Ideas

We sat down with Jonathan Hicken of the MAH to learn the secret ingredient to their ultra-successful fundraising events. Keep reading to find out more!

Membership renewal letters are critical to sustaining your museum, engaging members, and reengaging them. Here’s our analysis of one letter.

Let’s turn museums into mmmuseums. When it comes to making visitors happy, museums sometimes overthink it. We focus on big, complex projects: thought-provoking exhibitions, unique objects and artworks, exciting events, and eye-catching designs. But for many visitors, it’s amenities like cafes that really make or break their museum experience. After all, if we can’t look […]

The most intriguing thing about superheroes isn’t that they leap tall buildings in a single bound or change into capes and spandex tights inside phone boxes. It’s the fact that they help save the world every day – without most people ever realizing it. That’s why we think small museums are real-life superheroes. As much […]

Think the arts and humanities don’t have a big impact in the US? We found some fantastic facts showing how beneficial the National Endowment for the Humanities and National Endowment for the Arts really are.

The frigid air was biting at my cheeks, and I could feel the warm blood running to my ears. Not that I minded too much; this was just another one of my nightly walks, and extreme negative temperatures are part of growing up in small-town Canada. In most ways this icy stroll was much like […]

For $1.19 an hour, you could have more visitors than your busiest holiday weekend. Pokémon GO has taken the Internet by storm.  The app was released a week ago, and already museums and cultural institutions are seeing a marked increase in visitors.  Best of all? Most of these visitors are the coveted millennial audience! So […]

A special guest post by Blaire Moskowitz. Have you seen more people than usual staring at their phones in your museum? That is because “Pokémon GO” was released this weekend. It quickly claimed the number one place in the app store and will soon surpass Twitter in daily active users by capturing the attention of […]

Social media is one of the most powerful tools museums can use to connect with and inspire their audiences outside of the institution’s walls. While Twitter and Facebook are often the go-to for many cultural institutions, the visual aspects and nature of Pinterest perfectly align with the curation of museum collections. We know what you’re thinking […]

Potential visitors avoid museums for several reasons, but it all boils down to one: they don’t think museums are for them.  Ashleigh Hibbins’ blog post, “The Scary Museum: Who’s Afraid to Visit You?”, shared some insights into the driving factor behind this thought: Despite my reassurances to the contrary, they were worried they didn’t have […]

Facebook advertising represents an amazing marketing opportunity for museums and cultural institutions.  The methods by which Facebook can target audiences allows for very focused advertising, which can produce incredible results online and in the museum space. Museum Hack has utilized Facebook advertising to help us reach our goals of expanding and increasing relevance.  We’ve been […]

We asked our followers… The results are interesting.  As renegade tour guides, many people view our tours as purely entertainment.  But they’re not.  Our tours take an entertainment-first approach — with a focus on passionate storytelling as a doorway into successfully engaging museum audiences and providing unforgettable educational experiences. We know that many museum visitors […]

Many museums possess outstanding collections and programs that engage audiences.  But sometimes, their offerings need a refresher — with new perspectives and ideas to re-energize existing audiences and get new ones in the door. The National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library (NCSML) was confronted by this problem.  They had lots of great collections, but […]

Ever since we saw Night at the Museum, we’ve dreamt of being able to spend a night in our favorite museums.  And now, we can!  Many museums are experimenting with holding fun sleepovers in their spaces. We’re taking an in-depth look at these innovative museum experiences.  Our Night at the Museum series features interviews with […]

Social media are powerful tools for museums to interact and engage with their visitors.  They also serve as tools to help museums invite and engage with difficult-to-reach audiences before they ever step foot in the museum. Museums and the Web is an annual conference featuring research on—and applications for—digital practices in museums.  This gathering is […]

Ever since we saw Night at the Museum, we’ve dreamt of being able to spend a night in our favorite museums.  And now, we can!  Many museums are experimenting with holding fun sleepovers in their spaces. We’re taking an in-depth look at these innovative museum experiences.  Our 3-part series features interviews with museums holding awesome […]

Museums and the Web is an annual conference featuring research on—and applications for—digital practices in museums.  This gathering is unique in that a lot of conference papers are presented for free online.  One of our favorites from this year’s conference is “The museum as digital storyteller: Collaborative participatory creation of interactive digital experiences” by Maria […]

This past summer, Caroline Perkins was on a mission: to comparatively study art museum adult education programs. She was looking for the best ways that museums can “convey art historical content in an engaging manner.”  What she found are some profound insights into what works — and doesn’t work — in art museum programming. We […]