Vox The Goods

How "Instagram traps" are changing art museums (1x1)

Air date: Sep 19, 2018

Instagram is reshaping museums. What does that mean for art? There’s a new kind of art installation popping up in cities across the world. It isn’t designed to showcase classical paintings, or to house impressive historical artifacts — it’s designed to be photographed for Instagram. These might not feel like real museums, but they’re a reflection of a real change happening in the museum world right now. Museums — both new pop-ups and traditional institutions — are capitalizing on smartphone culture by creating spaces whose main appeal is being a backdrop for a great selfie. As more kinds of retail experiences move online, spaces like this — where digital reproducibility through social media is an active part of the design — are only going to get more common.