Andrew LaVallee

A forthcoming exhibit at New York’s Museum of Modern Art will feature work selected by unlikely curators: visitors to the YouTube video-sharing site.

MoMA solicited videos to be included in a retrospective of the Residents, an avant-garde multimedia group, that will open next week. The museum has posted the clips of 11 finalists on YouTube and invited the public to weigh in. The votes and comments those works receive on the site will help determine which are screened at the museum.

It is among the latest moves by museums to capitalize on the popularity of online communities and remain relevant to the new generation of art fans. London’s Saatchi Gallery is sponsoring what it calls “the first reader-curated contemporary art show” later this month, in which online voters picked the participants. In New York, the Smithsonian Institution’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum has this year expanded the prestigious awards it bestows on artists, adding a “people’s design award” based on votes from visitors to the museum’s Web site.

Meanwhile, the New York’s Pace/MacGill Gallery staged a summer show based on the photo-sharing site Flickr. Pace/MacGill’s project, called “Self-Portraitr,” included nearly 130,000 user-submitted photos, and drew a younger-than-usual audience — one of the goals of the exhibit, a gallery spokeswoman said.

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Looking to attract more young people to his church, the Rev. Patrick Gray turned to an unlikely marketing tool: MySpace, a social-networking Web site that draws millions of teens and young adults every day.

Father Gray, a 35-year-old Episcopal priest at Boston’s Church of the Advent, was sold on MySpace by a congregant whose rock band had used the site to attract listeners. While most MySpace users create pages to promote themselves or a band, he posted a profile for his parish. It includes reminders for Sunday services, audio files of its choir and announcements for “Theology on Tap” gatherings at a local bar.

“It’s a way for us to say, ‘Hey, come and see,’” said Father Gray, who created the MySpace profile in January. “It gets our name out there. It puts us on the mental map, the emotional map.” (The church also has a more traditional Web site.)

In a bid to attract new members and shed their persistently Luddite image, churches across the country are embracing technology and Web sites like MySpace. Blogs and podcasts have become part of religious leaders’ communications with congregants, and photo-sharing sites like Flickr are increasingly used to depict a fun-loving, casually-dressed community of churchgoers.

Churches with an evangelical bent often lead the way when it comes to harnessing technology, though some traditional congregations are also experimenting — even the Vatican has podcasts. Still, some Christians are concerned about using unmoderated social-networking sites that may contain adult language and racy photos.

“There’s always going to be some dangers,” Father Gray said of sites like MySpace and Flickr. But that doesn’t mean churches should avoid them, he said. His church is considering establishing a presence on another social-networking site, Facebook, that is limited largely to college students.

Attracting young people, as well as staying relevant, are two of the most common reasons churches are trying these sites, said Brad Abare, who posts tips and interviews on the blog Church Marketing Sucks. The tough-love name reflects the blunt discussion he thinks many religious organizations need to have, he said. “We have the greatest story ever told, and nobody’s listening,” he said.

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