Nick Gray, founder and CEO of Museum Hack, has said the most important thing about educating a millennial audience in museums and galleries is to entertain them first to keep them engaged.
Founded in July 2013, Museum Hack offers a different kind of tour to visitors, one targeted at the “ADD generation” – always on their phones and with short attention spans. It’s the museum tour for people who don’t like museums.
“We don’t hire guides based on whether they have a PhD in art history,” said Gray, speaking to
Attractions Management. “The most important thing is they are great storytellers.”
Differing from your average tour, Museum Hack’s guides engage groups of six or seven people with games and activities, as well as the “gossip” that comes from the unusual facts and intriguing backstories about works on display.
With tours about three times the speed of a regular museum tour, Gray says the millennial audience has to be engaged at the speed and pace they’re used to, something he believes the sector can learn from.
“I would love it if museums stole our ideas and put us out of business,” he said. “I know that will never happen, but if they did steal our ideas then great. It’s important to engage the audiences with art.”
Museum Hack offers alternative tours of places like the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MoMA) in New York and is one of the highest-ranked activities on Trip Advisor with a five-star rating.
For more on Museum Hack, see the latest issue of
Attractions Management,
available now.
