All over the world, insta-museums are popping up like perfectly cropped pastel-filtered snaps in your feed and egocentric Instagrammers can’t get enough of these art installations that celebrate everything from ice-cream to eggs.
Don’t expect to see paintings or historic artefacts in these “museums”. Instead, you will find pouting visitors juggling for the perfect selfie against colourfull backdrops.
It all started in 2016 in New York when the Museum of Ice Cream unveil their Instagram-bait sprinkle pool.
Two years later and the world is lit with pastel-coloured themed galleries. The Museum of Selfies in Los Angeles, The Color Factory in New York City, the Egg House in Shanghai, the pizza and candy museum, and this year the Rosé Wine Mansion, all latched on to the craze.
The Rosé Mansion is a two-story space in New York with 14 rooms filled with every shade of pink. Guests can leisurely meander through these rooms while interacting with exhibits and sipping on eight samples of Rosé, equalling two glasses of wine. An Instagram-worthy photo area complete with a giant swinging chandelier and a bathtub filled with rose petals, as well as a blending lab where attendees can create their own wines, is all part of the experience.
“It’s a great way to teach about why blending is so important to wine, but it’s also fun to create different flavours by using different grapes,” adds Tyler Balliet, one of the creators behind the Rosé Mansion.
These so-called food museums are not just social media thirst traps — they’re also big business, with MarketWatch estimating that the Museum of Ice Cream has brought in as much as $20 million in ticket sales since its 2016 debut.
