From behind glass to hands-on: how museums are rethinking the visitor experience | Canada Voices

To celebrate her birthday, Deanne Moser, a Toronto-based communications professional, gathered some friends and organized a trip for 10 people to Marfa, Texas. “It’s a little, tiny town, maybe 1,500 people. And everyone there is interested in art and culture,” she says.

The desert town in west Texas is known for being a cultural hub, full of galleries and outdoor art installations. But Moser wanted to dig deeper, so she arranged two days of private tours led by curators, along with artist meetings through the Dia Art Foundation.

“The town is all art, but it’s very hidden. If you don’t go on these tours and you just drive through, you wouldn’t necessarily know that the town is an art mecca,” she says.

Moser shares that arranging a private tour and having the guidance from the curator was invaluable.

“The personal stories were really insightful. Because so many major artists have visited or stayed or were artists in residence [in Marfa], the curators are able to reference how the artists would eat and drink and create and play,” she says. “I don’t think you would have gotten that at all by just looking at the art.”

Moser is part of a growing segment of travellers who are looking to get a deeper understanding of art and culture when they travel.

In their 2026 global trends report, Virtuoso, the network of luxury travel advisors, identified cultural immersion as a top motivator for travel, ranking fourth for travellers globally and seventh for Canadian travellers. In Canada, guided or private tours also rank in the top 10 travel trends for the year, signalling a growing demand for expert-led cultural exploration.

Lena Dojcinovic, a Calgary-based travel advisor with Civilized Adventures, is increasingly being asked by her clients for exclusive cultural experiences. “I think when COVID happened, it changed a lot of perspective about how we want to travel. People want to touch or feel or be more connected to the art and not just see a painting behind glass and feel disconnected. I think that’s why everything has to be reinvented,” she says.

This demand coincides with a trend happening in the art world of opening up collections and archives to visitors in new ways.

London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, for instance, has launched its Order an Object experience, which allows visitors to pre-order a specific object from their collection to get up close to the piece. A staff member is on hand during the appointment to explain how to safely interact with the object.

The Museum of the Future in Dubai embraces hands-on learning with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) and technology. Visitors can take a workshop to craft their own virtual reality experience and interact with digital exhibits that simulate life in 2071, including chatting with AI-powered robots.

And the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto has a Slow Looking program, an art version of forest bathing. Via a booklet or app, visitors are given prompts to consider as they take in five specific pieces in the museum. When looking at a carved door, for instance, guests are prompted to trace the design with their eyes and think about what it feels like in their body as they follow the path.

Art institutions are partnering with hotels as well. At Aman New York, guests have an opportunity to have a private tour of the Storm King Art Center, home to one of the largest collections of outdoor sculptures in the United States. The institution is in the Hudson Valley, a 90-minute drive from the hotel. But the hotel charters a helicopter to take guests to Storm King.

Travel advisors say more clients are asking for exactly these kinds of experiences.

Dojcinovic’s agency has travellers asking about visiting cultural spaces after hours or having curator- or artist-led tours. “We have a lot of people who have been to cities 10 times, but they’re like, ‘We want to see the Louvre again, but now we want a historian and we want to focus on this specific part,’” she says.

Dojcinovic sees the creativity in experiences only gaining more demand. It’s not just about viewing a work of art anymore. “Everybody can see it,” she says. “It’s how you visit it and with who that makes the difference.”