Is the Museum of Ice Cream the Future of Culture? If Museums Aren’t Careful, It Might Be, Says a New Study
The year is 2027. Your cousins are in town. You want to take them on an entertaining cultural excursion. So you pile into your self-driving car and head out, not to your local art museum—that would be so 2016—but to the Museum of Ice Cream, a grownup theme park custom-made for Instagram.
Is this the future of American culture? A new study suggests that it might be. Audiences are more likely to view a visit to a street fair as a cultural experience than a trip to the opera or the ballet, according to Culture Track 2017, a report by marketing firm LaPlaca Cohen and research firm Kelton Global. The study’s authors say that the definition of culture—long an avenue of self-cultivation that was synonymous with refinement—has democratized so much that the word may soon hold little significance at all.
“Audiences nationwide are breaking down cultural norms and redefining them,” Maggie Hartnick, the managing director of LaPlaca Cohen, said in a statement. “Now culture can mean Caravaggio, Coachella, Tannhäuser, or taco trucks.” In fact, the survey’s respondents said they were more loyal to restaurants, bars, and retail stores than they were to cultural organizations.
The study’s authors examined 4,035 responses to an online survey of people who had participated in at least one cultural activity in the past year. (The respondents accurately reflected the democratic makeup of the US, according to the survey’s authors.)
They found, perhaps unsurprisingly, that cultural consumers want to be entertained more than they want to be edified. The number-one reason for attending a cultural activity, cited by 81 percent of respondents? Having fun. (“Interest in the content” and “experiencing new things” came in second and third.) The biggest barrier to participating in cultural activities, on the other hand, was a feeling that the activity or institution is “not for someone like me.”
The survey suggests that in order to expand their audiences, museums will likely have to increasingly offer themselves up as spaces for socializing rather than havens for quiet contemplation or study.
Asked to describe their ideal cultural activity, those surveyed most commonly cited the words “social” (34 percent of respondents), “interactive” (32 percent), “lively” (31 percent), and “hands-on” (30 percent). Only 20 percent described their dream cultural experience as “reflective.”
Some institutions, like the Indianapolis Museum of Art—which organized the US Pavilion at the 2011 Venice Biennale—have already embraced this trend in dramatic fashion. It rebranded itself as Newfields: A Place for Nature and the Arts earlier this year and now promotes itself as a full-service cultural destination complete with a beer garden, performance space, and onsite preschool (as well as a museum).