Discuss (1/20/16): Museums and Branding

Many museums—mine included (don't ask more, you'll see it soon enough)—are rethinking their brand. Now among curators and other museum staff, the very idea of a brand is gross and corporate: "It's the arts! Why do we need a brand?" And there's even the perception, drilled into the public starting with my generation (X), that people no longer paid attention to brands.

I'll have more about this later this year, but for now, take a gander at this story about how museums, far from being ignorant of the need to brand, [actually have something to teach their retail cousins](- http://www.psfk.com/2015/11/brands-selling-experiences-future-of-retail-2016-target-local-projects.html). This story on a talk by Nathan Adkisson, Director of Strategy at Local Projects, at PSFK’s Future of Retail 2016 conference in San Francisco, is well worth reading. (If Local Projects sounds familiar, it should: the firm is responsible for the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum's relaunch, GalleryOne at the Cleveland Museum of Art, and several projects at downtown New York's 9/11 Memorial, among other cultural-sector projects.

PSFK, by the way, is a news-and-ideas site for creative professionals, and is well worth checking out if you like to see how design and innovation is bleeding out from the pure corporate world into areas of organization and culture, like … gasp … museums!

(A story about issues with Seattle's public library system's attempted rebranding, post-Rem-Koolhaas-designed central library, is here.)

What do you think?

top image courtesy of Wolff Olins Pintarest page