The World's Biggest Fans Are In Your City. Are They In Your Museum?

It's mid-June 2026 in New York City. The Knicks are in the NBA Finals for the first time since 1999, and fans are buying tickets to away games in San Antonio just to follow the team. The MTA has swapped out its subway globe lights for basketball-shaped ones. 

And oh, by the way, the FIFA World Cup just kicked off, with MetLife Stadium hosting eight matches, including the Final. Five official fan zones, one in each borough, are packed with visitors from every corner of the planet.

In other words, New York City is currently the global epicenter of sports fandom.

So here's my question for every museum professional in the region: "Where are all those fans?"

I've asked some version of this question before. Most recently, about Super Bowl Sunday, when I pointed out that game day is a great time to visit your local museum because it will be "even quieter than usual." The joke lands because it's true, and it shouldn't be.

The difference between a sports fan and a casual museum visitor isn't curiosity or intelligence. It's investment. Fans wear the gear. They know the stats. They travel to road games. They feel something when their team wins or loses. Passion isn't a personality type; it's something that gets cultivated through repeated, meaningful experiences that reward engagement.

Some museums are actually getting this right. Right now, the American Museum of Natural History has launched "World Cup, World Cultures," featuring match-watch parties in its galleries, an all-ages Goal Zone soccer play space, and a Global Sports Pavilion. The Intrepid Museum is running free watch parties for more than 50 World Cup matches on the pier. 

These aren't gimmicks. They're a playbook.

The AMNH didn't suddenly stop being a natural history museum by putting up a big screen for Brazil vs. Morocco. What they did was remove the activation energy barrier — that invisible wall that keeps people who aren't "museum people" from walking through the door in the first place. They said: the thing you already care about? It lives here too.

The Knicks marketing team understands something that many museum marketers still don't: you can convert a bandwagon fan into a real one, but you have to catch them while they're excited. Right now, there are people in New York wearing Jalen Brunson jerseys who have never been to a game before. Some of them will become Knicks fans for life. The question is whether anyone is offering them an equivalent on-ramp into your institution.

What would that look like? Here are a few things to chew on:

The story IS the exhibit. Millions of World Cup visitors will be in New York through July 19. Most of them love history, culture, and spectacle. They didn't come to Manhattan to stare at a wall panel with 8-point type. Give them something they can feel, touch, cheer about.

Fan-worthy requires a lower barrier to entry, not a higher one. The Knicks don't make you pass a quiz before you can root for them. Your admissions procedure, your signage, your hours — do they say "welcome" or "here are the rules"?

Repeat visits are what turn visitors into fans.  Sports teams don't try to make every game the same experience. Neither should you. What brings someone back to your museum a second time, a third time, until one day they're the person telling strangers on the subway how great your place is?

The World Cup Final is at MetLife on July 19. The city will be electric between now and then. Millions of visitors, billions of eyeballs, and a huge percentage of them are people who have never set foot in your museum.

That's not a threat. That's an opportunity.

GO MUSEUMS! (And, yes — go KNICKS!)

What are you doing at your museum to tap into the World Cup energy? And are there other sports-fan-to-museum-fan conversion stories you've seen work? Share your ideas in the COMMENTS section below!

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Paul Orselli writes the posts on ExhibiTricks. Paul likes to combine interesting people, ideas, and materials to make exhibits (and entire museums!) with his company POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.) Let's work on a project together!

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Have You Met Chloe?

By now, you may have stumbled across "Chloe VS History" in your social media feed or on YouTube.

If not, go take a look. I'll wait.

Chloe is an AI-generated avatar who "travels" through history, hanging out in pre-revolutionary Paris, dodging the eruption of Pompeii, and sneaking into the first-class section on the Titanic. She's got the vibe of a travel influencer: casual, enthusiastic, and a little amazed by everything. 

The YouTube channel has racked up hundreds of thousands of subscribers and millions of views, and the videos are genuinely watchable.

The person behind Chloe is Jonathan Laramie, who also runs Majestic Studios, a history channel that hit 14 million views in 90 days using AI to bring historical scenes to life. In a recent interview, Laramie, who has no background in filmmaking, talks candidly about what separates his work from the tsunami of AI garbage: trust and accuracy in sources, genuine creative investment, and a consistent storytelling voice. 

Now, before you roll your eyes and mutter something about "AI slop," I think there's something genuinely worth paying attention to here, particularly for those of us who work in history museums.

The secret sauce isn't really the AI visuals (though they're impressive). It's the perspective. Chloe works because she positions herself as a curious visitor to history, not a lecturer about it. She's learning alongside you. She reacts. She wanders. She asks the dumb-but-honest questions non-historians would ask if they felt comfortable doing so.

Sound familiar? It should. That's good interpretive design. (It's also worth noting that Laramie comes from the customer service space.)

So here's the question worth asking: what would it look like if YOUR museum used AI-generated media—not to replace human storytelling, but to model the kind of curious, visitor-centered engagement you want to spark?  A short "first visit to a Colonial kitchen" clip to play at a program intro, or an AI character who "experiences" your exhibit for the first time and invites visitors to do the same?

The AI technology is accessible. The approach is already working at scale since the Chloe Channel was built by just one guy with no film training and a lot of curiosity. 

The only thing missing is history institutions willing to experiment thoughtfully with accurate content, genuine curiosity, and real visitors in mind.

Chloe currently doesn't have all those advantages, but history museums do!

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Paul Orselli writes the posts on ExhibiTricks. Paul likes to combine interesting people, ideas, and materials to make exhibits (and entire museums!) with his company POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.) Let's work on a project together!

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FREE Museum Exhibit Design Resources

Who doesn't like free stuff?  Here are links to some great FREE exhibit design resources from the POW! website:

The Great Big Exhibit Resource List

A constantly updated compendium of resources for museum design and exhibit fabrication (including websites and contact information.) Need to find fake food, giant sequins, or adaptive devices? Check out the GBER List!  And contact me if you have a resource you think should be added to the list.

The Exhibit Cheapbooks

The idea for the Exhibit Cheapbooks started during sessions at the annual Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC) Conference. The purpose was to share "cheap" exhibit ideas and create a written record of how to replicate these simple and successful exhibit components.

The four Exhibit Cheapbooks have always celebrated museums' "sharing" nature. Inside each volume, you will find varied exhibit ideas from museum colleagues around the world. Sincere thanks to everyone who has shared their ideas and expertise! Special thanks to ASTC for allowing all the Exhibit Cheapbooks material to be shared freely online.

Museum FAQ Videos

Check out these interesting and informative video conversations with museum professionals from around the world.  Topics run the gamut from museum management, community engagement, digital exhibits, and more!  Click the link above for the video gallery, or go directly to the POW! YouTube site.

You can also find downloadable exhibit articles and other museum exhibit design resources by clicking over to the main resource page on the POW! website.

Do you have some other great resources to share?  Tell us about them in the COMMENTS Section below!

Don't miss out on any ExhibiTricks posts! It's easy to get updates via email or your favorite news reader. Just click the "Sign up for Free ExhibiTricks Blog Updates" link on the upper right side of the blog.

Paul Orselli writes the posts on ExhibiTricks. Paul likes to combine interesting people, ideas, and materials to make exhibits (and entire museums!) with his company POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.) Let's work on a project together!

If you enjoy the blog, you can help keep it free to read and free from ads by supporting ExhibiTricks through our PayPal "Tip Jar"

Caps, Gowns, and Grand Openings

It's graduation season. Everywhere you look: folding chairs in gymnasium-sized rooms, proud families squinting at tiny figures crossing a stage, and someone in charge at a podium declaring that this is only the beginning.

Sound familiar?

Think about the last exhibition opening you attended. The speeches. The ribbon cutting. The board members beaming in the front row. The champagne (or, let's be honest, the warm Chardonnay in plastic cups).

Both events share the same fundamental illusion: that the hard work is "done."

It isn't, of course. The grad still has to get a job, pay rent, and figure out what they actually "do" with that degree. And your shiny new exhibition? Visitors are going to touch things they shouldn't, break things they definitely shouldn't, and completely ignore the interpretive panel you agonized over for three months.

Here's the real parallel: graduation and an exhibition opening are both "beginnings," not endings. The diploma is just a ticket to the next set of challenges. The opening night ribbon is just the starting gun.

The best museums know this. They treat "Day Two" -- when the real visitors (not the donors) show up as more important than opening night. They watch, they listen, they fix things. They iterate.

So by all means, enjoy your opening. Pop that (warm) Chardonnay. Take the group photo.

And then get back to work.

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Paul Orselli writes the posts on ExhibiTricks. Paul likes to combine interesting people, ideas, and materials to make exhibits (and entire museums!) with his company POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.) Let's work on a project together!

If you enjoy the blog, you can help keep it free to read and free from ads by supporting ExhibiTricks through our PayPal "Tip Jar"

Every Train, A Note

Let me bring to your attention the website called Train Jazz.

Here's the premise: designer Joshua Wolk assigned a jazz instrument to every active NYC subway line, then mapped them against the MTA's open real-time transit data. Every note you hear is triggered by where an actual train is along its route. Bass, piano, sax, vibes, brushes all playing together as a kind of jazz combo. 

Eight hundred trains, give or take, forming a small jazz combo that has been "playing" without pause for over a hundred years. 

This is a perfect example of taking something people walk right past every day (a subway map, a stream of transit data) and making it audible in a way that suddenly reveals all the hidden rhythm underneath.

Museum folks, take note. What's the "Train Jazz" version of your collection? What data stream, what pattern of visitor movement, what overlooked system in your building is just waiting to be turned into something a visitor could hear or feel or interact with in a completely new way?

Don't miss out on any ExhibiTricks posts! It's easy to get updates via email or your favorite news reader. Just click the "Sign up for Free ExhibiTricks Blog Updates" link on the upper right side of the blog.

Paul Orselli writes the posts on ExhibiTricks. Paul likes to combine interesting people, ideas, and materials to make exhibits (and entire museums!) with his company POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.) Let's work on a project together!

If you enjoy the blog, you can help keep it free to read and free from ads by supporting ExhibiTricks through our PayPal "Tip Jar"

Museum/Exhibit/Design Inspiration: "Cook This Page"

What if instructions and end product become one and the same?

Leo Burnett Toronto created fill-in-the-blank recipes printed with food-safe ink directly on cooking parchment paper for IKEA Canada's "Cook This Page" campaign.

You lay your ingredients over the illustrated outlines (sized to actual proportions, naturally), roll the whole thing up, and cook it. The recipe IS the cooking vessel. < Mind blown. >

What makes this idea inspiring for me is the way it completely collapses the distance between instruction and action. No separate recipe card to consult. No screen to smear with salmon hands. The medium and the message are literally the same object, and then you eat it.

Museum/exhibit/design folks, take note: this is exactly the kind of thinking we should be applying to interactive experiences. What if the instructions were the activity? What if the label was the exhibit? What if visitors didn't need to read about something before touching it, because the touching was already built into the reading?  (I'm wondering about a hands-on science exhibit on edible paper ...)

All 12,500 parchment paper recipes for the "Cook This Page" campaign distributed across 18 Canadian IKEA locations were snatched up within hours. People grabbed those things because the format itself communicated "this will be fun and I can do this." Simply place ingredients here, roll, cook, and eat.

The other lesson worth emphasizing is that the "Cook This Page" idea went through multiple iterations: starting as dessert recipes on peel-away posters, then recipes on different cooking materials, before landing on the fill-in-the-blank parchment paper approach.  

Prototyping your way to the right answer isn't just good exhibit development practice. It's apparently good marketing practice, too.

Don't miss out on any ExhibiTricks posts! It's easy to get updates via email or your favorite news reader. Just click the "Sign up for Free ExhibiTricks Blog Updates" link on the upper right side of the blog.

Paul Orselli writes the posts on ExhibiTricks. Paul likes to combine interesting people, ideas, and materials to make exhibits (and entire museums!) with his company POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.) Let's work on a project together!

If you enjoy the blog, you can help keep it free to read and free from ads by supporting ExhibiTricks through our PayPal "Tip Jar"