Weekly Blog Roundup

Here's a small collection of some interesting blog entries from the museum world.

Diner en blanc at the Louvre at Out and About in Paris

So I cheated - this is not a museum blog at all, but a lifestyle blog about Paris, written by an American expat. I've followed it for some time as I once lived in France myself and it makes me nostalgic, and Mary Kay has a real knack for finding interesting experiences in a wonderful city.

This particular post caught my eye professionally because of the terrific public program possibilities. The White Dinner flashmob meets at various locations around Paris once a year and serves dinner to 8,000 invited guests, who all show up wearing white. Can you imagine a catered dinner party for 8,000 - as a flashmob? This year's was in the Louvre courtyard and I wondered if they got permission ahead of time. Either way, I would argue that the Louvre benefited; part of the goal of the dinner is:

All of the guests are familiar with the rules governing the event and know exactly what must be done before the celebration can begin. For example, invitees must arrive and depart by bus or organized public transportation, allocate seats in a very specific manner, with men on one side and women on the other, and take all of their trash away with them when they leave. The diners must enhance the value of the public space by charming passersby with the unexpected rather than detracting from it. And, most incredibly, it works.

There have been several viral examples of flashmobs recently, music, dancing, etc., and I would argue that most do "enhance the value of the public space." So how can museums cultivate what is essentially an unplanned phenomenon?