Pizza, rose wine, gloves, ice-cream, hats, avocado, colors, candies, happiness, houses, comic books, advertising – one can make an entertaining museum based on any subject today and charge from 200 rubles (a discount price for interactive Van Gogh museum in a regional shopping center) to $40 for a ticket to the most famous ice-cream museum in San-Francisco (those tickets were sold out a month before its inauguration).
A properly organized instamuseum always creates a kind of a craze: advance ticket sale, a queue at the end of the week. A similar museum queue in Moscow was first seen when the Garage Museum brought an exhibition of a Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama entitled Infinite Theory in July and August of 2015. The infamous queue to see the paintings by Serov happened later, in January 2016. We are picking up from museums, do you remember? Hype or craze happen for a number of reasons. First, the time is limited. Second, art objects and installations are interactive. The visitors of Infinite Theory were left in a mirror labyrinth for 10 seconds and would make unique photos. Third, a visitor is the main character or exhibit.
The model of how people consume and understand art or any other creative element has changed in the past 10 years. The main character is the visitor and the location is the background, decorations, the world, where visitors can express themselves. It is something creative, either making a unique photo or confirming a somewhat important social role of an art expert, fashionista. So attending an exhibition is based on the need and desire to make an action, and not just being a part of a crowd or admire art as a viewer.
Instamuseums did not reinvent the wheel. Starting back in the 1960s, modern artists in Europe and the USA were creating interactive art-objects and spaces specifically for museums and art galleries. This form of art is called art installation. The main idea behind it is to engage the visitor in the process of mutual art with the artist and become a part of the art itself, not just stay a passive viewer. Nearly all instamuseums are inspired by the works of Yayoi Kusama, especially her project Obliteration Room, which she created for Queensland Art Gallery in 2002. The artists made a fully furnished white room and the visitors were changing the way it looked for several months by sticking bright colored stick-it notes on the surfaces.
In order to make an attractive installation one needs simple materials: objects with interesting forms, simple textures, spotlight and bright colors. All instamuseums have minimum details and a beautiful story underneath, which people can show quickly and retell each other with only a picture.