Wow museums to see now

Forget marble columns and hushed voices: Museums today have recast themselves as family friendly, fascinating, and above all, fun. From Tokyo to Texas, Egypt and beyond, new venues and experiences are popping up, each with its own, radically modern approach—here’s our guide to the ones to see now.

Virtual-reality headset, not required

A buzzword in museums right now is “phygital”: exhibits that blend the physical with digital, creating a truly immersive experience. Take Superblue Miami, where you’ll find a mirrored labyrinth, trippy floral projections and a room filled with soap-bubble clouds. Or teamLab Planets Tokyo, showing until 2027 (pictured top), which is described as a “museum where you walk through water, and a garden where you become one with the flowers,” thanks to giant glowing projections.

At the Atelier des Lumières in Paris, eye-popping expositions range from underwater worlds to expansive digital renderings of revered artworks by the likes of Marc Chagall. And in Houston, Seismique uses motion-tracking cameras and sensors to involve the spectator and activate installations. There are optical illusions, galaxies of LED lights and even a “soft playscape” crocheted by Japanese artist Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam.

A futuristic way to experience the past

Architecturally, too, museums are no longer being imagined as a place for classical pillars and white marble—even in the lands of the antiquities themselves. Due to open this spring/summer, the new Grand Egyptian Museum outside Cairo rehouses all of Tutankhamun’s treasures in a spectacular antiquarian-futurist edifice near the Pyramids of Giza.

Not only will the interiors feature awe-inspiring displays (you will be able to stand beneath a towering 3,200-year-old statue of Rameses II) but the building is breathtaking, resembling ancient pharaonic tombs. It’s a way to glimpse what these exhibits once were: items that were part of real people’s daily lives. Technology means you can see them that way again.

Insta-ready displays

Pop culture is also having a moment. Take the zany, highly photogenic Museum of Ice Cream, which has outposts in New York, Chicago and Austin (Miami and Boston are coming soon). Here you can eat unlimited ice cream, jump in giant sprinkle pits, and frolic in a unicorn playground.

Then there is Meow Wolf, which builds trippy dreamworlds in places such as Las Vegas, Santa Fe, Houston and Denver (where Convergence Station is pitched as “the first multiversal transit station serving Earth”). Equally mind-bending is Wake the Tiger in Bristol, England, billed as an “Amazement Park.” And Yayoi Kusama’s blockbuster Infinity Rooms, which you’ll find at London’s Tate Modern (until April 28) and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (until September), are like stepping into an endless, sparkling, optical illusion. 

It’s all part of the growing “experience economy,” where people don’t just want things to look at, they want immersive exhibitions to feel part of—and the Insta-moment for added kudos.

Ones to watch (and one to book)

Other exciting openings on the horizon include the forthcoming Whale Museum in the Norwegian Arctic Circle, designed to look like a giant tail emerging from the sea. And The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, opening in Los Angeles in 2025, is designed to look like a spaceship—appropriate, given its co-founders include the filmmaker George Lucas.

And in Dubai, the Museum of the Future is an Instagrammable marvel—a hollow, silver, oval etched with Arabic calligraphy. It looks towards an era not yet lived, with a collection of futuristic robots, self-driving cars and a mixed-reality recreation of the Amazon rainforest. But walking through the museum—and so many of these other immersive exhibits now transfixing visitors—you can’t help but feel that the future is already here.