Ever innovative, the Brooklyn Museum of Art is doing the social networking tihng:

A
first-of-its-kind new socially networked
Membership tier has been created at the
Brooklyn Museum and will debut on January 3,
2009 at Target First Saturdays. The
program,
known as 1stfans, will offer paperless
benefits through the social networks
Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter, as well as
exclusive live events at the Museum’s monthly
Target First Saturdays, all for an
annual fee
of $20.

Artists from Swoon’s studio will be on hand
to help
launch the initiative at the January Target
First Saturday, the Museum’s popular evening
of art and entertainment in which the Museum
is open until 11 p.m. with free admission
beginning at 5 p.m. They will create prints
on found paper to be provided that evening by
new 1stfans.

"Traditionally, Membership has meant a
connection between one person and an
institution," comments Membership Manager
William Cary. "By engaging our Members
through online social networks and with live
events at Target First Saturdays, we
have created a way for visitors to become
associated with
the Museum and with each other. 1stfans isn’t
just an online category of Membership; it’s a
completely new way of using Membership to
grow our Museum community."

A groundbreaking benefit of the program will
be a unique method of utilizing Twitter, the
free social networking and micro-blogging
service, to connect with 1stfans. Twitter
technology enables its users to send and read
other users’ updates, known as tweets, text
posts of up to 140 characters in length.
Each month, the 1stfans Twitter Art Feed will
provide original content from contemporary
artists exclusively to 1stfans, providing
them with unique access to the perspectives
of many contemporary artists. The January
Twitter Art Feed artist will be announced in
mid-December.