San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
WHAT’S THE ATTRACTION?
Why S.F. flipped for ‘experience’ pop-ups in 2018.
San Francisco’s Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park was founded 100-plus years before the invention of the smartphone, but it was selfie city on a recent Friday night at the opening of its new seasonal attraction, “Night Bloom.”
Design firm Lightswitch created an installation to show off the greenhouse rooms in the evening hours, with plenty of destinations perfect for crafting social media moments. From the Christmas green and red disco ball effects under the fronds of giant ferns to uplighting that illuminated the lily pads in the water room, the first-night revelers captured the happenings as they moved from location to location, seemingly well-practiced in this 21st century ritual of experiencing-the-experience, and then sealing the deal with a social posting.
“We’ve been making a huge shift in our focus to appeal to the people of San Francisco,” says conservatory director Matthew Stephens.
“We have people from China, from Germany, from all across the world coming to see our extraordinary plant collection housed in this historic structure. But we weren’t reaching people across the street.”
This new emphasis on temporary exhibitions and installations like “Night Bloom” is designed to reach not only San Franciscans unfamiliar with this historic treasure in their own backyard, but also that everharder to capture below-40 demographic that will be the future support of institutions like the conservatory.
“We recognize there’s this emerging demographic looking for curated experiences,” Stephens says. “We’re trying to tailor those to the Conservatory of Flowers’ authentic self and hoping people come to the conservatory for an event like “Night Bloom” not just for the selfies, but also to see the space in a new light.”
It’s not just the Conservatory of Flowers. Everything this year was rebranded “an experience.” Retail is now a “shopping experience.” You don’t just go see a movie, you “experience it” in IMAX, or Dolby, or Cinemascope-Odorama-whatever. Millennials aren’t just a generation that likes to spend money on activities more than material items, they’re “experience spenders.” You didn’t go places in 2018, you “had an experience.” Experience the experience you are experiencing in this experiential experience!
Nowhere was this more apparent than in a series of themed attractions that opened in San Francisco and around the country in 2018 and fed our needs to conquer the ever-present FOMO (“I’m worried I won’t have the experience!”) and to document ourselves in the wild throes of “experiencing.” From fluffy confections like the Museum of Ice Cream and Candytopia to the socially conscious festivals of their own wokeness like Refinery 29’s 29 Rooms and S.F.’s That Lady Thing, are these experiences the perfect symptom of our selfie age? Or are these $40-a-ticket self-contained worlds just the latest incarnation of analog amusements like sideshows, theme parks and carnivals, all designed to be streamed, posted, curated and hashtagged?
In the social media incubator and influencer-obsessed region that is the Bay Area, it makes perfect sense that these real-world attractions designed to be shared online have reached an epic concentration. Add in a healthy helping of family entertainment and tourism dollars and you’ll understand why some, like the Museum of Ice Cream, are choosing to make San Francisco a permanent home.
With the wide demographic reach and popularity of these new attractions (the Atlantic magazine estimates the Museum of Ice Cream in San Francisco averages 1,700 visitors a day ), long-established institutions like the Conservatory of Flowers are now in competition with these experience startups and are increasingly looking to their techniques and ways of creating engagement to adapt to the new climate.
Austin Shapley, a designer for Lightswitch who worked on “Night Bloom,” says that part of his job as a designer on any experiential project is to help audiences engage with a preexisting venue or organization in a way they haven’t previously.
“In every gallery, there’s at least one great place to take a selfie,” Shapely says. “I go through the entire installation myself to test it for photos. Selfie culture is a natural part of what we do as lighting designers now.”
But there’s a fine line between adopting techniques from these experiences, and having an identity crisis, Stephens says.
“We’re being careful that we’re not succumbing to the lowest common denominator,” says Stephens. “For 139 years the brand and image of the conservatory has continued to grow, and this is another way.” Competition for people’s time, money and attention are major factors in an organization’s decisions to move toward these models, Stephens says.
For Piera Gelardi, the co-founder of Refinery29 and 29 Rooms, the appeal of the experience model is the ability a presenter has to create an engaging narrative that speaks to issues important to their brand identity.For 29 Rooms, it meant installations focusing on the Women’s March, Planned Parenthood and transgender rights next to sponsored installations for tea brands and Bravo TV shows.
“More and more, we’re all content creators,” Gelardi says. “We’re constantly projecting our ideas out in the world,” whether that be via words or the images we post. She says the made-for-photos element of these experiences have a life and an impact beyond just quickie Instagram stories: When issues like reproductive rights or women’s issues are in the news, many repost their content from the appropriate installations at 29 Rooms as a way of becoming part of the conversation.
“People often ask us about the selfie nature — I think there’s a judgment
there about it being vapid,” says Gelardi. “Social media and selfies have allowed a lot of people who were not visible to insert themselves into the public sphere in a way that has created a lot of visibility.”
Other traditional institutions in addition to the Conservatory of Flowers are also looking to the experiencemodel to compete with these upstarts. The Oakland Museum’s “Nature’s Gift” neon installation by artist collective Friends With You was early to the game in fall 2017, and SFMOMA’s Magritte exhibition this fall featured not only blown-up backdrops of the artist’s paintings, but also interactive video screens that placed visitors in the iconic works. By now even the least-photo-friendly fine arts shows at museums usually include at least one backdrop for your museum selfie — proof that you’ve had a day experiencing art.
But is it culture? Well, why not? Isn’t anything that gets you out of the house culture? So what if we’re not off our devices, and they’re now part of how we partake in the world beyond our screen? If the promise of another destination to take a picture of yourself living the good life, experiencing the experience so you can also be experienced counts as a lifestyle choice, then welcome. The world is waiting for you to have that experience, and it’s being redesigned for you with that in mind.