SFMOMA SendMe
Background
SFMOMA launched the SMS-based service Send Me SFMOMA to great acclaim (it was featured on The Today Show) in 2017. You could send a text message to the museum, and they’d respond with a relevant (and sometimes hilarious) item from their collection. The initiative was conceived as a way to shed light on the museum’s vast collection, only a fraction of which is on view at any given time. Send Me SFMOMA quickly went viral. Over the course of the summer millions of people texted the service everything from “Send me 🙄” to “Send me abstract expressionism” to “Send me a sign” and received artwork images from SFMOMA’s collection.
What we made
That summer, SFMOMA partnered with Stamen Design to create data visualizations exploring the alternately poignant, deadpan, and whimsical exchanges that emerged between users and Send Me SFMOMA.
It’s not a search engine. You can’t request something specific that you want. It’s a sublime engine.