Changing Museum Aesthetics: From Traditional to Experiential

With over 100 across all five boroughs, New York City has a rich history of museums. More recently, within the last decade especially, a new type of museum has arisen: the experiential museum. Growing extremely popular, these forms of museums have started popping up throughout the city and seem to stray from the “traditional” intent and aesthetic of most museums New York is home to, like the Met or the MoMA. 

Having gone to both experiential and classic museums, I wanted to compare the aesthetics of both sides along with the purpose behind their creation – are experiential museums intended to educate or inform like other museums, or is there a different goal?

“Traditional” Museums

1. The Met

According to their website, “the Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870 by a group of American citizens – businessmen and financiers as well as leading artists and thinkers of the day – who wanted to create a museum to bring art and art education to the American people.” 

The Met holds a plethora of art from around the world, and even though I’ve been a few times, I’m always in shock at how massive it is and how much art there is. The museum has several wings, including the European Wing(s), American Wing, Asian Art, Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia, Greek and Roman Art, and the Egyptian Wing. Besides each work of art, whether it be a painting, instrument, photograph, jewelry, or sculpture, there are plaques that provide information on the piece – the artist (if known), roughly what date it was created, materials, and most have the history behind the work as well. 

Though clear in its goal, the Met still certainly serves as a place for visitors to have an extensive amount of art to observe and history to learn. This is especially so as the museum also rotates some exhibits to provide a continuous cycle of new history. Going to the Met, I experience what I would expect out of a museum as well: to see and to learn. 

2. The Guggenheim

Another classic art museum, the Guggenheim opened in 1959, with Solomon R. Guggenheim’s foundation being “dedicated to promoting the understanding and appreciation of modern and contemporary art through exhibitions, education programs, research initiatives, and publications.” 

A bit different than the Met in terms of what type of art is exhibited, the Guggenheim still offers a similar plaque to describe the artwork (artist, date, and information). 

While I did not feel like I learned as much at the Guggenheim as I did at the Met (though I definitely learned about different art styles and artists), I still found the experience enriching. Not only did I see new art, but I saw, more so than at the Met, how evocative art can be. The artwork the Guggenheim showcases seemed to hold deeper meaning and stories, which is another purpose that “classic” museums hold – to show art that is powerful, reminiscent, tells a story, or conjures emotions from the audience.

3. The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
The Museum of Modern Art, or the MoMA, was built in 1929, and was founded with the purpose to “challenge the conservative policies of traditional museums and to establish an institution devoted exclusively to modern art.” 

As per its title and the MoMA’s website, the museum offers different types of art than museums like the Met, being more experimental in nature, while also showcasing a few more mainstream works. This includes Van Gogh’s The Starry Night and Dali’s The Persistence of Memory, along with Picasso’s Les Demoiselles D’Avignon and Girl Before a Mirror – among other iconic pieces. 

When I’ve been to the MoMA, I’m always entertained by the art selections they have, finding them to be more abstract and visually different than what the Met might have. I’ve learned from the plaques, but also again through the unique art, which inadvertently informs on the trends of art and how it is developing.

Though differing from the Met’s Egyptian and Greek sculptures and traditional European paintings, the MoMA serves to be an institution dedicated to the exhibition and education of (modern) art – a constant purpose behind the creation of these traditional exams. 

“Experiential” Museums

1. Museum of Illusions

The Museum of Illusions was the first experiential museum I went to – which opened in NYC in 2018 – and having gone a couple of times since, I’ve found the time I’ve spent there to be engaging and enjoyable. Especially the mirror/infinity room, which they’ve decorated with lights and where you can see infinite reflections yourself. There are plenty of other great photo-ops, including one area where you rotate the picture after you’ve taken it, and it looks like you’re floating, and another where at one end of the room, you look huge and the other you look shrunken down. The museum is in a smaller venue with two floors, but is packed with illusions all over. 

When I’ve gone, I’ve been left with great, unique pictures as well, which has led me to wonder if this is truly a “museum” or just meant to be a place for people to interact with the exhibitions and take pictures to post on social media. A year after my first visit, I went again and noticed they had even set up several tripods throughout the different areas as a way to help visitors take these pictures.

The Museum of Illusions website offers a bit of history on illusions and different man made illusions created over time, but this educational aspect did not feel present in the museum. Thus, there wasn’t much I felt I learned while there, but are illusions meant to be learned about or experienced?

2. Museum of Ice Cream

The Museum of Ice Cream opened in NYC in 2016 with the mission to “Rediscover the kid in you.” Drawn to the cute pink aesthetic of the “museum,” I first went to the Museum of Ice Cream with a friend who was visiting. The entire time I was walking through the different rooms, I kept wondering why it was labeled as a museum – none of it felt like the experience I had at other traditional museums.

While we ventured through the “museum,” there was nothing I saw that reminded me of a museum, just a bunch of colorful areas with occasional small activities to do. My friend and I took a bunch of pictures, and while it was fun, it perplexed me why it was named the Museum of Ice Cream. I learned nothing about ice cream and half the rooms didn’t even relate to ice cream – the only encounters with ice cream I had was a small scoop they gave everyone at the end and their pool full of giant sprinkles.

I hadn’t anticipated my experience there to be anything close to the Met, but I felt like something was missing and a sense of false advertisement with the “museum” label. If visitors are only attending as a way to gather pictures for a cute Instagram post and not much else, can this really be called a museum? Perhaps the purpose of these types of places is to offer a unique experience that doesn’t intend to be inspirational, informative, or even emotionally evocative like traditional museums are. But if they aren’t necessarily fulfilling the promise of a museum, should we be finding a new name for them?

3. Color Factory

Highly similar to the Museum of Ice Cream, the Color Factory calls itself an “experiential art museum,” with their mission to allow visitors to “experience artful wonder and to inspire them to bring that joy back into their everyday lives.” As “museum” is absent from their title, at first I was unsure if the Color Factory fell under the museum category, but the company definitely considers itself to fall under this category.

Again, like the Museum of Ice Cream, the Color Factory has several rooms all varying in color, all offering visitors different activities to enjoy. This experiential “museum” was a really fun experience and I got some great pictures here too – they also had several high quality cameras throughout that would take pictures for you as well. 

Also, like the other experiential museums, there was nothing I really learned here, but that was definitely not the intent of the Color Factory. It doesn’t seem right to consider the Color Factory a museum, as there were only a bunch of different themed and colored rooms, again no sort of educational factor or demonstration of “art” you’d find at a traditional museum. The goal of entertaining visitors through offering a fun experience has definitely proven to be the primary intent of experiential museums.

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If the “experiential museum” title had not existed, what would places like the Museum of Illusions, Museum of Ice Cream, and the Color Factory be considered? Even with “experiential museum,” is “museum” really the right word to describe these types of places? Perhaps these places are labeling themselves as museums to compare or bring themselves to the level of institutions like the Met or the MoMa. Beyond this, maybe the purposes and experiences of museums are evolving to cater to what modern audiences are looking for – not a place to learn, but somewhere everyone feels like they can access and a place to have a unique and enjoyable experience.