It’s like trading clothes with your best friend, only better. Today, eighteen museums in New York City — from MoMa to the Whitney — have paired up for the #museuminstaswap to draw parallels between their collections on Instagram. What it means for casual Instagram museum fans is that they get to see gorgeous artwork populating their feeds all day. Good deal.
The pairings, which may seem completely random, were actually carefully chosen. According to Wired, each museum created a ranked list, which was crunched with all the other lists using a computer algorithm. Sort of like old-school computer dating…but for artwork. The best part about it is that the museums get to help each other promote their collections to fans across the city.
After the pairings were received, the museums set to work drawing parallels for the Instagram project. “I knew I wanted to focus on the artists who painted the landscape backgrounds for AMNH’s famous dioramas,” MoMA’s digital marketing team director Gretchen Smith said. “The small group of artists who created them were really masterful, and many of them worked at the museum for decades. I thought this was a natural opportunity to recognize their work.”
It’s not the first time it’s been done—a similar InstaSwap took place between ten London museums last August. But this February’s U.S. incarnation is taking place on a larger scale.
Check out some more of the exchanges below. And by all means, follow the swap as it happens on Instagram. Because #artrules
