#Museum Week

SA Migration Museum highlighted stories of arduous journeys to start a new life. 

#MuseumWeek brings digital exposure to culture around the globe, DW,

You don’t need to leave the house to immerse yourself in culture. The Twitter project #MuseumWeek has hundreds of cultural and arts institutions around the world tweeting about their treasures.

Billed as a “world cultural event,” the annual one-week campaign is in its third year and growing steadily.

While in its first year in 2014, only 630 museums had signed up for the digital event, 2015 saw numbers more than triple with 2,207 museums participating globally. This year’s numbers are yet to be verified, as institutions are still jumping on board, but the social media event is likely to continue gaining popularity.

Galleries and museums from around the world are sharing parts of their collections as well as little-known facts and anecdotes online in a bid to appeal, above all, to a younger audience.

Using the hashtag #MuseumWeek, people are invited to enter into dialogue and share their own impressions and views, even when they’re thousands of miles away from participating institutions, and ask questions to learn more about art, culture or a particular field of study.

The biggest names in culture

The majority of participating museums and galleries appear to be from Europe and North America, with big names like the British Museum, the National Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum tweeting from the UK or the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) taking part from New York.