There's a warehouse in Brooklyn that
feels like stepping into a dream. It's an
art exhibit but the only picture frames
you'll see are right here, on smartphones.
This exhibit is part of a new generation
of pop-up art experiences designed to
look good in person and here on
Instagram.
There's the Museum of ice cream, the
Museum of selfies, the Museum of feelings.
Others have themes around colors, dreams,
pizza, eggs, candy, and Rosé wine. Basic
admission can run around $40 and they often
sell out months in advance. These places
might not feel like real museums and
instead more like a trendy fad with ball
pits, but right now they're shaping how
we consume art.
In these pop-up museums the room and you
are the centerpiece. So that's what makes
it Instagramable, is that you are you
are immersed in the actual art. This
format, interactive art pieces separated
into themed rooms, is hot right now, but
it isn't new.
It comes from traditional
museums. In the 1960s artists started
using museum rooms to create immersive
three-dimensional artwork designed
specifically for a certain space. It was
called installation art.
Suddenly, art
wasn't just confined to the walls of a
museum; it was immersive and interactive.
Viewers were part of it. You can see
installation art's influence on today's
pop-up museums pretty clearly. Just
look at the obliteration room, first
developed by Yayoi Kusama for the
Queensland Art Gallery. It's a white room
where visitors can place colored
stickers wherever they want. The Rosé mansion,
an Instagram-friendly pop-up
has its own version of that. Or infinity
room, a series of mirrored rooms that
Kusama has been producing since 1965
that has a pretty identical version at
the dream machine pop-up museum.
Installation art invites the viewer to
participate in creating a piece of art
or to physically see themselves in it,
often alongside brightly colored
lighting and simple, elegant shapes. And
that made for museum experiences that
were inherently photographable.
Pop-ups figured out that there was a business to
be made out of that photographability.
even if it wasn't attached to a
well-known artist.
Now the explosive
success of those pop-ups is making
traditional museums rethink how they do
things.
People who work at museums are
very concerned. It changes the nature of
what artwork is most attractive to
consumers and so in order to compete
with the trendy, colorful exhibits that
are popping up, you have to add some of
those components to the more traditional
exhibits.
That conversation often starts
here, with museum photography policies.
Many museums have traditionally banned
photography to protect copyright and
light-sensitive paintings, but now that
museums are becoming more social media
friendly, their policies are changing.
Like the Renwick gallery, which started
posting "photography encouraged"
signs in 2015.
It was our way
of saying, boldly, it's okay.
You can be
who you are,
mediate your experience in museum
however feels right to you. It's very
rare that museums are no photos anymore.
I mean that change has just been in the
last five years. And when museums host
selfie-friendly shows, they become
blockbusters.
The exhibit Wonder helped
break the Renwick Gallery's yearly
attendance record in its first six weeks.
2015's summer show "The Beach," at the
National Building Museum brought in 30%
of annual attendance in just two
months and when the Hirschorn held a
three month show of Kusama's Infinity Mirrors,
the museum increased its
membership by a whopping 6,566%.
Instagramability drew in a crowd that
might not have come to museums otherwise.
Honestly I'm here just to take pictures, you know.
I saw lots of pictures on
Instagram and that prompted me and my
friends to come here.
Ow!
But for museums who
still have rules about taking photos,
it's hard to keep visitors from snapping
pictures. Like this 2013 installation in
the skylight of the Guggenheim Museum by James Turrell.
The colors and simplicity made it
serious Instagram bait. Thousands of
people posted photos of it, even though
the artist asked that no photos be taken
since they would detract from everyone's
experience. That concern is real and
research is starting to prove it.
Just the act of photo taking itself and
choosing what to capture, changes the
nature of your experience and that alone
is changing how people go through
museums.
Research Barash conducted found
that when museum goers were instructed
to take photos for social media, they
enjoyed the experience less. Having the
intention to post or share photos in
mind while you're taking the photos, can
actually remove you from the experience.
Now both Instagram pop-ups and
traditional museums are facing a tricky
question: limit photography and
potentially limit who shows up, or allow
it and possibly change the experience. At
Refinery29's pop-up experience, that
means having some rooms where phones are
supposed to be put away.
I think it's time you put those
cellphones to bed, what do you say? How
about we Insta-connect with one another?
At the end of the day, even if social media is a
big part of why so many people show up,
people are showing up.
And if this means
more people engage with art they
wouldn't have paid attention to
otherwise, that feels pretty promising
for the future of art.
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