Mobile Media Studies Lecturer: Michiel de Lange January 2015 Liset van der Laan #3967824 New Media and Digital Culture Me, myself and Andy, Pablo and Vincent. The relationship between the #museumselfie and someone’s selfpresentation.
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Mobile Media Studies
Lecturer: Michiel de Lange
January 2015
Liset van der Laan
#3967824
New Media and Digital Culture
Me, myself and Andy,
Pablo and Vincent. The relationship between the #museumselfie and someone’s self-‐presentation.
Introduction
When visiting the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, a new phenomenon arises. Where it used to be
crowded with people facing the picture to have a glance at the famous Leonardo da Vinci
painting, nowadays a significant number of visitors have their backs to it. They are taking
selfies1 of themselves with the Mona Lisa. This phenomenon where museum visitors are
taking photographs of themselves with pieces of art does not only occur at the Louvre, but
people are taking selfies in museums all over the world. The popularity of taking
photographs in museums has even led to a change in the photography policies of several
museums, which now effectively create conditions to encourage selfie taking (Hromack
2014).
A painting can have different roles, for example it can have a decorative role, it can
be there to enhance an unknown world or to teach the spectator something. All in all a
painting is created so that the spectator can look at it. With the museumselfie, the roles are
reversed. The painting is there to present ourselves together with it. If we only wanted to
show the painting, a picture of the painting alone would be sufficient but instead the
painting becomes a piece of scenery of our presentation of the self (Kleinpaste 2015).
Today, the sharing of lived experience is part of our daily lives and within that process we
have the ability to present ourselves. Selfies, and taking selfies in museums, receive a lot of
bad press. For some, they’re the manifestation of a self-‐obsessed, narcissistic society. We’re
impelled to step back from significant or sombre moments in our lives to share selfies
online. Taking a selfie with the Mona Lisa is not about the quality of the painting and how it
makes the spectator feel anymore, but about what can be checked off the bucket list
(Schama 2014).
Scholars have theorized that the selfie could function as a mode for people to
express themselves, seek attention and love, or become part of a certain community
(Tifentale 2014, 7). By taking selfies in front of works of arts, people show the world about
what they think is worth taking a selfie with, thus not only expressing themselves but also
showing their cultural taste. According to sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, a person’s entire set
of patterns of choice and preferences -‐ a person’s manifested preferences, can be defined as
her or his taste (Bourdieu 1984, 56). A person’s entire set of manifested preferences for
cultural practices like visiting a museum can therefore be referred to as her or his cultural
taste.
1 A selfie is a “photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or
webcam and shared via social media.” -‐ the Oxford Dictionary
Sociologist Erving Goffman, in his book The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life,
argues that we present a front in all our behaviours before others. Goffman employs a
dramaturgical approach where interaction between people is seen as a performance,
shaped by the environment and audience, constructed to provide others with impressions
that are consonant with the desired goal of the individual (Goffman 1956). Goffman states
that during any type of social interaction people have the desires to control the
impressions other people form of them. In our online lives, our postings are more
deliberate acts than our informal behaviours in real life, making Goffman’s approach very
relevant. We are consciously shaping and forming the content we enter in social media
networks, in order to control the impression we have on others.
This paper focuses on whether taking and sharing selfies in museums create and
influence distinctions in cultural practices and taste between people and therefore
contributes to the process of establishing desirable individual identity by showing cultural
taste in their front stage performance. The main question is formulated as follows: In what
ways does taking and sharing a selfie in front of a work of art contribute to the process of
establishing a front stage identity by exposing someone’s cultural taste?
To answer the research question it is necessary to clarify the definition of the selfie,
explore the possibilities, the criticism and how it relates to cultural taste. The first part of
this paper covers this elucidation and development of the selfie. The second part will cover
the notion of front stage performance, following Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical approach.
In the third part I will combine two different research methods to answer the research
question. First, I will carry out a data analysis of 295 photographs uploaded on the photo
sharing platform Instagram with the hashtags #museumselfie. I will look at the other
hashtags used in combination with the museum-‐ and artselfie to gain knowledge of how
people are expressing themselves and their taste. Secondly, I will conduct a textual analysis
on four museumselfies. Textual analysis is used to understand how people use text to make
sense of their lives (Brennen 2012, 194). By combining these methods I aim to get an
answer to the research question.
The selfie
A selfie is a type of digital self-‐portraying, usually taken with the front camera of the
smartphone and shared on a social media platform. According to journalist Elizabeth Day,
the first photograph tagged with the hashtag selfie appeared on the image-‐hosting site
Flickr in 2004 (Day 2013). Selfie taking and sharing has become a global phenomenon and
everyday endless selfies are uploaded to social media sites. As of January 2015, more than
222 million public user images have been hashtagged #selfie on the social image-‐sharing
platform Instagram.
Selfies are often depicted as the symbol of the narcissistic time we live in, a
manifestation for self-‐obsession (Schutte 2014). In the Greek mythology, Narcissus could
not tear himself apart from his reflection in the pool and drowned, but anno 2015 we carry
our mirror with us permanently, ready to take a photograph of ourselves. In popular
culture, many articles have been published about the self-‐centred aspect of the selfie, “it's
selfishness of the most superficial kind” (Freedland 2013). Nevertheless it is not accurate
to say that everyone who takes a selfie is a narcissus in its classical form. Narcissus had
enough of the one image he saw in the pool. He did not talk about it with people. To
Narcissus, unlike the taker of the selfie, the world around him did not exist. In that respect
is the selfie not only about how ‘me’ but is a call for ‘us’ as well. In this paper I will not
elaborate on the relation of the selfie with narcissism but explore its relationship with
cultural taste instead.
Cultural taste and selfies
French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu argues that cultural choice, or taste, is closely related to
social position. He claims that how one chooses to present one’s social space to the world,
one’s aesthetic disposition depicts one’s status and distances oneself from lower groups
(Bourdieu 1984). Bourdieu presented three sorts of capital that were determinative for
social class: economic capital, social capital and cultural capital. Economic capital is the
financial power that people have, the fundamental capital according to Bourdieu; social
capital is the quality of someone’s social network, and cultural capital is the total of
knowledge and skills that people own. Considering the scope of this paper, I will not
discuss all the aspects of Bourdieu’s theory but I will highlight three key concepts for
understanding the relation between cultural practices and cultural taste. These concepts
are cultural capital, the idea of fields and habitus.
Cultural capital. Like Karl Marx, Bourdieu argued that capital formed the
foundation of social life and dictated one’s position within social order. Cultural capital is
the capacity to “play the cultural game” (Blunden 2004), which means the ability to acquire
skills, clothing, posture, etcetera through being part of a particular social class. Bourdieu
states that “the social order is progressively inscribes in people’s mind” (Bourdieu 1984,
471). According to Bourdieu, cultural capital comes in three forms: embodied, objectified,
and institutionalized.
Field. Fields are the various social and institutional arenas in which people, or
agents, express and reproduce their dispositions. For example in the academic field,
administrators and professors are two types of agents who have a stake in the operation of
the academic field. The positions of agents in the field are determined by the amount and
weight of the capital they have. Fields are simultaneous spaces of conflict and competition
as agents compete to gain a monopoly in the species of capital that is most effective in a
particular field (Blunden 2004). For instance, agents in the artistic field may use social and
economic capital to gain a monopoly on cultural capital.
Habitus: The concept of habitus plays an important role in Bourdieu’s theory. It
reflects to the physical embodiment of cultural capital. It is created through a social, rather
than individual process, and is a sensibility acquired through a life-‐time and an upbringing
“in those conditions and the possibilities they include or exclude, with a future (including a
future for one’s children) which offers prospects, or on the other side, a past remembered
when things were better” (Blunden 2004). It is thus not determined by structures, nor is it
a result of free will. It is created by interplay between the two over time. Habitus also
extends to our taste for cultural objects. Bourdieu links taste of cultural objects such as art,
food and music, to their social class position.
Selfies can be understood according to the concept of hexis in which the habitus of
life is inscribed and embodied. We see that in the museumselfie, as people are
communicating to their network, showing themselves in combination of a work of art.
Bourdieu puts all domains of culture on a spectrum, from the legitimate to the personal.
The legitimate domains relate to art and what we usually call “high culture”. The personal
domains involve decisions that have a functional element, and are usually more closely
related to domestic life. On this axe, a selfie would be more a part of the personal domain,
while the depicted art on the selfie is in the legitimate domain. The cultural choice to make
and share a museumselfie thus interrelates these two in the spectrum.
#museumselfie
The museumselfie is a selfie made in a museum, most of the time in front of a work of art
but it can also be in front of the museum or in one of the halls without a work of art in the
background. Although the origin of the museumselfie hashtag cannot be traced, curator
Brian Droitcour coined its brother, the artselfie, in 2012. However, where the
museumselfie is used widely in all places of the museum, with almost every thinkable kind
of work, Droitcour limits his use of the artselfie to “cases where the art itself creates the
conditions for the selfie, with mirrors and approximations of their sheen” (Droitcour
2012). The popularity of the museumselfie started after the first Museumselfie Day,
organized in January 2014. After that day, the museumselfie received praise as well as
criticism. On the one hand museums praised the hashtag because they see the selfie as the
voice of the digital world, “the voice of real people whom potential for real life engagement
with the museum is” (Hromack 2014). On the other hand it is argued that the
museumselfie is more a way to say, “here I am”, less than a connection with the museum.
Furthermore it is argued that instead of a painting letting us reflect on ourselves, it is used
to support our own self-‐image.
“Going to a museum in the era of #MuseumSelfie is less about what you see and
how it makes you feel than what you get to check off your bucket list.” (Schama
2014)
The presentation of the self in front stage behaviour
In his book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, sociologist Erving Goffman explains his
idea of the world as a stage, where everyone present themselves to the observers around
them. Individuals thus construct reality by performing a role that observers take in and
absorb. The performance is therefore always linked to the actor and the observer(s). He
believes that legitimate performances of everyday life are not acted in the way that the
performer knows in advance just what he is going to do. Goffman describes performance as
“all the activity of a given participant on a given occasion which serves to influence in any
way any of the other participants” (Goffman 1956, 8). There are two types of performers: a
sincere actor who believes in his or her own act; and a cynical actor who deludes the
audiences for purposes of what is called “self interest” or private gain.
Goffman distinguishes between a frontstage and a backstage. The front is the
“expressive equipment of a standard kind intentionally or unwittingly employed by the
individual during his performance” (Goffman 1956, 13). In the front stage, we are trying to
present an idealized version of ourselves, according to a specific role, which can be for
example a good student, waitress or banker. In the back stage we leave the front stage
when we are no longer required to be in a social environment. Individuals engage in
performances, which Goffman defines as “the activity of an individual which occurs during
a period marked by his continuous presence before a particular set of observers and which
has some influence on the observers” (Goffman 1956, 13). While we are on front stage we
try to put our best character out there for other people, tweak our behaviour, a process he
calls impression management (Goffman 1956, 49).
Goffman’s analysis of social interaction as dramaturgical performances is very
fruitful in human’s social interaction on social network sites as well. A social network site
(SNS) is a “web-‐based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-‐
public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they
share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by
others within the system” (boyd en Ellison 2008, 211). Thus, the concept of a SNS, is to
create a micro-‐society centred around the user, offering him the possibility to link with
other users, in Goffman’s terms, offering the user, the actor, a stage where he can perform
in order to model his identity. In the last decade, Goffman’s dramaturgical approach is
frequently considered a useful foil for understanding online presentation of self. The
common thread in these articles is that individuals would employ impression management
online to present an idealized self.
People use SNS to present aspects of themselves to their networks (Mendelson en
Papacharissi 2010). These networks can differ from platform to platform. Platforms like
Facebook and LinkedIn for example are most often used to connect with individuals’
people known from offline environments, while users on platforms like Instagram or
Twitter do not necessarily know their friends or followers. But can all online content be
considered a performance? Scholar Bernie Hogan argues that in the era of social media, the
world is not merely a stage but also a participatory exhibition. Individuals continually
submit data to their profiles, react on others and view the content. He argues that aspects
of Goffman, like impression management, can be used in a framework “through the
metaphor of an exhibition rather than one of a stage play” (Hogan 2010, 8). Where
performances are subject to continual observation and self-‐monitoring, exhibitions are
“subject to selective contributions and the role of a third party”(ibid).
The social networking site Instagram is a platform based on photographs and
functions as one of the most popular platforms for selfies. Photographs play a large role in
how identity is presented, especially personal photographs2. They present ideals and show
the positive moments of our lives, with an emphasis on moments of celebration like
birthdays, weddings and vacation. Before the camera we consciously and unconsciously
transform ourselves, “portraying a version of ourselves we hope to be”(Mendelson en
Papacharissi 2010). Thus, following Goffman, people give a performance when they allow
themselves to be photographed; they use “dramaturgic techniques endeavour to give
others an impression of who they are”(Boerdam en Martinius 1980, 109).
2 Personal photographs are photographs made by ourselves, members of our family or peer group
for our own use, not by professional photographers and not for mass audiences (Mendelson and
Papacharissi, 2010).
Presentation of the self in a museumselfie
With an integrated camera in almost every smartphone, taking photographs has become
something natural to us. When people see something they like, their common reaction is to
take a photograph of it. This has resulted in the popularity of taking photographs of pieces
of art. Celebrities like Beyonce, Jay Z, P. Diddy and Eminem shared their tribute to Picasso,
Leonardo and Warhol on social media. Last year, the first Museumselfie Day was
organized, a day to make people aware of the large collections that museums are exhibiting
all over the word (Caines 2014). Museum Selfie Day is an initiative of Mar Dixon, who runs
a blog about museums, art and culture. She thought a one-‐day, crowd-‐sourced
phenomenon would promote awareness of great collections of work being housed in
national and regional museums. The Museumselfie Day was well received so this year, on
January 21st, the second edition of the international Museumselfie Day was held. This
paper addresses the research question via an analysis of 200 photos uploaded with the
#museumselfie and a textual analysis of four uploaded photographs on Museumselfie Day
with the #museumselfie on the social image-‐sharing application Instagram.
Instagram is an app that allows users to make a photo, apply preset filters in order
to manipulate the appearance, and share it instantly on the Instagram service itself or
another social networking site. With numerous filters and hashtags, Instagram’s tools
create infinite possibilities to customize selfies, making it one of the most popular
platforms for selfie sharing. By tilting, raising, and lowering our smartphones to find the
best angle of ourselves on screens, we build perceptions about ourselves that are
constructed purely on screens. So Instagram is not just a way to take photographs, “but it is
also an active means for some people to establish their identities – viewing the ubiquity of
their selfies as a mark of distinction” (Wendt 2014, 7). Much of Instagram’s appeal comes
from the fact that it makes everything in our lives look better. It gives us an ideal self,
faking the emotion of old photographs by giving something just a few seconds old the
texture of time, creating a kind of instant nostalgia (Crouch 2012).
Complications with time and language
The app Instagram focus on its temporality, making it not really clear when exactly a
photograph is taken. Although each photograph is stamped with a specific time and place,
the photos are organized with a flexible time span where the measurement is “relative
between the present moment of launching the application and the original date of
creation” (Hochman and Manovich 2013). This means that if you look at an Instagram
photograph on January 23rd that is uploaded on January 21st, the time indication will be “2
days ago”. The photographs that I took during the Museumselfie Day are a randomized
sample of the photographs uploaden between 09:00 Central European Time (GMT +1) and
23:00 Central European Time (GMT +1) on January 21st 2015.
Besides the time span, there were also some complications with the language. As
the museumselfie is an international phenomenon I was not able to understand and read
all the content. A lot of museumselfies were made in Slavic countries, using the Slavic
characters. As I do not understand Slavic languages I decided to leave these photographs
out of the analysis.
Data analysis
Using the official API of Instagram, I scraped Instagram data that was uploaded with the
hashtag #museumselfie. I also scraped their metadata, which are the location, combined
hashtags, user ID, comments and number of ‘likes’. In total I scraped 295 photographs. For
this scrape I took a sample at random of a 142 photographs with the hashtag
museumselfie, and I took a sample at random of 153 photographs that was taken with the
hashtag museumselfie, particular on Museumselfie Day. First I will look which hashtags are
used most in combination with the #museumselfie.
Hashtag Amount Percentage
Art 50 17%
Selfie 50 17%
Museum 39 13%
Museumselfieday 24 8%
Repost 17 6%
Jeffkoons 16 5%
Koons 15 5%
Sculpture 12 4%
Museumviews 11 4%
nyc 11 4%
Artmuseum 9 3%
Artmirror 8 3%
Expo 8 3%
Metmuseum 8 3%
Modernart 8 3%
Table 1: The table shows information about the top 15 most used hashtags in combination
with the #museumselfie. The total amount of images was 295.
Table 1 shows the 15 most used hashtags together with the #museumselfie. The two most
used hashtags are #art and #selfie, which is to emphasize their out and about. What I
found striking is the large amount of hashtags #Jeffkoons and #koons, but after research I
found out that the pop artist Jeff Koons had an exhibition of his work at Whitney Museum
of American Art which ended this January. The exhibition is full of giant, shiny, mirror
objects that Koons is known for. By the large amount of the hashtag, the museumvisitor
was clearly invited to make a lot of selfies. The Whitney Museum anticipated on this and
handed out cards to visitors that declared: “Koons is great for selfies”. The museum
encouraged visitors to take selfies and post it on Instagram with @whitneymuseum. The
selfies made at the Jeff Koons exhibition are not the only selfies taken by using mirrors or
shiny objects. This is not strange according to journalist Heather Corcoran, “[b]ecause if
there’s anything that the selfie-‐taker loves more than a mirror, it’s a culturally significant
mirror” (Corcoran 2014).
We can organize these hashtags in different categories. The first category is that of
the actual act of taking the selfie. Next to the museumselfie hashtag, people use the hashtag
selfie as well to let their followers know that the photograph is a selfportrait. Secondly
there are the hashtags that are in any way related to art, museums or an exhibition. Thirdly
there are hashtags related to a location and the fourth and last category is related to time.
Category Hashtags
Selfie #Selfie
Related to art, museum or exhibition #Art, #Museum, #Koons, #JeffKoons,
#Sculpture, #Artmuseum, #Artmirror,
#Expo, #Modernart
Location #NYC, #Toulouse
Time #Museumselfieday, #Repost,
#Museumviews
Table 2: The table shows the categorization of the most popular used hashtags in
combination with #museumselfie.
The data analyses of the number of hashtags shows that people want to be find firstly by
art related hashtags and secondly by the location. It was difficult to differentiate within
these two categories. To define more categories more data was needed.
Textual analysis
To gain more insights in the motivation of the museumselfie, I decided to do a qualitative
textual analysis, next to the quantitative content analysis. I am going to analyse four
museumselfies, focussing on the theoretical framework I described earlier. I chose the
photographs on the criteria that it should have between 20 and 100 likes, is made by the
user self, and is made in the United States of America. The first criterion is used because I
aim for users who are active on Instagram for personal use and not as a marketing tool, for
example to promote their brand or blog. The second criterion is used because a
photograph that is made by someone else is also often tagged ‘selfie’, though the
museumselfie I am aiming for is made by the museumvisitor him or herself, using their
front camera, with or without a selfie stick. The third criterion is chosen because the
presentation of the self can also be cultural different. In this paper I won’t focus on the
cultural differences between people. All the users have public profiles so I could also look
into their other photographs.
Museumselfie in front of a museum
The first image is from Instagram user fashionkristy (Instagram.com/fashionkristy) and is
taken in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She writes with her selfie: “Spent this
snowy after noon lost in art!” after which she writes the following hashatags:
#philamuseum, #museumselfie, #selfie, #snow, #art, #museum, #getlost, #adventure,
#wanderlust, #wander and #winter. Her photo is liked 31 times and three people left a
comment. Fashionkristy is a vivid Instagram user. She has posted 1135 photos, follows 375
Image 1: Museumselfie from Instagram user fashionkristy
Image 2: Museumselfie from Instagram user russellihrig
people and 393 people follow her. She has no biography but when I look through her
photos I can say that she is form Philadelphia, she lives here with her cat and has a job in
retail. She posts a lot of inspirational quotes and lyrics from songs. She does not post a lot
of selfies, one out of ten photos she post is with her in it. She uses a lot of hashtags with all
of her photos, which indicates that she likes people who she does not know will see her
photos. By exposing yourself in front of a museum you enlarge your cultural taste by
saying ‘I was here’. Though you do not say anything about the art that you saw. It is merely
a way of showing off.
Museumselfie engaging with the work of art
The second image is from Instagram user russellihrig (Instagram.com/russelihrig). He
took his selfie on museumselfie day in the Cincinnati Art Museum and wrote “Battle of the
Beards”. Just as fashionkristy he posted a lot of hashtags with his photo:
#museumselfieday, #cincymuseumselfie, #saintjerome, #grampaguns and he also
mentioned @cincyartmuseum. He got 22 likes and three people commented on the photo.
Russellihrig has no biography but as a lot of his photos are made in the Cincinnati Art
Museum, I assume that he works there. Although he uses four hashtags at his
museumselfie, he usually uses none. Russellihrig is in this photograph not only showing
himself in the museum, but also clearly playing with the surroundings and what is painted.
It is clear why he chose this particular painting.
Image 3: Museumselfie from Instagram user ohlorelo
Image 4: Museumselfie from Instagram user mstegne
Museumselfie inspired by the work of art
The third museumselfie is from Instagram user ohlorelo (Instagram.com/ohlorelo). She
took her selfie during the Jeff Koons exhibition in the Whitney Museum of American Art.
She has no other text written by her selfie other than “Museum Selfie Day”. She tags the
photo with #MuseumSelfie, #MuseumSelfieDay, #JeffKoons, #ArtSelfie, #WhitneyMuseum
and #NYC. The Whitnew Museum of American Art promoted taking selfies in the Jeff Koons
exhibition. She has only her real name shown in her biography, Lore Ordóñez, but nothing
more. She seems to be often in Mexico. It is not clear if she lives here or if she is on holiday.
She writes her Instagram photos in English and Spanish, which indicate that she is from
Mexican background. In Goffman’s terms, this is the least frontstage museumselfie of them
all, not showing her face but hiding behind her camera. She rarely shows herself on her
photos, which can be because she is shy or because she does not want to expose herself on
social media.
Museumselfie in front of a work of art
The fourth image is taken in Metropolitan Museum of Art by Instagram user mstegne
(Instagram.com/mstegne). She states by her photograph: “Last picture from The Met, I
promise”, following by the tags #irises, #vangogh, #themet and #NYC. Her photo got 12
likes and two comments, of which one is from herself, adding more tags: #museumselfie,
#metmuseum and the mention @metmuseum. Just as the other participants, her biography
is only showing her name, Marina Mila. She took seven photos of her trip to the museum, of
which two or selfies. One is in front of the museum and one is with the van Gogh painting.
She is not engaging with the painting and it is not clear why she chose that painting in
particular.
Taking selfies in museums
Museumselfies are made in different ways. Through an examination of the approaches that
visitors have to museumselfies, taken selfies in museums can be described in terms of
three broad categories that are unique but not discreet: showing, collaboration and
experimentation, and location.
The first category is showing. The museumvisitor is taken a selfie in front of a work
of art without collaborating further with the piece. It can be a painting or a sculpture, but
the person poses normal and does not further reflect on what he or she sees. The selfie
shows thus him or herself and the piece of art. There is no further interaction so it is only a
way to show their out and about to their network.
The second category is collaboration and experimentation. Here, the
museumvisitor is collaborating with the work of art. The artwork itself creates conditions
for the selfie or the museumvisitor is experimenting with the work of art. This can be an
artwork that has mirrors or shiny objects but also a sculpture from the renaissance where
the museumvisitor is creatively creating a photograph in which it looks like the sculpture
is making the selfie.
The third category is location. Here the museumvisitor is not making a selfie with a
work of art, but is merely showing the location. This can be taken in a hall of the museum
or in front of the building. There are also a lot of location museumselfies made in the
mirror of the cloakroom and bathroom of the museum.
If we look at the three sorts of capital defined by Bourdieu we see that museum
selfies are intended primarily to increase cultural capital. The museumselfie is saying to
the public: “I visit museums so I am a cultural person”. Museumselfies primarily increase
cultural capital but also social capital, as museums are places where people gather. A
museusmselfie thus also says “I engage in a social activity so I am a social person.” We can
even differentiate this for the three categories of museumselfies. The first category
showing is only showing someone with a work of art but is not doing anything more. The
second category collaboration and experimentation is more engaged and is telling “I am not
only watching art, but I am myself also a ‘arty’ person”. The third category dwells more on
the status of the museum location, but is not doing anything. This category gains the least
cultural capital. We see this in the image of user fashionkristy. She is only standing in front
of a museum, which does not tell us anything more than her location.
In Bourdieu’s terms, the museumselfie depicts oneself as an agent in the field of
high culture, at least as a museumvisitor or even an art lover. Making a museumselfie is in
itself controversial in this field. The habitus is not entirely clear on this. If we look at the
Jeff Koons exhibition where museumselfies are promoted, as well by other museums, we
see a changing attitude towards museumselfies. The three categories are also deflecting a
slightly other habitus: location and showing selfies are more modest while the exploration
and collaboration selfies are more playful and controversial.
Following Goffman, museumselfies are by nature a frontstage phenomenon. One
could argue that the selfies of the exploration and collaboration have some backstage
elements, thus increasing the authenticity factor. As if one is saying: “I made this picture
for myself, but it turned out so well I like to share it”. Nevertheless, the playfulness can also
be seen as being not too serious. As if one is just making fun in a museum. As such the
museumselfie can be used in different subtle ways according to the needs of once
impression management.
Conclusion
Taking and sharing a museumselfie is a way to increase ones social and cultural capital. It
can be seen as playing around in the field of high culture, showing off someone’s cultural
taste. As such it needs some impression management because the museumselfie is not
without risks. There is a fine line between what is considered good and bad taste and this
line is not clear and evolving. The content of the selfie can make a selfie more or less
accepted, reflecting ones habitus and defining ones position within the field of high culture.
Museums themselves are playing an active role in evolving the border between good and
bad taste regarding the making of museumselfies. Museums are on the one hand attracted
to the communication and marketing possibilities of selfies but also have to consider the
common opinion that disapproves the taking of museumselfies.
New technologies are entering the museum doors, which brings a lot of
opportunities for further research. The line between what is considered high culture and
low culture is blurring which has consequences for someone’s identity. In this paper I’ve
done a close reading of the museumselfie to gain more insights in ones self-‐presentation.
The museumselfie itself can be further studied, but also photography in museums and
exhibition methods in the age of the smartphone has a lot of unknown questions that are
very fruitful for research.
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