MoMA is a leader in the field of art on YouTube, with 528.5K subscribers as of Dec 31, 2023 (we gained 42.3K subscribers and 4.0M views in 2023). Our videos take viewers into the minds of artists and behind the scenes to see the vital work of those who make the museum run, from conservators and curators, to educators and art handlers, and more. Our video program spans documentaries, demonstrations of art techniques, think pieces, artist and thinker profiles, live streams, promotional trailers, and curator tours, and while our primary outlet is YouTube, we also make videos for a handful of exhibitions a year. Online, we reach a wider and more diverse audience than the museum can. Some of our viewers will never make it to MoMA, or may only come for a once-in-a-lifetime visit, but can stay connected, learn from, and engage with the museum on a regular basis via our free channel. Video is a uniquely emotional medium and the majority of our work is unscripted. We have developed series that audiences keep coming back to becasue we meet people where they’re at, allow for complexity and intimacy, and foster a willingness to hear other’s perspectives and go new places. In 2023 we focused on making our videos vital to the public conversation, exposing our audiences to working artists and new mediums and taking them beyond the walls of the museum.
In 2023, we published some of our most wide-ranging content in the channel's lifetime, including a documentary on how artists are using AI, profiles of architects and designers working on issues of the environment, instructional videos on collage and watercolor, a master printmaker making his last print, a detective story from the photography conservation lab, a behind-the-scenes look at the making of Ed Ruscha's Chocolate Room. In the past eight years, the video team at MoMA made a major effort to create recognizable series that would draw in new audience, fulfill subscribers, and help strategy. The pandemic increased viewership but limited production and we found that starting in 2021 we had to stabilize and build back the channel's offerings to the quality of storytelling. Since then, we've been using YouTube's analytic tools to determine what our subscribers and new viewers want to watch, what they're searching for, what inspires them, and what keeps them engaged. Our ambitions for the quality and complexity of our stories have led us to publish less frequently than during the pandemic, but with the intention of making evergreen media with higher engagement and impact in terms of educational value.
MoMA remains a leader in the field of art on YouTube, with 528.5K subscribers as of Dec 31, 2023. We gained 42.3K subscribers and 4.0M views in 2023. Our top performing videos were three that we published in 2023: our short documentary How to See Like A Machine on how artists are using AI (384.5K views) and our two tutorials on watercolor (249.7K views) and collage (158K view) techniques. In fifth place was our video on master printmaker Jacob Samuel making his last print (136.9K views) and in sixth was artist Ed Ruscha talking about the little-known artwork that inspired his career (117.7K views). Amongst the top ten were videos from as long ago as 2017–previous tutorials and conservation videos, which shows how the long tail of evergreen content is the basis for our channel's success. Overall, our watch time was 201.9K hours, we had 50.6M impressions, and our impressions click-through rate was 3.9%. Compared to 2022, in 2023 there was a 17% increase in subscribers and a 21.9% increase in impressions click-through rate, and a 16.5% increase in shares, which implies that our content was more striking and compelling to viewers.
