Living Room: Embracing the you-seum
July 01, 2016
Museums are public spaces. Exhibitions are a chance to explore the world, but museums are also a place for shared experiences and activities, and we are interested in creating environments accessible to everyone. The Anchorage Museum is often filled with music: live bands on the lawn on summer afternoons, DJs spinning tunes in the atrium, strings or spoken word in the elevator on Friday nights, and live concerts in the galleries at special events. We even have silent discos, where people dance to music streamed to wireless headphones. This summer we combine a silent disco with a silent book club, offering what museums are best at — being places for quiet contemplation and social experiences at the same time.
The museum’s Living Room is an experimental space in the atrium where we are introducing content on iPads and video screens, furniture that invites interaction and connection, places to plug-in and unplug, places to be happy alone in a crowd or to connect with new people or best friends. Museums need to be about you to be relevant. We want to create spaces and experiences where you find your own connections and find yourself in the narrative we offer. We want ways for you to upload and contribute your stories to add to the story of Alaska. In this way we are a you-seum, a space that is not about providing all the answers but about starting conversations and offering experiences for you to participate in and shape.