What is the Museum of the Future?

What do you imagine your dream museum to be? An area of floating paintings and sculptures with zero gravity? An experience with holograms? A safe space for reflection and seclusion from the chaos of society?

Ultimately, the “Museum Experience” is beneficial to both the museum and those who visit it. It is no secret that the events of 2020 put the existence of these sanctuaries at risk all over the world. 

Museums were forced to look for innovative ways to engage their audiences. Some had online exhibitions where curators recorded audio information on particular artworks which the museum put together for display on their websites.

Others had online zoom sessions with museum enthusiasts, where new art collections were introduced and viewed. People, confined to their homes at the time, found online videos and social media challenges very engaging, even though the total engagement was not as huge as it used to be.

The Yemisi Shyllon Museum of Art is one of the many museums that faced with the challenge to increase its level of engagement with its online audience. As a museum just newly formed, the pandemic placed many of its physical activities and programs on hold.

With museums reopening, the age-old question “what would our museum of the future look like?” has resurfaced even more strongly. 

It appears that the pandemic hastened the evolution of a lot of our museums, as within a short space of time they have been able to successfully rethink the engagement strategies for their programs and exhibitions, and new technologies have been infused into these programs. 

The future seems to be the now, as more museums are going digital, exploring their options in catering for a much younger, tech-savvy generation of art enthusiasts.

The idea of having a partial or full immersion into the world of art, bypassing physical constraints and fuelling the power of the imagination has drawn people - artists and technology enthusiasts alike - to infuse technology and art in a marriage that is sure to last for years

Digital engagement is fast becoming the preferred option for many, and museums are no exception. Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality are two technologies often touted as “gatekeepers of the museums of the future”.  

The appeal of digital curators and audiovisual aided learning will endear many to museums around the world. A good reference will be the virtual tour of the YSMA, developed and launched by the end of 2020, which has greatly improved their engagement level with the public. 

With VR, a lot more opportunities have opened for the museum to guide visitors online on a virtual tour of their current exhibitions. However, a museum beyond walls is also a concept that many have put forward as a plan for future museums to implement. 

Museums should not only focus on being a repository of past information but also attempt to become one with their host community. These communities become the “canvas” by which the museums of the future can engage artworks with. 

It could be in the form of city-wide exhibitions, mobile tours, art movies/documentaries and events and competitions to discover and nurture local talent.

On the other side of the spectrum are those who uphold the sanctity of museums and hold the traditional way of viewing art as more engaging. It is important not to ignore them, as museum spaces can be reinvented to serve various purposes.

Activities such as workout sessions, picnics, mini-games and competitions, spoken word programs and more activities around the museum environment could help to introduce a new exhibition or recommunicate it.

All in all, there is a need to create a sustainable economic model for museums, especially the new, younger ones. Most still run on money gotten from grants and loans, others search for sponsorship deals and other ways to operate sustainably. 

Museum maintenance does not come cheap, to say the least and this excludes the cost of acquiring new technologies for the museum. Museums must learn to change their business models to accommodate for a more entrepreneurial-minded ecosystem. 

Co-working spaces, consultancy services for artists, recreational event centres, to mention but a few, are ways museums can diversify and earn multiple streams of income to run their activities and programmes.

Does this mean that we will not get to see an era of floating, zero-gravity themed exhibitions? Only time will tell. All we know for now is that museums need to be sustainable, creative and forward-thinking in their approaches to rediscover their magic in the future.