FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sarah R. Smith
336.758.5524
smithsr@reynoldahouse.org
@SarahatReynolda
REYNOLDA HOUSE PARTNERS WITH NYC-BASED MUSEUM HACK
TO ‘HACK’ ITS NEW DIGITAL WING
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (Feb. 26, 2014) – Usually, if a museum announced its website had
been hacked, it would ring alarm bells among the staff and create problems for its visitors. But
just months after the launch of the new reynoldahouse.org, Reynolda House Museum of
American Art asked a New York-based business to do just that.
Reynolda House has partnered with Museum Hack, a museum-tour company that describes its
experiences as “un-highlights museum adventures.” The company’s team has led tours at The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, American Museum of Natural History and, this week, the “digital
wing” of Reynolda House. On Feb. 26, Reynolda House debuted “Museum Hack Hacks the
Collection,” an online gallery curated by the same team that leads in-person tours at the New
York City museums.
The concept, said Sarah Smith, Reynolda House director of marketing and communications, was
to look at the Reynolda House website as an experience parallel to visiting the museum in person
and open up new ways to explore and share the museum’s renowned collections of American art,
historic house objects, and Reynolds family archives.
“Nothing can replace an in-person experience at Reynolda,” she said. “But with nearly 400
objects from our collections now available online—more than can be on view in our museum
galleries at any one time—we’re redefining and expanding the Reynolda experience. Working
with Museum Hack is a step forward in our exploration of how we make memorable connections
with people before and after they set foot in the museum.”
This is the first time that Museum Hack has “hacked” a museum’s online collections. For its
online gallery, the Museum Hack team selected nine objects, including eight works from the
American art collection and one from the historic house collection. Each selection is explained
by the Museum Hack team on the museum’s blog.
Visitors can jump from a 1917 copper ashtray with matchbox holder to a 1973 silkscreen with
dye and flocking print by artist Alan Shields. It’s this unusual juxtaposition of objects that makes
a Reynolda House experience – onsite and online – unique, says Elizabeth Chew of Reynolda
House.
“What this Museum Hack gallery demonstrates is that we’ve created an opportunity for people to
look at the objects in our collections in a very personal way,” said Chew, the Betsy Main
Babcock of the Curatorial and Education Division. “That’s when transformational moments
happen – when you see a painting, an archival image, or piece of historic furniture and it adds to
your own life experiences. You don’t need an art history degree to know what paintings make
you feel happy or what archival object reminds you of home.”
Chew says the museum is envisioning other online galleries curated by visitors, museum
members, or other audiences.
Museum Hack’s founder, Nick Gray, is a 2004 graduate of Wake Forest University, with whom
Reynolda House formally affiliated in 2002. The museum and the university share the Reynolda
Campus, named for the original 1,087-acre estate of R.J. and Katharine Reynolds. Gray
remembers Reynolda House fondly from his days as an undergraduate.
“I lived on campus all four years, and I liked to take a lot of walks through the historic property,
brainstorming business ideas and talking with friends,” said Gray. “Reynolda House was always
on my radar. Getting the opportunity to work with the Reynolda House on an official project was
a huge honor. I loved looking at the collection and pictures of the historic house from my laptop
in New York City.”
Reynolda House and Museum Hack will host an online discussion on Twitter March 13 at 2 p.m.
Follow the hashtag #hackreynolda to participate. In April, the museum will hold a day-long
retreat with Gray and other thought leaders in the museum field on the ideas of visitor-generated
experience and engagement at Reynolda.
The Museum Hack gallery is part of a larger Reynolda House initiative called the Digital
Engagement Project launched in 2010 with the digitizing of the museum’s collections. The
federally funded project included cataloging each object in the museum’s collections,
redesigning the museum’s website to facilitate access to collections, and creating new
opportunities for people to interact with the museum online.
Earlier this month, Reynolda House announced that it had created a new staff position for its new
“digital wing.” Trish Oxford was named Assistant Director of Marketing & Communications, a
position that will focus on creating synergy between on-site experiences and virtual experiences
through management of the Museum’s new website, email, social media, and other digital
platforms.
About Reynolda House
Reynolda House Museum of American Art is one of the nation’s premier American art
museums, with masterpieces by Mary Cassatt, Frederic Church, Jacob Lawrence, Georgia
O’Keeffe and Gilbert Stuart among its collection. Affiliated with Wake Forest University,
Reynolda House features changing exhibitions, concerts, lectures, classes, film screenings and
other events. The museum is located in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in the historic 1917
estate of Katharine Smith Reynolds and her husband, Richard Joshua Reynolds, founder of the
R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. Reynolda House and adjacent Reynolda Gardens and
Reynolda Village feature a spectacular public garden, dining, shopping and walking trails. For
more information, please visit reynoldahouse.org or call 336.758.5150. Connect at
facebook.com/rhmaa and @CurateReynolda.
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