Do you love museums? Or do you think they are boring? I find the public split on this issue. What would you do to make museums better?
Museums are one of the “unsung” important parts of our education and entertainment industries. They draw millions per year, and over time have had an increasing impact. For profit museums are one of the fastest growing segments of the economy, doing over $1 billion a year.
As I have reported in this newsletter, my colleagues and I are working on creating an entirely new type of “museum” about innovation, in Austin, called The Spark.
I love museums, and have visited perhaps 700 of them in about 40 countries. However, coming from a deep and long background in retailing, I see so many ways they could be much better (click here for more).
Even with all my words, it may be hard to see what we are talking about.
Recently, I visited the great new Perot Museum of Science and Nature in Dallas, which drew 1.3 million people in its first year, an impressive result. I decided that the best way to show our thinking would be to put together a review of the Perot, and include the places where I thought they could better engage and entrance their visitors. So I put together a pdf of a PowerPoint and we have placed it on The Spark website, at the top of the page here.
The PowerPoint is not very polished, but I think anyone interested in museums or The Spark will get all the “big ideas.” While it is over 150 pages long, it is primarily pictures, so you should be able to flip through it pretty fast.
And I encourage you to visit the Perot, or your local museums, at your earliest convenience! There is so much to be learned.
Gary Hoover
