In Lean Times, New Ways to Reach Out

Museums are seeking younger audiences through social networking sites. Nearly every museum has a page on Facebook. The Brooklyn Museum recently introduced a new tier of membership using social networking sites like Facebook, Flickr and the microblogging site Twitter to lure 20- and 30-somethings.

Some institutions are also using the Internet to give an exhibition an added dimension. At the Walker, for example, a traveling show called “Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes” has its own Web site, which includes a lexicon of terms related to suburbia. Visitors can add their own terms and can also post their personal suburban stories on YouTube, 16 of which were included in the show when it was on view at the Walker last summer. (The exhibition, which was also at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh last fall, opened at the Yale School of Architecture on March 2.) It’s just one example of many ways the Walker is trying to “merge on-site with online,” as Ms. Viso explains it.