An Introduction to Immersive Museum Experiences

Immersive experiences are reshaping how stories are told—offering inspiration for digital and in-person museum storytelling. This post explores what museums can learn from these productions and how they’re changing audience expectations. 

What Is an Immersive Experience?  

In the 2020s, a new kind of experience took the world by storm during a time when interaction-starved humans were just beginning to emerge from a global pandemic.  

The Vincent van Gogh immersive exhibitions (plural) became very popular, and permanent spaces such as The Outernet (2022) and The Sphere (2023) opened soon after. 

For-profit immersive experiences began emerging in the late 2010s, blending storytelling with digital environments. Though not traditional museum spaces, they offer valuable insights for museum professionals. 

Why Immersive Experiences Matter to Museums

This post outlines what we can learn from these immersive productions and how we can apply those lessons to museum spaces. While the experiences themselves don’t take place in digital spaces, the stories they tell are digitally manufactured and rely entirely on digital (and digitized) collections. 

As such, both the immersive concept and the materials referenced can serve as inspiration for digital storytelling in museums—both online and in-person. 

Main Qualities of the Immersive Experience

There are hallmark qualities to immersive productions, irrespective of the production company. Many of the productions are text-less or mostly text-less—choosing to focus more on engaging different senses.

This is an unusual quality for most traditional museum spaces, as text is often the primary conveyance of interpretive information.

In an immersive environment: 

To experience = to learn

Rather than the conventional: 

To read = to learn

The refreshing shift helps the non-typical museumgoer feel more welcome and engaged.

Common Features of Immersive Museum Experiences

Regardless of the production company, there are shared features among immersive experiences. Features common to the immersive experience are:

• Large screens
• 360° projections
• Virtual and augmented reality elements
• Moving images
• Multi-sensory elements, such as lighting, color, sound, touch, and even scent

These mainstream productions are often described as experiences; however, the venues and the product offered possess similarities to museum exhibits. In fact, many even feature artwork from museum collections and weave together a storified experience similar to the way(s) an exhibit is structured.   

Identifying Storytelling Infrastructure   

The evaluation of immersive experiences will include identification of familiar storytelling infrastructure. To refresh, storytelling infrastructure in museum exhibit design includes: 

1. The Story Path

• Linear Pathway: A single digital pathway through the exhibit and, therefore, one definitive way to experience the story.  
• Multiple Pathways: Several digital story pathways that can be taken. While there is a sense of beginning, middle, and end, there is no wrong way to progress through the story.  

2. Storytelling Performance Types 

• Oral: Narration, oration, recitation, interviews, conversation  
• Written: Exhibit panels, documents  
• Visual: Objects, drawings, graphics, photographs, visual media  

 3. Sensory Setting  

• Lighting: Position and intensity of lighting the objects as well as overall lighting for the space can help set the mood for the story.  
• Sound: Narration, interviews, music, and even soundscapes help convey a portion of the story or create the atmosphere.  
• Color: The use of color is a subtle way of conveying the mood of a story and signaling a tone shift. Humans interpret colors as emotions and they can be used to both attract attention as well as convey an emotion that may otherwise be ambiguous.  
• Texture: Design elements with texture aid in setting an atmosphere. Regardless of whether a visitor can touch the elements, they can still subliminally pick up on how the textures in the room help set the tone.   
• Temperature: A space that can be made colder, warmer, dry, or humid, to encourage the audience to feel the shifts in the literal atmosphere of the space.   
• Smell: More commonly deployed in natural sciences exhibits, offering smell stations, or providing an ambient smell of fresh grass or rain can help set the sensory scene.  

What’s Next: Immersive Exhibits in Context

In the upcoming weeks, we’ll take a deeper look at the exhibits mentioned above. Next week’s post will focus on two different Vincent van Gogh immersive exhibitions that bring the artist’s work to life through multisensory storytelling.  

We will explore how each exhibit creates an immersive environment—and how those experiences may differ from traditional museum exhibition design. 

Frequently Asked Questions

What defines an immersive museum experience? 

A strong immersive experience engages multiple senses, follows a coherent story path, and uses design elements—like lighting, color, and sound—to create emotional resonance and enhance learning. 

What are the benefits of immersive storytelling in museums? 

Immersive storytelling invites deeper emotional and sensory engagement, helping visitors connect with content in more personal and memorable ways. It’s especially effective for reaching broader audiences, including those who may feel alienated by text-heavy or traditional exhibit formats.