[ad_1]
Even as the pandemic takes its toll on tourism, immersive museums and experiential art centers are expanding to new cities and wooing investors willing to gamble on the future of the emerging industry.
Fotografiska wanted to introduce New Yorkers to a different type of museum when it opened in December 2019 in Manhattan, welcoming visitors to view photography exhibitions in a boozy clubhouse atmosphere complete with midnight D.J. sets and a restaurant run by a Michelin-rated chef. The coronavirus pandemic has brought an end to the party, but not to the Swedish company’s dreams of dotting the world with its for-profit museums. The franchise has announced plans for a fourth location, in Berlin.
Similar ambitions have fueled Meow Wolf, which over the last decade became a tourism juggernaut in Santa Fe, N.M. The immersive-art company welcomed a half-million visitors in 2019 into its psychedelic “House of Eternal Return,” with a giant marimba that resembles a mastodon’s rib cage. But an outbreak of Covid-19 cases among staff members forced the enterprise to close its facilities last year, resulting in layoffs for 200 employees. Despite losing half its work force, the company is barreling ahead with a $158 million investment, expanding its footprint with new locations in Phoenix, Washington, D.C., Denver and Las Vegas.
Entering what was already a crowded market for companies specializing in experiential art, Superblue had plans to dominate the field with installations by experimental artists like Nick Cave, James Turrell, Es Devlin and teamLab. But the multimillion-dollar venture in Miami stalled before it started; the city’s surge in coronavirus cases forced Superblue to postpone its anticipated opening from December to March. Unfazed by the delays, the company says that it has attracted stronger interest from investors and is planning for two additional centers in unnamed cities.
While traditional museums are discussing closures and mergers, the for-profit industry around experiential or immersive art is investing hundreds of millions of dollars into a business that currently has no audience in the U.S. because of the pandemic. It’s a gambit that has surprised market watchers, who see this gamble on the previous triumphs of experiential art — Random International’s Rain Room, which had thousands waiting for hours to experience a technology-generated rainfall, or teamLab’s digitally inventive exhibitions, which have drawn two million visitors in Tokyo — as difficult sells in a pandemic environment.
[ad_2]
Source link