SMK rhymes with Mastodon
OK, maybe not phonetically. But for a museum dedicated to open access, a decentralised, non-algorithmic social media platform seems an obvious place to make ourselves available and claim a space for the national Danish art collection.
A mastodon (well, some sort of mammoth) figurine visiting SMK
Last week, on an early spring Friday, we took our first baby steps into the Fediverse, the collection of platforms connected by the ActivityPub protocol. We did this by setting up an account on the cosy Danish expressional.social server populated by friendly-seeming natives (with an endearing love of image alt texts).
Now, that previous paragraph contains the words ‘protocol’ and ‘server’ and admittedly the Fediverse does require some acclimatisation: it’s just a slightly more abstract concept than your average centralised service. But such is the price of openness and flexibility. When you can “do” the Fediverse almost any way you please, choose your own server and choose your own app, things immediately become a bit complicated.
Slightly technical as it may be, it’s also very promising. The early adopters stand ready to help, all the features (and more) that you may want from a Twitter/X-like platform are available and the non-algorithmic focus imparts a feeling of control. On Mastodon you may be slightly confused, but you’re also very much in charge.
Of course, what you’re not getting is content going viral to a massive audience. Mastodon is thinly populated at this time. So we’re decidedly not there for the reach but because we see clear affinities with our openness ambitions, because the platform’s open architecture may allow for really interesting re-use/automatisation and because there might be a time where the current social media behemoths lose steam. In which case our mastodon riding skills may well come in handy.
We’re starting small. But we see great potential – not least for joining forces across museums and other fine cultural institutions. French cultural institutions are getting together at ReseauCulture.fr – and perhaps Danish/Nordic ones should look very closely at that model. Hit us up if you’d like to talk! 🤗
🏠 SMK on Mastodon (we speak Danish)
Our first Mastodon post
Image generated from Constantin Hansen, Prometheus Moulding Man from Clay, 1845, SMK
Carl Kylberg, Meditation, 1925, KMS3913, public domain
On 
© Ditte Ejlerskov, The Cult of Oxytocin, Nikolaj Kunsthal (2022). Photo: Jan Søndergaard
Still image from Lucio Arese’s prizewinning short film Les Dieux Changeants featuring a 3D scan of Hermes Belvedere from SMK Open
L.A. Ring, A Landscape near Bryrup, Jutland, 1888 (
C.W. Eckersberg’s