BRIAN KENNY: Welcome to Cold Call, the podcast where we dive deep into the groundbreaking ideas in Harvard Business School case studies. Museums have spent centuries bringing art to life, but what happens when technology can literally make a painting speak? Today we’re exploring a dilemma at the intersection of art, marketing and AI. Faced with changing audience expectations and growing pressure to engage younger visitors, a museum considers a bold idea using generative AI to animate one of its most iconic artworks as part of a public campaign. The proposal promises attention and accessibility, but it also raises deeper questions. Would it help people connect with art or distract from it? Could AI broaden engagement without compromising authenticity? And who gets to decide what an artwork would say? This case is about far more than a marketing experiment. It’s about innovation versus stewardship, technology versus interpretation, and how institutions rooted in history navigate a rapidly changing future.
Today on Cold Call, I’m joined by Professor Julian De Freitas and guest John Connolly to discuss the case, “Harvard Art Museums: When Art Meets Artificial Intelligence.” I’m your host, Brian Kenny, and you’re listening to Cold Call on the HBR Podcast Network. Julian De Freitas’s research addresses questions about how consumers perceive, adopt, and interact with AI systems. You’re a repeat guest here, Julian, welcome back.
JULIAN DE FREITAS: Good to be back.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah, it’s great to have you back on the show. John Connolly is the director of marketing for the Harvard Art Museums and the protagonist in this case. Welcome, John.
JOHN CONNOLLY: Thank you. Thank you for the invitation.
BRIAN KENNY: You knew you were the protagonist, right? Your name is all over the case.
JOHN CONNOLLY: Exactly.
BRIAN KENNY: This case hits close to home, right? Here we are. We’re across the river from Harvard, but I have to say I have a personal connection to the Harvard Art Museums. I grew up just about 20 minutes away from them and I used to go visit them all the time with my aunts. My grandaunts would take me there. I saw the glass flower collections and all the taxidermy and things like that. And then fast-forward another generation, my children have all gone there for field trips with their schools. Oh, fantastic. Lots of personal connections there. I love the Harvard Art Museums and I think this is a really fascinating conversation. I was mentioning to both of you before we got started that the Boston Globe recently had an article about the Museum of Fine Arts animating some of their artwork. Very controversial. So we should have some fun with this one. Julian, let me ask you to start, if you can tell us, we know that museums are guardians of history and tradition. Why did you decide that this was an interesting case to write about?
JULIAN DE FREITAS: Yeah, so my research program is broadly based on this assumption that artificial intelligence from a consumer perception standpoint is a fundamentally different technology from other technologies. And so it raises unique sources of value and risks and also barriers to adoption. So I had a sneaking suspicion that by studying an organization that preserves history and tradition, we might learn something broader about these types of questions. And I was particularly drawn to an art museum because arts are one of a kind original product if you think of it. So I think that raises some unique constraints for marketers. You can’t duplicate it or put it online. So what could AI do to maybe help, but also what are some of the challenges that come from mixing AI with art?
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. What’s your cold call? I’m curious when you start the discussion.
JULIAN DE FREITAS: This case deals with a particular instantiation of AI avatars. So I ask the class, should the Harvard Art Museums use AI avatars in a marketing campaign? So straight to the action.
BRIAN KENNY: To the core. And you probably get an interesting mixed response to that. I won’t ask you to give away too much about what happens in the classroom, but that’s a good start. John, let me turn to you. Thank you for being here with us today. You had to walk all the way across the bridge.
JOHN CONNOLLY: Good. It was warmer…
BRIAN KENNY: It was a nice day for it though. Yeah. Maybe you could start. Just tell us a little bit about the Harvard Art Museums. How many things do you have in the collection? What’s the sort of composition of the museums?
JOHN CONNOLLY: Yeah, no, absolutely. The Harvard Art Museums is embedded in the university campus right adjacent to Harvard Yard. There’s over 250,000 objects in the collections, one of the largest collections in the country in the US, which is fantastic. We have five floors, 50 plus galleries, and we have art from ancient works right up into modern and contemporary works. We reopened after a period being closed in 2014. We renovated the museum and now we have all these collections under one roof, which is fantastic. And we used to have an admission fee to get in and about two and a half years ago we launched a free admission initiative, which was really a game changer for us.
BRIAN KENNY: I thought that was amazing to read about that in the case. I didn’t realize that it was free. I don’t remember what it cost before necessarily, but to do that seems like a big step, particularly for a nonprofit.
JOHN CONNOLLY: It was a big step and price is a barrier when we’re talking about accessibility. So that was a big move for us. And then from a marketing perspective, we had a new challenge of sometimes free can equate to lesser. So we were out there trying to beat the drum that we are not lesser. We really pushed the size of the museum and we talked about the size of our collections and really tried to make it seem like a noteworthy experience that even though it’s free, you should still make the effort to come.
BRIAN KENNY: But I think you’re up against a lot of challenges, right? You’re not the only game in town. Boston has a lot of excellent museums, so it’s a competitive place to get attention. And museums, generally speaking, I’d love to hear your take on this, have a challenge just in terms of getting people to understand why should they spend time there given all the other things that they could do.
JOHN CONNOLLY: Very crowded market. In Boston we have the Museum of Fine Arts. We have Isabella Stewart Garden Museum, Institute of Contemporary Art. Down the street we have the MIT Museum, which opened in a new building itself. It’s an extremely crowded market. And then you talk about you’re in a sports town too on top of everything else. Then it’s Netflix, it’s Amazon, it’s movie theaters. There is a massive pressure to try and pull people into an art museum. I will say that more people are coming into art museums, people who are generally Instagram has helped a lot of people come in, influencers recording themselves, walk into museums and things like that. So there is kind of a nice energy around art museums, but there’s such pressure on museums to bring in visitors to generate revenue and also build a membership base, which is a challenge now for us because admission price was a membership benefit that went away. We face that now as a new healthy challenge that we’re embracing.
BRIAN KENNY: And some of that gets to the heart of the case, right? You’re even considering this and the this, by the way, we should say, is animating some of the artwork, the classic pieces that are in the museum. The only reason you’re even thinking about doing that is so that you can engage a broader audience maybe in ways that people would find fun and interesting, right? Is that fair to say?
JOHN CONNOLLY: Yeah, absolutely. And there’s a lot of content creators out there, so even that world is very noisy right now. So you’re looking for something that maybe can, you’re doing something different. Art museums still struggle with a perception issue. They have long, dusty corridors. They’re very…
BRIAN KENNY: And Harvard, by the way, you add onto that, Harvard’s 375 years old.
JOHN CONNOLLY: They’re perceived as shush environments where people go in and have to be… There’s a lot of rules and stuff like that. So that’s the perception of museums out there. And so as a marketing person working in museums, it’s always healthy to kind of push and flip those perceptions a little bit. And yeah, AI is there. It’s right in front of us and it’s like, how do you engage without tipping over something else? So that was a big challenge of where we landed with Julian.
BRIAN KENNY: So Julian, I’m sure you’re seeing other kinds of organizations encounter things quite similar to this. It seems to me like it takes on an add level of tension when you talk about something that people revere like artwork. And in this situation, the case really goes deep on the fact that there was a lot of concern from the curators. Curators in an art museum I think are kind of like faculty at a university. They’re the subject matter experts. They get the final say on things. But what are some of the tensions that arose in the context of this case around how you get to interpret and who gets to interpret what the AI could or couldn’t do?
JULIAN DE FREITAS: Yeah, it’s really interesting reactions that are described in the case because you could think of this as just another marketing campaign. But as we were just discussing, this is an embodied persona who’s talking to you, who’s moving. And that combination of what AI can do with the fact that this is a one of a kind artwork seemed to raise all sorts of barriers that other marketing campaigns had. The curators were of course very concerned with representing the artwork accurately as the artist might have wanted it to be perceived. And so they didn’t want to layer on interpretations that would seem at odds with that. The conservators of course want to preserve the artwork exactly as it is as well, and they don’t want to transform it in any way. And now you’re making it move and potentially biasing people toward the character, let’s say, rather than other details of the artwork. Then there are art historians who are worried about this idea of losing the skill to be able to analyze art and talk about it, which is also resonating with broader societal concerns around how AI is going to lead to de-skilling. So all of these different stakeholders are worried about this. And then on top of that, now that it has a voice, now that it has a body, some are concerned that it’s going to be perceived as a spokesperson for the museum, as if the museum’s saying, “Hey, this is an artwork that we think really stands for what we’re all about. ” And so that triggers a whole discussion about, okay, then in that case, which particular artwork should we use?
BRIAN KENNY: …is this the one?
JULIAN DE FREITAS: And then also, by the way, can we keep control over the narrative? Can it speak in our voice? Is it going to misrepresent us? Because we know that AI can hallucinate various facts. So how do we get the best of this technology while also keeping control of the brand?
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. Does that ring true to you, John? I’m wondering, and Harvard also, the Harvard museums are teaching places, right? Yes. So you have to balance this dual identity of you’re a public asset, you’re open to the public, but you’re also accommodating students and faculty. And I’m wondering if what Julian just said rings true to your experience.
JOHN CONNOLLY: Yeah, absolutely. And it is an interesting challenge for us when we have that dual identity. I think it’s a good kind of challenge. We’re all about inviting people in to look closer and to build a relationship with an art object, feel something. And I think once we do that, we succeed because I think that means that person feels something and they come back. We have this whole family student guide program where we train students to be student guides. They do such a remarkable job. And I’ve gone on their tours with the public and the first thing they do is ask people, what do you see? They invite all the perspectives in, they invite inquiry. And I think that is a wonderful connective tissue between the academic audience and the general museum public.
BRIAN KENNY: But you’ve had some fun with this in the past and the case has some exhibits from previous marketing campaigns that you’ve done. I don’t know if you can talk a little bit about the Barbie campaign.
JOHN CONNOLLY: Oh my God, yeah.
BRIAN KENNY: Which just surprised me, but this is fun. I’m enjoying this and maybe that’s –
JOHN CONNOLLY: Yeah. Sometimes we move into this irreverent kind of space. Our social media and digital strategist, Tara Metal was the one and she worked in collaboration with curators, got it all signed off and used this object and positioned it in relation to the Barbie movie. And it really kicked off in the comment section. Instagram, some people were saying, “This is a travesty, you shouldn’t be doing that. ” But you get that. But there was actually some back and forth that happened, which was great. And there was a nice energy off that. And again, I think in the perception game, it messed with perceptions a little bit or turned them around a bit because again, we still have that perception issue with museums. And anytime that’s poked and prodded a little bit, I find that we’re succeeding.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. And I should just for our listeners who haven’t seen this, I’ll describe what the Instagram post was. It was basically an ancient artifact that looked like it was in a Barbie box and the teaser copy on the box was describing the artifact. It was very well done, I thought. And really funny. Julian, this reminds me of another case that we had on Cold Call once about the Boston Ballet. That one didn’t involve AI, but it involved the challenge that the Boston Ballet storied institution in the arts has in attracting a younger audience to start to appreciate ballet and to want to attend. Their audience is aging quickly. So they’re trying to find ways to update some of the old ballets and make them more contemporary. And I’m wondering, as you look broadly across organizations, is this a challenge that’s very common in cultural organizations where your population is aging out and you need to find a way to attract that newer, younger audience and breathe new life maybe into what you’re doing?
JULIAN DE FREITAS: Yeah, I think when you look across various surveys, the challenge that you see is less so much getting them in the door and more sort of what John was describing around turning them into repeat invested visitors who also contribute economically to welfare of the museum. I think another challenge related to this is keeping abreast of how attitudes toward museums and cultural organizations are changing. The case, for example, features some research done by a consulting company showing that one of the main sort of outcomes that people expect from museums is to be entertained. And that’s across the board, which of course raises challenges if now people are spending time at home on Netflix, for example. But then there are also some generational differences that are interesting. So older generations, for example, think that an important role for museums is to conserve art and preserve it through the years to a greater extent than some of the younger generations. Whereas many of the younger generations think that an important role for museums is also to be a place for self-discovery. These are just some of the shifting attitudes that I think someone like John needs to keep abreast of if he wants to continue to evolve and stay relevant.
BRIAN KENNY: Managing that brand, you’re dealing with a whole bunch of different stakeholders. So you’ve got conservators, we mentioned faculty, you’ve got students, you’ve got people who belong to the museum. But as you started to maybe socialize this idea among those different stakeholder groups, what were some of the things that you were hearing? And were there any pushback that you said, “You know what? They might be right. This could be a wrong step.”
JOHN CONNOLLY: That’s an excellent question. And I will say as a museum, we’re on our own journey. And when we talk about trying to engage audience on it to have more fun, we had this museums at night that we run on the last Thursday of every month. We have this wonderful piazza, this indoor courtyard. It’s a gathering space for people to socialize. It’s modeled after a piazza in Italy, bustling town square. We wanted to bring that to life at nighttime. So we felt like we pushed into new ground there and we proved that this could be something that could be successful, that people would come in, they would socialize in this space, and then they would visit the galleries and they would actually spend time with art, which is fantastic. So it’s funny, you can never say, let’s talk about AI period. You kind of have to come at it with a 45 degree angle so you can state what you’re trying to achieve.
And the goal here was to use AI to bring people closer to art basically. And to also maybe do something a little unexpected because Julian says museums are evolving, so we should evolve as market the museums. We are also in an ecosystem in Harvard where we teach a museum, pushes the envelope a little bit more. Experimentation happens within our four walls. We should do that through marketing too. So when I did socialize it with curators, honestly, I was careful not to forward this around as an email because then the things get CC’d. But I really wanted to talk to people face-to-face and to give context and to really explain what we were trying to do. People were good. They understood what we’re trying to do and it was a very good conversation. They brought up their concerns in a very constructive way. Good.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah.
JOHN CONNOLLY: Museums are all about trying to get the authentic voice out there. Now I did make sure to stress that we are not trying to fake anything here. This AI is transparent. It’s obvious that we’re using AI out in the open, that we’re not using it to write emails to donors. I think that is such dangerous territory to go because if anyone picks up on the fact that a communication has been written by AI, we push our audience further away. Museums are trying to make up ground. Historically the big divides between museums and their publics. So we’re trying to get closer. And if we start playing around in the background with AI, then that’s dangerous. So I really like the aspect that we were very out in the open and that appealed to the curators. They were like, “Okay, we’re out there with this. ”
BRIAN KENNY: What does this tell us a little bit more about the broader issue around AI and authenticity and what should firms be thinking about as they kind of go down this path?
JULIAN DE FREITAS: So I think there’s one type of use of AI where it’s behind the scenes, it’s helping you to operate at scale. And I think I agree with John that you have to be careful about where exactly you’re using it in those types of settings. Whereas in this case, just to be concrete about what was done, there were two instantiations. One was the artwork talking in a video form, and then there was another one where it was a chatbot that you could have a two-way interaction with. And no one I think would think that this was being done with anything but AI. I think that a couple of general lessons that I take away from this are firstly, there are certain domains where these barriers to using AI are particularly salient. So one is like this one where you have a one of a kind original artwork where people are really concerned about the authenticity of representing that.
But there are also other domains that you see a lot of pushback, like ones that involve a lot of trust. So think about tax preparation where the expectation is that this product is 100% solid. Also domains where we expect there to be some level of human touch, healthcare, education where we think that it’s really critical that a human is there in the loop. So that’s the first point. I think there are just certain domains where you have to be more sensitive. You can’t just assume that because it worked in that other domain, it’s going to work here. I think the other one is what John was alluding to around how you execute it, especially because people are very skeptical of companies tacking on AI to please investors and that sort of thing. They’re very sensitive to what might seem like a superficial use of AI, something that’s more performative or that’s really cost-cutting even though you’re touting it as something else. What they want to see is that you’re doing something that you really couldn’t do without AI and that it’s adding some real value and that can be solving some real customer problem like how to position my furniture in my living room or some broader societal value, like making a statement using AI that you couldn’t have done otherwise.
And it could also be educational value. And then a final one, and I think this goes for any new technology that you’re using in a very public-facing campaign, is just this issue of authenticity with respect to the brand and the associations that it brings to mind and what it’s been doing historically. I think when people are confronted with one of these campaigns, they’re asking themselves, “Does the brand really have a license to be making these types of claims with this technology? Or can I sniff out that this is really jumping on the bandwagon?” Which of course is tricky when you’re trying to bring it in. So I think again, the execution is important. If you’re wanting to invest in this in the future, how do you ease into it as well?
BRIAN KENNY: What were some of the considerations that you had as you thought about how this would play out creatively, John?
JOHN CONNOLLY: I saw this as a marketing tool, first of all. I will say when we’re thinking about audiences in the Harvard Art Museums, we’re thinking about them on their level of engagement. Now that we have free admission, we are in this amazing position where somebody could come to the art museum that’s never been to an art museum ever before. And that’s a massive moment, a massive responsibility and a massive opportunity. And this person could come into the museum and engage with an art object and be into museums forever and then go to visit all the other galleries and all of a sudden they become a museum person, a return visitor. And then there’s also an extra interpretive layer, which I found very interesting where this AI activation can give us more than a static image that we could put out across our channels that this would actually deepen someone’s understanding that they will want to move to the next level of understanding with that object. It conveys a, come on, take a deeper dive. And I really subscribe to the whole Oscar Wilde thing that art should be playful. There’s a lot of truth telling in art, but it should be playful too. And these artists, they experimented throughout their careers. They experimented their artistic techniques and everything like that. I often wonder what they would think. And I’m sure there’ll be varying degrees of reaction.
BRIAN KENNY: To your point earlier about the church-like atmosphere and museums, I think we all feel that when you walk into… It’s not a place where you want to speak up, where you want to feel jovial and loud, but something like this could totally break the ice. As you walk in, you could feel much less intimidated. It makes me wonder, Julian, how much of what John is describing is really the push to be innovative and how much of it is the push to be relevant? And maybe those things are one and the same or maybe they’re related, but I think a lot of marketers generally, and I’m a marketer, so I can say this, we’re always feeling like we need to be onto the next thing. We got to be innovative. We’ve got to show that we are advancing with the times and where people are going. But also relevance is the key to the realm. If you’re not relevant to your audience, why should they pay attention to you?
JULIAN DE FREITAS: I agree. I think that this is an innovative use of AI. At the time of the case, there aren’t really examples of people animating artwork in this way, but this is by far, I think in my mind, a relevance play. And I think it’s doing that in a couple of ways. One is what John mentioned where you’re able to do creative things with art that you couldn’t have even done before, which I think is really making it attention-grabbing. It’s unexpected, right? And maybe that means it sticks in your memory so that next time you’re considering how to entertain yourself, the Harvard Art Museums top of mind.
I think the other part of this in terms of the value it adds and how it makes it feel relevant is I think what we’ve been circling around here in terms of making this come down to earth. Now this isn’t just an artwork that exists several centuries ago that’s stiff and unapproachable, but it’s talking to me in an accent and I can ask it questions. And so it makes it approachable. Related to that idea is more broadly this idea of democratizing art. What if I have no education in art and now I’m able to interact with this piece of art at my level? And it’s responding in a personalized way to the sorts of questions that I have. And then that becomes a first entry point to consuming this and developing a vocabulary around it.
BRIAN KENNY: And is that how you saw it coming together, John?
JOHN CONNOLLY: Absolutely. We’re in the nurturing business when it comes to the museum visitor. We want them to feel welcome when they come in. We want them to feel welcome enough that they come back. We put ourselves in the visitor’s shoes and we look at the visitor journey and we look at the different pain points and those moments that give them pause. And this definitely is attention grabbing. I showed this on my phone to the curator and she jumped and she couldn’t believe that this could happen. I’m like, this will really get a reaction from audiences. But yeah, definitely the interpretive layer, the fact that they can interact and go deeper and all of a sudden feel a connection. And that’s the thing, isn’t it? Everybody talks about you should want to inspire and catalyze those connections with art and welcome those multiple perspectives.
BRIAN KENNY: So how did it play out? What happened in the end?
JOHN CONNOLLY: We got big engagement. There was some positive feedback. There was some negative. The negative feedback generally fell with the perception of AI out there.
BRIAN KENNY: Of course.
JOHN CONNOLLY: That was the problem. But people did appreciate what we were trying to do and were blown away by the technology itself. And some people have found it funny, good old-fashioned humor.
BRIAN KENNY: If people want to see this, if our listeners wanted to see it, is it able to be viewed on the website?
JULIAN DE FREITAS: We’ve been discussing the idea of doing just this. The way they ran the campaign was of course in a very controlled way where some people see one version and others see another. But I think it stimulated some appetite perhaps for round two in terms of doing something with Instagram. So I guess it’s to be determined.
JOHN CONNOLLY: Yeah, definitely. Yeah. It could suddenly drop. As I say, it’s…
BRIAN KENNY: Dramatic.
JOHN CONNOLLY: I think there was a positive response as to how we handled the whole thing. And I have to say, Julian was great. We had a lot of conversation about this.
JULIAN DE FREITAS: And related to this, John and team were kind enough to share the data from the campaign. And so we’ve been analyzing those and we’ll eventually post the publication with the link there.
BRIAN KENNY: Awesome.
JULIAN DE FREITAS: Yeah, I guess listeners can stay tuned for that as well. That should provide some samples.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. We’re coming close to the end of our time. I knew this would be a fun conversation and it certainly played out that way. Julian, with all the things that John’s describing about the delicate way that he had to approach this internally with his internal constituents, I’m wondering what the broader lesson is there for people. Again, we’re all trying to figure out how to embrace AI on a number of different levels. How should we think about dealing with those conversations and the inevitable pushback and tension that it creates?
JULIAN DE FREITAS: One lesson is definitely that this discussion has to be newly had for your particular brand because you’re dealing with particular audiences, particular kind of products. And as we see here, maybe AI in an instantiation that’s going to evoke new issues compared to other ones. I think one sort of lasting issue that I find intriguing about this case is firstly, you emerge from the case clearly having learned that even though AI is a tool when it comes to consumer perception, that’s anything but, and you have to be really mindful about that. But one discussion point that students still hang around and ask me about is whether they think all of this is going to go away in a couple of years because it’s going to become ubiquitous, it’s going to become familiar. And what I find at least an intriguing possibility is that yes, for some domains that might indeed happen, but there might continue to be other domains such as art or places where we think the human touch is important where we continue to want to insist that humans be a part of that. And I think that has implications for how brands strategize in terms of their positioning, but also for various other stakeholders. For example, if you think that in a world that’s crowded with AI, we’re not going to have enough human touch, but you think that this should be a right, then maybe you want to put policies in place to guarantee that. So I don’t think anyone knows for sure. And this is something that’s never fully resolved, but I like it that way.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. Just like an HBS case. That’s awesome. Julian, John, thank you for joining me on Cold Call.
JULIAN DE FREITAS: Thank you so much.
JOHN CONNOLLY: Thank you. This is great.
BRIAN KENNY: If you enjoy Cold Call, you might like our other podcasts, Climate Rising, Coaching Real Leaders, IdeaCast, Managing the Future of Work, Sky Deck, and Think Big Buy Small. Find them wherever you get your podcasts. Please email us at coldcall@hbs.edu if you have any suggestions or just want to say hello. Thanks again for joining us. I’m your host, Brian Kenny, and you’ve been listening to Cold Call, an official podcast of Harvard Business School and part of the HBR Podcast Network.
