For some, it may have seemed like a normal February weekend in Florence, with some spectacular spring weather and a good crowd of both locals and tourists downtown. But to serious users of the social network Instagram, it was an intense weekend with a conference, an ‘empty’, an Instameet and an Instawalk, all being shared and requiring monitoring online (for the truly passionate).
The Museo dell Opera del Duomo invited 12 worldwide Instagramers with a following of well over 1 million to Florence for a weekend centered around the Cathedral and its newly reopened museum. Star of the event was American Dave Krugman, founder of the #emptymuseum movement; back in 2013, he approached the Metropolitan Museum of New York about letting a team of top Instagram artists into the museum at night. This spawned a worldwide movement of collaboration between museums and Instagramers.
Krugman and other #EmptyDuomoFi invitees spoke to the press and members of the public at the #InandOutDuomoFi conference on Saturday, February 20. Marianna Marcucci, Tuscany representative of the Invasioni Digitali movement, spoke about the importance of museum photography by all users to convert observers into visitors. Both movements are helping diffuse knowledge of collections to millions of online ‘followers’ who may not have previously been aware of these places. The invited Instagramers spent Saturday night at the museum until the late hours, and will be sharing their images with the hashtag #EmptyDuomoFi on Instagram over the next few days.
Saturday morning also saw the Church of Santa Maria Novella as a protagonist in Florentine Instagram streams in an event organized by Tuscany Buzz for Opera di Santa Maria Novella. 50 passionate photographers discovered the building’s cloisters, chapels and museum with the help of three guides, and dedicated themselves to sharing knowledge and images of the works on the network with the hashtags #tuscanybuzz and #buzzmeet3 (some 280 photos so far). Tuscany Buzz is a project of Ilaria Vangi and Ilaria Gori created one year ago to share the best of Tuscany through social media, organizing both blog tours and larger meets, often with a cultural focus.
Buzzmeet3 participants outside SMN | Photo @Tuscanybuzz
The Instagram crowd moved through the whole city on Sunday morning with the #YourFlorence Instawalk organized by Georgette Jupe (@GirlinFlorence) and Instagramers Firenze, bringing together over 120 photographers including the invitees of the Opera del Duomo’s Empty event.
YourFlorence Instawalk | Photo Nicolas Pradier
Starting in piazza Duomo with a group photo, under slightly overcast skies, the pack moved through the city’s main piazzas, converged in piazza Santa Croce, and ended in the Oltrarno at the organic market. The #YourFlorence hashtag, which currently counts just short of 300 images, is intended to remain ‘open’ as a place to share what you love best about the city.
