{"id":4016,"date":"2019-08-30T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-08-30T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.dream.press\/?post_type=customer-spotlight&p=4016"},"modified":"2025-05-06T19:27:40","modified_gmt":"2025-05-06T19:27:40","slug":"museum-hack","status":"publish","type":"customer-spotlight","link":"https:\/\/news.dream.press\/news\/customer-spotlight\/museum-hack\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet Museum Hack: Tours for People Who Don\u2019t Like Museums"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Did you know that the Metropolitan Museum of Art\u2019s famous Temple of Dendur was actually selected by Jackie Kennedy?\n She chose the ancient Egyptian temple on a trip to Egypt while her husband was president. And have you ever wondered\n why it\u2019s located at the edge of the museum? It\u2019s so that she could see it from her Manhattan apartment, earning it the\n nickname \u201cJackie\u2019s Little Nightlight.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another fun fact: Pablo Picasso\u2019s \u201cThe Actor\u201d painting wasn\u2019t one of the artist\u2019s more known pieces. But its worth\n skyrocketed \u2014 and so did visitors \u2014 after a museum guest tripped and accidentally put an elbow into it, triggering a\n very costly repair job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At this point you\u2019re probably wondering where all of these tidbits are coming from, so we\u2019ll fill you in: Museum Hack<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company, which uses DreamHost to power its websites<\/a>,\n offers renegade tours of some of the best museums in the world, but this isn\u2019t your typical tour. The guides are all\n about storytelling and interacting with the group, sharing context and quirky facts that you wouldn\u2019t get on your\n grandma\u2019s museum tour.<\/p>\n\n\n

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A Tour is Born<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It all started in 2013 when Nick Gray went on a date to the Met and fell in love \u2014 with the museum. He went back with\n his iPad to research pieces he was interested in, things he could imagine being in his apartment. Soon he started\n giving tours to his friends, and one of them happened to be a writer for a popular blog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next day after the tour was posted about, Gray had a waiting list of 1,000 people who wanted to take a tour with\n him. He hired a tour guide to help him lead the groups and started charging for tickets to pay for that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now Museum Hack offers public museum tours in five cities across the U.S., as well as private tours and team building\n events in additional cities (it brought in $2.8 million in revenue last year).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen we first started, we branded ourselves as museum tours for people who don\u2019t like museum tours; they were meant\n to have a renegade spirit,\u201d says Michael Alexis, Museum Hack\u2019s director of marketing. \u201cIt\u2019s very different from\n conventional tours. We aim to entertain people first and educate them as part of that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A VIP group poses with the art.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

If you imagine a typical museum tour, you probably envision someone lecturing as you walk from piece to piece. But\n Museum Hack is all about being interactive and getting to know the group. You can expect activities like taking a\n picture of a painting you\u2019d either like to burn or buy, then having the group guess which fate you have in mind for\n your snapshot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne of our pillars is it\u2019s a social experience,\u201d Alexis says. \u201cPart of what we are competing with is not just other\n museum tours in cities, it\u2019s literally everything \u2014 we\u2019re competing with Netflix and iPhone games and whatever else.\n We found that the social experience is really important for making people feel it\u2019s a great use of their time and\n making it memorable. People become more comfortable with each other and become friends on tour. It\u2019s closely related\n to the VIP experience.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Related:<\/strong> 10 Easy Social Media\n Tips for Your Hard-Working Small Business<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Site Check<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

During each two-hour tour, a guide will typically share the stories of 10 to 15 pieces, bringing the group through a\n range of galleries. \u201cEverything is story-based,\u201d Alexis says. \u201cIt\u2019s also passion-based, so each guide is creating the\n material themselves after seeing what catches their eye and what resonates with them. It\u2019s like going to a museum with\n a really good friend who also happens to know a lot about the collection.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Tour guide Zak at the American Museum of Natural History.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Museum Hack offers overview tours as well as more niche ones. For example, \u201cBadass Bitches Tours<\/a>\u201d is\n one of their most popular offerings at the Met. The two-hour tour explores feminism in the galleries, highlighting\n female artists and subjects, many of whom don\u2019t get as much time in the spotlight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each Museum Hack tour includes a mix of crowd-drawers and lesser-known works. \u201cWe try to get a mix of both,\u201d Alexis\n says. \u201cA lot of Met tours include \u2018Washington Crossing the Delaware,\u2019 but they don\u2019t have to. It\u2019s not definitive one\n way or the other. We often do include showstopper pieces, but we generally prefer to try to show a side of the museum\n that people might not otherwise see on their own. If you go to the Louvre, you\u2019re going to see the \u2018Mona Lisa,\u2019 but\n there are 100,000 pieces that also deserve attention and have stories behind them, and we try to celebrate that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n

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