Museum of Broadway

Personally, I love what I am seeing here, and they had me until they said it will be $50 a ticket??? I mean, I will certainly pay $50 to go once but do tourists pay $50 to go to a museum? Especially something this niche? I can't remember paying $50 to go to any museum in my life. Maybe I have a short memory but makes me nervous this whole enterprise will be short lived.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56nBbrw8Wew

I suspect many would prefer to put the $50 towards seeing an actual show.

I’ll definitely be visiting once they smooth out the early kinks. The Academy Museum in Los Angeles (at $25) was a huge disappoint upon its opening and just now is it starting to address its hiccups. The only major plus for me are the film screenings they have at their Geffen Theatre, which is a state-of-the-art red encased movie theatre.

I'm going Saturday 11/19 during my NYC trip and report back (when I get back home from the trip-won't have my laptop with me).

I have to admit, I never thought much of this idea to begin with but assumed I'd check it out - at this cost, I doubt I'll go at all.

I'm sure over time tickets to this will be available at a discount.

They'll probably have rotating exhibits at some point. I may visit if the special exhibit is interesting to me.

Some theaters like the Gershwin (Wicked), Richard Rodgers (Hamilton), August Wilson (Funny Girl) have areas in the theater lobby/corridor with Broadway history stuff.

Does anyone expect this to last more than a few months?

Based on a review from Matt Tamanini on BroadwayRadio, it seems like it's a timeline walkthrough of the history of Broadway, starting from things like the Follies and minstrel shows and going through the Rodgers and Hammerstein era and so forth, with a lot of old costumes and memorabilia (Patti LuPone's wig from Evita and audience survey responses from the NYTW run of Rent were mentioned). That definitely makes me more curious but I'm assuming it'll be around for a bit so I'll see if they adjust pricing during the winter months.

I agree that the promos make it look like an "Instagram museum," and that's not encouraging.

But hopefully it's more of a hybrid. One of the clips in the news segment says that there's a lot to read as well. Plus, it seems appropriate that a theater museum would have a lot of visual + interactive components.

Regardless, I'm with you on the bottom line: no way this is worth $50 to me, and I won't be attending any time soon unless it shows up on the papering sites, and even then it won't be a priority for me time-wise.

seaweedjstubbs said: "It looks less like a true museum and more like a place to just take Instagram photos. Kinda like the Museum of Ice Cream, also in NYC. Too bad. I was really looking forward to a real Broadway museum. This ain’t it, kid."

Yes,it is more like those pop-up attractions for clueless tourists.

Neither of the co-founders have any experience running a museum. But they do have experience in brand activations and experiential marketing, unsurprisingly. In fact, it doesn’t look any anybody involved has any experience even working in a museum.


The lack of involvement from big theatre names and people with legit museum experience is kind of a major red flag to me here. The whole thing looks very focused on Instagrammability, not preservation or education. The twee neon signs? C’mon.

Updated On: 11/12/22 at 02:11 PM