To attract a new audience to the National Museum of Fine Arts, in Rio de Janeiro, we simply placed hashtags, one of the most popular social media icons, under our main artworks. Creating the "Hashtags of Arts Exhibition". The objective was to offer an experience that gave the public a fresh way to look at secular paintings, creating a link between historical works and a contemporary digital behavior. Knowing that Brazilians spend an average of 3h56m per day on social media, we created an exhibition that allowed people to witness art in a way they could relate to it.

Only 7,5% of Brazilians have the habit of going to museums. And when they take the decision to visit art exhibitions, they usually prefer trendy or foreign artists. With a very low budget, the National Museum of Fine Arts, in Rio de Janeiro, had a big challenge : how to draw attention to the oldest Brazilian art collection in town, which has been on display for the last 82 years? So we decided to make people look at the museum's collection with a new perception. By simply adding hashtags under our artworks, we gave the audience the trendy and modern component they like, specially in a country with so many social media heavy users.

As Brazilians rank second worldwide in social media usage, we created an exhibition to show people that everything they like in the digital world is also in the National Museum of Fines Arts of Rio de Janeiro. By placing more than 250 hashtags under 40 artworks, we made an audience that wasn't interested in art start to relate and connect to it. But we did more than that: we made people learn about art in a different way: the hashtags were always based on the history and context of the artworks. To enhance the experience, we created an audio guide that could be accessed on the museum's Instagram stories highlight. The audio guide explained the history of the paintings through the language of the hashtags. To spread the idea and get people talking about the "Hashtags Exhibition" on social media, we also took the idea to the museum's Instagram feed.

Projections show internet penetration rate is forecast to grow to about 61 percent in 2021 in Brazil, compared to 2018[1]. Besides, the country ranks second worldwide on social media usage, with an average of 3h56min per day (2). Hence, it is getting harder and harder to take people's attention away from their smartphone, especially when we want them to look at art. According to a recent survey, 70% of Brazilians have never been inside a museum(3). So, our approach was to make people realize that everything they loved about social media was also in the art world, using hashtags under the paintings and telling their history in a way people would connect with. (1)Internet usage in Brazil - Statistics & Facts(2) Global Webidex(3) http://www.ipea.gov.br/

The implementation of our idea was as easy as placing stickers on the walls of the museum, but, in our cases, each sticker was a different hashtag. As simple as that. Like this, we created the "Hashtags of Arts" Exhibition. The exhibition happened between the 10th of April and the 10th of May with 40 artworks of the National Museum of Fine Arts, in Rio de Janeiro. We also used social media as a tool to attract attention to our idea, creating posts featuring some of our paintings and their hashtags. To know more about the paintings, people could access the museum's Instagram highlights an listen to an audio guide specially created to the occasion.

The "Hashtags of Arts" made visitors increased by 78% compared to the same period of the last year. By only adding hashtags on our walls, we made our permanent exhibition, which has been on display for 87 years, look fresh again and got people talking about it. Some of the main Instagram influencers in Brazil were organically impacted and started comment and sharing our idea. On social media alone, our organic reach was about 6 million people, the number of the brand online mentions increased by 1112%, only in the first week. The idea was organically featured in the Brazilian conventional media, across 5 different TV stations, including the largest tv network of Latin America that is also one of the largest of the world ("Rede Globo"), besides the main radio stations and newspapers of the country. In total, the idea reached almost 21 million people in an organic way.