Museum Hack completely lives up to the hype and offers an excellent alternative to traditional museum visits or tours. The company originally only offered tours at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But it became so popular and expanded so rapidly that in a few short years, they were offering tours in five other major cities in the U.S.
Museum Hack seeks to put a unique spin on the museum experience. Each tour features tons of little-known, strange, funny and intriguing facts about various items housed in the museum. They offer public, private, and corporate tours and can customize the experience based on individual or group preference. They also allow for customization on public tours, routinely checking in with the group to see if the material is still of interest or if they’d like to explore a different topic.
The company employs dozens of tour guides. These guides play an integral part in the research that goes into their own tours. This is very different from many tours where the guides are merely given pre-written information to present. The guides can actually create tours based on what things appeal more to them. And of course, if you create the lesson plan, you will undoubtedly learn and synthesize it better. This also allows for fresh and dynamic tours, where new or more interesting information can be added at any time.
We joined a Sunday session of their most popular tour: The Met Un-Highlights Tour. If you know the Met, you know it’s the largest, most overwhelming museum there is, probably second only to the Louvre. You could spend a month in the Met and not get a chance to properly see everything. It’s massive and diverse, having not one theme or concentration, but featuring a little bit of everything that pretty much ever existed in the world.
We’ve been to the Met on multiple occasions, at times freely roaming the museum ourselves and at other times joining one of their daily tours, but no matter how many times you go, you can only do so much. Half the battle is getting to the right room. Once you’re there, you have to figure out what you’re looking at and why it’s important. In that sense, tours are essential, and while the Met’s daily tours are great, Museum Hack’s Un-Highlights Tour is arguably even better. You should do both – they are entirely different beasts with each playing a separate role in your experience of the Met.
Our tour guide was Nate. He texted everyone about ten minutes before the tour began, letting us know exactly where he was and checking in to see if any of us were running late. He waited until everyone in the group arrived, then introduced himself, and did his best to learn the names of everyone on the tour. Right away, he let us know that if we got bored or wanted to change direction, we could let him know and he would alter the course of the tour to accommodate the group’s preferences. Pretty cool.
Throughout the tour, we were efficiently guided to various rooms around the Met. In each room, we heard riveting stories about artifacts, paintings, history, and people, covering a broad cross-section of time periods and subject matter. The tour could not have been more engaging. The stories were well-presented, juicy, and memorable – and often shocking and hilarious. Our guide was knowledgeable, well-prepared and up-beat, and interacted well with the crowd. He asked questions and inserted mini games throughout the tour that got us all involved and therefore more interested.
To be honest, it made no difference whether the tour covered a topic we found inherently interesting. Our guide made everything interesting. Even if the topic seems boring on its face, the guide keeps you on the edge of your seat. The guides find the fun and intrigue in everything, whether it be Byzantine art, ancient Egypt, Roman and Greek statues, or modern art.
The two hours flew by. Not one person wanted the tour to end. But what’s great is that these tours cover different material every time, because each guide sets his/her own syllabus. Though there is overlap, the guides are free to cover whatever most appeals to them. And, of course, there are also similar tours of the Natural History Museum if you’d prefer.
If you hate museums, you will love Museum Hack. If you love museums, you will love Museum Hack. And if you feel anything in between hate and love for museums, you will love Museum Hack. It’s a winner for everyone and we couldn’t recommend it highly enough. Check it out the very first chance you get!
