Case study 1 - Queens College Art Center, Flushing, NY.

Being quite new to researching this kind of thing, I decided to turn to Google scholar to find out a bit more about the theories behind social networking and small galleries. I stumbled on an article edited by Lee Sorenson titled On Running a Small Art Gallery in an Academic Library (1987). Sorenson uses the Queens College Art Center in Flushing, New York, as a case study of a small gallery to focus on. Although this gallery is different in many ways to what is going on at The Old Lookout, there are still many similarities that link the two examples. Sorenson notes that this gallery is distinct from other more commercial institutions for three main reasons:

first, its accessibility to students, faculty, and other community members; second, its flexibility for potential exhibitors; and third, its limited size, modest curatorial and administrative requirements, and very modest budget needs. From an organizational standpoint, these last two characteristics - flexibility and scale - can be seen as mutually reenforcing conditions rather than as conflicting objectives. Flexibility is the positive by-product the comes from operating on a modest institutional and budgetary scale. (Sorenson (ed.), 1987)

Baring in mind these factors, I think that similarities can definitely be seen between this gallery and The Old Lookout, in not only the limitations of the gallery but the positives that come as by-products of these limitations. Therefore, after establishing that it is indeed still runnning ans showing exhibitions, I decided to have a look at what was online about the Queens College Art Center.

The first thing that I found when googling the name of the gallery is, unsurprisingly, its website.

Immediately, it is clear to see that the gallery's website is easy to find, with the URL just being the name of the place. It looks clean, but without much personality from just the home page. To me, although being easy to find, it doesn't necessarily draw the viewer in or capture the imagination. Clicking through to 'exhibitions', it becomes obvious that this gallery operates in much the same way as the Lookout, showing exhibitions by different artists for a series of weeks at a time, with a frequently changing schedule. However, it appears that it does operate throughout the year, as opposed to just the summer season.
 
In the 'about' section, the viewer is directed to the history of the gallery.

The centre describes itself as such:

Queens College Art Center, a nimble gallery anchored in Queens and open to the world, is a successor since 1987 of the Klapper Library Art Center that was based in the Queens College Art Library’s gallery founded in 1960. In more than 200 exhibitions to date, it has shown masters like Alice Neel, Joseph Cornell, and Elizabeth Catlett, and introduced scores of artists from around the globe and emerging artists who later went on to major careers. The Art Center focuses on modern and contemporary art, presenting the works of both emerging and established artists in diverse media, in programming expressive of the best of the art of our time.

Art Center exhibitions support the educational and cultural goals of Queens College. The goal of the Queens College Art Center is to provide the means for participating in and upholding a democratic society through learning, adaptation, and critical thinking.

Having the history of the gallery I feel will draw viewers in, and make them more likely to visit if they are in the area.
On clicking in the link to 'press' I was surprised to see that this section is obviously not regularly updated.
I was hoping to find links to twitter, facebook or linked in, but after doing a bit more googling, I found that they don't actually utilise any of these social media tools. I assumed that as a gallery run in a student institution, they would be trying to appeal to a younger demographic by keeping potential visitors updated on what is going on.

Although on paper, it sounded like this kind of institutional-based gallery would be very similar to The Old Lookout, after doing a bit of digging, it appears not. Although the Queens College Art Center is presenting itself as a professional and clean art gallery, the gaps in information throughout its online presence (the link which directs visitors to a 'campus map' page is also blank) I feel would put visitors off to some extent. Chance visits will still, of course, be unaffected. However, people coming from further afield may want to plan visits using online tools, and when they are not kept updated this can look unprofessional. To me, The Old Lookout's online coverage is much more extensive and useful to potential visitors than just having one website.

So, to conclude a bit, this case study has been quite surprising to me. I expected that The Old Lookout's online presence would be about average for the size of the gallery etc. However, for now, I can only assume that at the moment we do much more than a gallery of similar grounding.