Aussie TikTok star Mary McGillivray and the new frontier of art history
Mary McGillivray is gaining traction among a young global audience hungry for an approachable way to understand art.
For millions of TV viewers around the world the moments following the Eurovision grand final last month were a tense wait to see who would claim the crown. But for one young Australian it was the hours following the unveiling of Italian rock outfit Maneskin as this year’s winner that caused her a little angst. Like so many global viewers Mary McGillivray was captivated by the question of “did he or didn’t he?” when lead singer Damiano David was caught on camera allegedly doing a line of cocaine during the band’s post-win press conference.
While social media sites went into meltdown arguing the toss, McGillivray sat down and put her own investigative powers to work in David’s defence. Confident in her methodology, McGillivray publicly shared her conclusion that he was innocent, at the same time as the world held its breath waiting for the results of the drug test that would decide his fate, a drug test that ultimately came back negative.
How did the 25-year-old reach her not-guilty verdict? McGillivray’s theory relied on her university degree in Renaissance art history, specifically the theory of perspectivism, to prove it simply wasn’t possible for his nose to have connected with the table once the dimensions were taken into account. Posted on video sharing platform TikTok, her post had been viewed, liked and commented on more than 3 million times within a matter of hours. That number has now reached more than 5.2 million and counting.
The research, ingenuity and pure audacity McGillivray displayed in her lightning-quick response – and the overwhelmingly popular reaction it elicited – flies in the face of the naysayers who sniffily dismiss TikTok as just another social media platform for silly dances and funny cat videos. This isn’t the first time the Melburnite has taken to TikTok sharing unconventional facts and figures, all inspired by art history. In fact she makes a near-daily habit of it, and a strange thing is happening – McGillivray is gaining traction among a young global audience hungry for an approachable way to understand art history.
But first, a quick TikTok 101 for those of us who aren’t regular users (including this writer who, in a reversal of roles, was forbidden to even download the app by a certain teen son). One of the fastest-growing social media platforms in the world, TikTok emerged in late 2016 as a short video making and sharing app. Simple to use, it enables anyone to create and post their own quick and creative videos.
In January this year it had 689 million monthly users globally and has now overtaken YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger as the most downloaded app, with the majority of users aged between 10 and 29. With most of the world placed in a Covid-induced lockdown in 2020, TikTok quickly grew in popularity to an average of 1 million videos created on the platform each day. Although it was during one of Melbourne’s lockdowns that McGillivray posted her first TikTok, it’s no coincidence she ended up there. “On the one hand I’m surprised I’ve ended up on TikTok but on the other it makes a lot of sense,” she says. McGillivray grew up surrounded by both art and history – her mother was a high school art teacher while her father was a museum curator who founded Melbourne’s Scienceworks and worked at the Melbourne Museum. “It’s definitely in the blood and the arts have always been a big influence on me,” she says.
In high school she focused on both art and media, teaching herself to make YouTube videos and murder mystery films before going on to a degree in media studies at The University of Melbourne, later changing her major to art history after discovering and becoming obsessively passionate about renaissance art.
An ongoing part-time job as a video editor for Balloon Tree Productions and an editing gig on the first narrative TikTok web series, Love Songs, means she has a solid understanding of this online space. After receiving an award for the highest thesis mark in Fine Arts, McGillivray was accepted into Cambridge University to do her Masters thesis on two little-known Giotto frescoes in Padua’s Scrovegni Chapel, only to find all travel postponed indefinitely in 2020. “I was stuck at home, there wasn’t a lot to do and I’d had my overseas study plans scrapped so I made my first TikTok: fun facts about historical popes,” she says.
That post attracted a mere 1895 views but she persisted. “I have a great community of web series producers who are good friends and really encouraged me, saying I had the knowledge of a degree and the skills to make content.” From there she began creating regular art history TikToks that are fun, engaging and accessible.
A post called “Recognising artists part 1” offers “a rough guide on identifying Italian Renaissance artists”. “If everyone in the painting looks unreasonably jacked (buff), including the women, it’s a Michelangelo,” McGillivray notes in the TikTok. “If she’s blonde and got thicc (voluptuous) thighs, it’s a Titian but if she’s blonde and has this exact face it’s a Botticelli (showing three different Botticelli’s all with uncannily similar visages) and if it’s unfinished it’s probably a Leonardo.” The video lasts less than 40 seconds and runs through at least 10 paintings. Yes it’s silly and not steeped in academia but it’s entertaining and you have to admit she has a point. It’s also been viewed 1.8 million times.
Using the handle “the Iconoclass” McGillivray has since created more than 346 TikToks on topics ranging from Mona Lisa’s eyebrows to the artworks and architecture that feature in the Harry Potter films to why Brutalism is ugly. While the content itself is superficial it could only be created by someone with a deep knowledge and understanding of the era. A post called “How to identify art movements” notes: “If it looks like you need your glasses prescription updated it’s Impressionism, if it looks like your Tupperware drawer, it’s Cubism” and features some of art history’s most iconic paintings. That post has been viewed a whopping 3.7 million times.
With more than 350,000 followers and posts attracting 7.5 million likes it seems McGillivray is onto something. It’s a situation that’s taken her pleasantly by surprise, particularly as it’s introduced her to a global community of what she calls “amazing niche communities” including fellow art history TikTokers. “I’ve made friends through TikTok so I have a group chat with a bunch of really cool people,” she says, citing Japanese-Hawaiian artist Dane Nakama who posts on 20th century art history and contemporary art and Colette Bernard, a New York-based artist who covers art world dramas, disputes over copyright and NFTs.
McGillivray estimates she is one of around 20 young people internationally creating content around art history, often through a contemporary sociopolitical lens that retrospectively explores themes of misogyny, racial inequality and xenophobia that have pervaded art for millennia.
“While in one minute you can’t get into a huge amount of nuance you can start people really thinking and get them interested and I do hope they come away feeling they can appreciate art history, feeling like it’s not as scary or as elitist as they thought and that they have some tools to look at art themselves and ask their own questions. I get a lot of really thoughtful comments responding to what I’m saying.”
When faced with the observation that the content could be conceived as trite, art history lite or just plain ridiculous, she readily agrees. “It is ridiculous, and that’s kind of the point. When you make jokes about something it makes it a lot less intimidating and that’s my goal. The western canon in art history has an aura of prestige which is often used to increase value and lock people out of a whole world of interest, and art history is everyone’s heritage.”
People are listening, and not only millennials. “The funniest thing is the world of academia seems to be impressed with what I’m doing,” she says. “I’ve had some really good responses from mentors and academics and even someone from Cambridge who said the number of views I get is unimaginable compared with how many people will ever read his book or paper. Of course TikToks aren’t in-depth, they’re not scholarly. They’re fun, surface-level topics, but if I’m going to make something I want people to see it.”
While there are still only a handful of museums and galleries internationally that have cottoned on to the potential of this video sharing platform to attract the sought-after, elusive younger viewer, institutions are slowly adding TikTok to their social media offerings: The Uffizi has 83,000 followers, the Prado 261,000, and the Rijksmuseum 98,000 (all of them less than McGillivray). Last month TikTok held its first International Museum Day, offering viewers an exclusive tour of 23 museums across 12 countries.
In Australia the uptake is even slower, with the exception of the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery. In January it had the foresight to launch a TikTok channel and commission McGillivray to make a series of videos exploring the gallery’s permanent collection. It is the first gallery or museum in Australia to take on a dedicated TikTok creator. McGillivray works with the gallery’s curators, existing collection and upcoming exhibitions and posts short, punchy engaging videos that are getting noticed by young people. One video exploring a controversial Freudian Pat Brassington photograph has attracted 79,300 views so far.
“From my experience, people disregarding TikTok in any context is just another example of people disregarding young people,” McGillivray says. “The arts in general struggle to reach that group and not taking TikTok seriously is missing an amazing opportunity to reach so many people. (TikTok) is where the kids are, we can’t just let them watch dance videos,” she laughs.
McGillivray may be a popular TikToker but, aside from the odd piece of branded content and her work with MPRG, she is still relying on her day job and freelance editing work to pay the bills. Although things are looking up. She has been invited to participate in “The great art debate: classical v contemporary” opposite art historian Louise Mayhew, on August 15 at the Queensland Art Gallery|Gallery of Modern Art’s blockbuster exhibition European Masterpieces from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. And she is in discussions with various groups about TikTok opportunities, including another regional gallery. “It is cool that people are starting to see it as an option,” she says.
Where once she anticipated a linear path from university to hopefully becoming the next Mary Beard or John Berger, McGillivray is quickly realising she already has a very real opportunity to educate and entertain millions of young people about art history in a format and language they understand.
“I’m still having a minor personal crisis about what I’m doing,” she says. “I’ve always wanted to be a history communicator but thought I’d need to wait ’til I had a PhD to do that so I could be on TV and make art history documentaries. But the amazing thing about the internet is I can make a career right now. There are a lot of really cool opportunities coming up for me (in Australia), so I’m not stuck for things to do.”
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