As with any innovation, it is difficult to determine the right time to enter the immersive art market. Indeed, museums need to assess the impact of staying away from a potentially lucrative market, and estimate the benefit of investing or adjusting their programming. With that in mind, they also need to understand how artists embraced this technology, and why art lovers are fond of this new art form. Many cities, these days, have hosted projection-based shows about the work of iconic artists in public spaces or theatres. Up until recently, there have been at least five distinct digital exhibitions presenting the work of Vincent van Gogh across the world. Now, similar exhibitions are moving to traditional museums in need of boosting their audience. So, we’ve identified useful ways of integrating immersive installations within their space.

1. Avoiding barriers to entry

Museums turning to immersive art need to redesign their exhibition rooms and ensure they have enough space to setup an installation. Indeed, projecting a large-scale work definitely requires higher ceiling and huge floor space, allowing viewers to fully experience the installed work. Last year, the New York’s American Museum of Natural History opened an immersive space dubbed “the bowl”, on which they projected stunning images onto every surfaces to present the exhibition Invisible Worlds. Once the space is secured, the museum needs to setup the technological logistics. Most of immersive installations are built with multiple large screens, powerful processing units, and a variety of speakers and projectors to enable viewing and listening. Since 2020, the experiential art center Superblue has been presenting several immersive exhibitions powered by multiple computer programs that render the work in real time. Implementing these logistic requirements typically depends on a multidisciplinary team of artists, architects, designers, and engineers. Having such team is also useful in case the museum plans to roll out the immersive exhibition to multiple locations.

2. Assessing few substitutes

Traditional art remains relevant as a main exhibition material to sustain museum’s visit. While museums redesign their space to host experiential art forms, they also need to keep room for their traditional art pieces. The new audience attracted by immersive art will eventually seek these traditional artworks. Another way to adapt with immersive art is to find specific projects to alleviate space scarcity. Except for brand new museums, existing ones weren’t built with immersive installations in mind. So, museums could commission artists who will consider the spatial constraints in their projection-based works. However, the impact of multiple smaller screen-based installations might not be as important as the experience provided by a single large-scale immersive work. Other substitutes include the use of augmented reality or virtual reality art forms, which allow viewing artworks outside and inside the museum. Last year, Sarah Montani – a pioneer digital artist launched a groundbreaking project that integrated AR sculptures into the physical spaces of multiple renowned museums, transcending traditional boundaries and captivating viewers around the world.

3. Approaching various artists

For museums without experience in the organization of immersive exhibitions, an interesting strategy is to start collaborating with technology-savvy artists. Indeed, an established artist will be responsible of setting up the installation while the curators will concentrate on the preparation of the exhibition. Most of the recent immersive exhibitions involved tech-driven artworks made by contemporary artists and their team. For example, the Japanese art collective teamLab produces every aspect of the art experience in-house to create spectacular installations since 2001. In 2014, they had their first exhibition with Pace Gallery in New York, where they presented six holographic works which marked the beginning of an unlikely collaboration between a prominent gallery and an experimental collective. Since then, the collective has owned and operated multiple popular permanent spaces and exhibits worldwide. Other artists require a far greater investment in physical installation infrastructure. In that sense, museums need to partner with technology companies to reduce the cost of the initial investment.

4. Adapting to visitors’ needs

Museums which get more experimented in building immersive exhibitions should adapt their approach to new contexts. They should listen more to their visitors to offer them a personalized experience. They should also find ways to engage their audience thoughtfully, focusing on interactivity over passivity. Some museums used live streaming during the pandemic in an effort to reduce queuing time and limit visitor numbers to their location. That way, people were able to explore every aspect of the museum including its permanent collection. Other museums are leaning toward more interactivity, enabling visitors to be part of the art itself. During the pandemic, teamLab launched a live streaming on YouTube, displaying flowers that appear on people’s screen and bloom in clusters. The images of flowers were drawn by participants around the world and put together in a participatory and interactive work. Another example is illustrated by the Cleveland Museum of Art which designed an interactive space with various installations powered by sensors and motion tracking. Visitors could play with screens and other devices to create artworks and digital collages made of fragments from the museum’s collection.

5. Adopting innovative ways

To compete with other experiential art centers, museums need to find innovative ways for people to experience immersive art. Several projection-based exhibitions provide a 360-degree audiovisual experience focusing only on what people can see and hear. New immersive experiences should also focus on what people can feel by activating their others senses. Artistic directors and curators need to offer an interactive and multi-sensory journey for any visitors, allowing them to physically and mentally walk through a series of unique digital experiences. Indeed, some notable creators of immersive works have a background in scenography. This theatrical background would help them transform museum experiences through immersive, play-based events that could captivate a broader audience, and attract people who have long avoided visiting museums. For example, the Rijksmuseum launched an escape game in 2019, inviting participants to unravel a hidden mystery within the museum’s collections. The immersive narrative cleverly wove in visual arts, art history, and physical space, engaging players in a way that traditional exhibits often fail to achieve.