services such as Facebook, Tumblr, Reddit and Flickr to showcase their work, attract audiences without geographic limitations and advocate on their own behalf.
But it’s Instagram, according to Bamberger, that has had the biggest effect on the industry.
“The lack of words, the immediacy, it changed everything up,” Bamberger said. “Artists like that. They’re not big fans of tedious explanations or big, long discussions. They like fewer words, more pictures.”
Major galleries, such as Saatchi in London, and museums including the Whitney in New York City and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art have cultivated enormous followings on Instagram. The museums use the service to promote upcoming shows, give followers a behind-the-scenes look at their operations and make art itself more accessible.
“Social media is a space where we get to be especially playful. Everyone loves sharing a good Caturday image, so why can’t we?” said Eva Recinos, social media manager at LACMA, which has more than 650,000 Instagram followers (Caturday is a portmanteau of “cat” and “Saturday” that appears frequently on the service). “That post could pique someone’s curiosity about Japanese art or get them to explore our collections page for more artworks.”
It has worked the other way, too, with museum visitors helping build awareness of LACMA by posting photos from the museum to their own Instagram pages. “Urban Light,” the large-scale sculpture of lampposts outside LACMA’s entrance, has become “an icon of Los Angeles, and that’s due in large part to Instagram,” Recinos said.
The art world is not immune to the baggage of social media, which can often bring out the worst of an artist’s insecurities.
Bussieres says Instagram can be distracting, especially when artists get swept up in comparing how many “likes” or comments their work gets compared to others.
“We all have to be able to separate what is good versus what is popular,” she said. “Is it popular because the artist is young and stylish and posts cute pictures? Is it a trend? Does it mean anything that this artist has more followers than I do?”
Rokas and Bussieres describe feeling pressure to constantly be engaged on Instagram and to post photos of their work to maintain a following and keep up with other artists.
“Sometimes I just want to get rid of it because it encourages you to be on your phone, and I don’t like that obsession,” Rokas said. At the same time, she says that if she deletes the app, she’ll miss out on opportunities.
“As with any technology, there are good things and there are bad things,” she said. “And you either have to accept both or neither.”