It turns out the Broad Museum in LA is a raging success with young people who look like the rest of the world more than they do affluent museum goers in other cities. According to the LA Times, several different factors contribute to the Broad having 60% of its 400,000 attendees so far identify as non-white and 14 years younger than the national average. An astonishing 70% of the visitors are younger than 34 years old:
Many of the young people in line say they found out about the Broad from social media. Seeing the fun that friends were having from afar, in pictures and videos, they didn’t want to fall prey to “FOMO” (fear of missing out). According to an on-site survey, conducted by Morey Group for the Broad, 1 in 4 visitors heard about the museum through someone else’s social media feed.
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“I have a lot of artist friends and they’re all talking about it,” says 25-year-old Lindsey Jakstis, who’s visiting the museum from Orange County. “It’s pretty much what everyone’s been posting.”
Murakami’s vibrant, 82-foot-long painting, “In the Land of the Dead, Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow” — featuring demons, dragons and ships roiling in a tsunami — is also one of the Broad’s biggest youth attractions. The museum says Glenn Ligon’s neon sign “Double America 2,” Koons’ multicolored, metallic “Tulips,” Robert Therrien’s towering dining room set “Under the Table” and the works of Jean-Michel Basquiat are social media hits as well.
What’s drawing millennials to downtown L.A.’s Broad museum (LA Times)