MuseWeb 2021

Plenary: #HashtagTheCowboy & MoMA’s Security Officers Speak for Themselves

Co-Chair Rich Cherry will introduce two programs innovative programs and moderate a discussion around these boundary pushing efforts:

#HashtagTheCowboy: How a Global Pandemic Became an Opportunity to Do “Different”

When the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City shut its doors on March 17, 2020, the museum's Director of Security and Operations was tasked with taking over the museum’s social media accounts. Since then, the museum’s social media following has soared; their Twitter account peaked at 300,000 followers, and their Instagram and Facebook pages each gained tens of thousands of followers. In this program, Seth Spillman, Chief Marketing Officer for the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, will discuss the museum’s closure and how appointing a social media novice led to a marketing triumph in the midst of a global pandemic.

MoMA’s Security Officers Speak for Themselves

Museums have long called upon experts from a variety of backgrounds within the field to engage a broad audience through their unique perspectives. The “Beyond the Uniform” program at the Museum of Modern Art went one step further by calling upon experts already within the museum: security staff. The project resulted in an audio guide and a day of public programming initiated by the socially-engaged artist Chemi Rosado-Seijo and created by nine artists who work in the museum’s Security Department. This panel will present findings from “Beyond the Uniform”, encouraging museum professionals to look past existing structures in order to engage audiences with new perspectives.

Photo Credit: Beyond the Uniform by Chemi Rosado-Seijo, featuring Eric Scott, Chet Gold, Brian Wilson, Kevin Reid (back row), Joseph N. Tramantano, Rabbila Konock, Eva Luisa Rodríguez, Chemi Rosado-Seijo, Jose Colon, and Jose Martinez (front row). The Museum of Modern Art. Photo: Beatriz
Meseguer/onwhitewall.com. © 2020 The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Chair: Rich Cherry


MoMA’s Security Officers Speak for Themselves
Alethea Rockwell, Museum of Modern Art, USA

What happens when you truly give over programming control to people who do not typically have creative power within museums? Find out from this collective group of MoMA security officers who are also artists themselves. They will share their knowledge and experience creating Beyond the Uniform, a series of visitor-facing programs that included officer-led art-making, live performances, in-gallery talks, workshops and a public panel, as well as a museum-wide audio guide that has been incorporated into MoMA’s permanent interpretive offerings. The group will discuss defying institutional expectations, breaking rules, and how they built a new culture of shared authorship within MoMA.

#HashtagTheCowboy: How a Global Pandemic Became an Opportunity to Do “Different”
Seth Spillman, The National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum , USA

Tim Tiller serves as the director of security and operations at the National Cowboy Museum in Oklahoma City. But after the museum closed on March 17, he was asked to take over the museum's social media accounts during the shutdown.

He said he was "brand new" to social media and made his first tweet:
"Hello Friends, my name is Tim and I am the head of security for The Cowboy. I have been asked to take on the additional duty of social media management while the museum is closed. I'm new to social media but excited to share what I am told is called 'content' on all of The Cowboy's what I am told are 'platforms' including the Twitter, the Facebook, and the Instagram.