Between education and entertainment: a comparative study into the strategy of museums to attract young adults and the museum experiences of young adults

Traditional art museums are searching for strategies to attract a wider audience, especially young visitors because there is seen a decrease in attendance from young visitors. Besides, there is seen an upcoming trend in digital art museums whereby there is made a combination of art and entertainment and those attract enormous visitors amounts. Therefore, it is socially relevant to get insights of museum professionals to attract young adults to their exhibitions because it is important for museums to stay relevant and also for the young generation. This research is based on a comparative study between a traditional art museum, the Mauritshuis and a digital art experience, namely Remastered. Therefore, the museum professionals in both the case studies interviewed and the visitors about their experiences. The aim of this research is to get a better insight into the intention of museum staff on the topic of how to design an exhibition to attract young visitors. Besides, it is the aim to test these efforts from the museum staff by interviewing the young visitors and get in-depth information about their experience of the exhibition. This research shows that at the traditional art museum the Mauritshuis is not focused on the visitors and developing an exhibition design that is welcoming and inviting for young adults. Therefore, they are still in the process of developing strategies for attracting young audiences. Besides, the Mauritshuis has exclusively highly educated young visitors, that does enjoy the exhibition. On the other hand, is Remastered fully focused on developing an exhibitions design that is welcoming for a broad audience. The visitors from Remastered were diverse in their educational levels and knowledge about art, which implies that their exhibition design is attracting a wide audience of young adults. This should suggest that art museums should implement entertainment and experiences in their exhibition design in order to attract young adults from diverse backgrounds.