Artworks that have traditionally been placed inside museums are now being transformed by and understood within the digital space of Instagram – a dominant visually oriented social media platform. The current essay presents an ontological reasoning, attempting to explicate the changing conditions of art, and further, the transformation of its aura, remediated by new social media. Drawing on seminal theoretical works by Walter Benjamin (1969), and Bolter and Grusin (2000), the altered ways of consuming and experiencing art in the contemporary world are critically discussed. The understanding of the hyper-mediated art experiences of Instagram users, who are characterized as postmodern digital ‘tourists,’ is followed by an attempt to reinterpret the concept of aura, which is inevitably influenced by the highly interactive, visually oriented new social media. It is suggested as a conclusion that the reflections on the changing modes of art consumption in the designated space of museums versus in the digital space of Instagram lead to a problematization of the museums’ role in the current social media age, and further, of the social media’s approach to the digital sharing of artworks.
