The Immersive Museum Experience: The Sphere in Las Vegas

Recently, we looked at different types of immersive experiences offered in non-traditional settings—including multisensory art productions like the traveling Van Gogh exhibits and the immersive Outernet district in London, UK.  

This week, we’re taking a closer look at another immersive experience: The Sphere in Las Vegas. Created by the Madison Square Garden Company, The Sphere opened in its permanent home of Las Vegas, Nevada, in September 2023. Costing nearly 2.3 billion dollars and featuring the largest LED screen in the world, The Sphere is described by the company as: 

Sphere is a next-generation entertainment medium that is redefining the future of live entertainment, allowing the foremost artists, creators, and technologists to create extraordinary experiences that take storytelling to a new level and transport audiences to places both real and imagined. The venue is powered by cutting-edge technologies that ignite the senses and enable audiences to share experiences at a never-before-seen scale.  

Of all the immersive experiences we’ve reviewed in this series, The Sphere is unique in centering storytelling as the product its experiences are intended to provide.   

Features of The Sphere

The Sphere elevates the venue experience beyond the highly visual. In addition to immersive elements like photographs, moving images, and animation, The Sphere performance area incorporates haptic seats, direct-to-seat multilingual audio, wind, and even scents. In terms of the senses being engaged, the only one missing from this venue is taste.   

• Story Path: Multiple Pathways  
• Storytelling Performance Types: Oral, Written, Visual  
• Sensory Setting: Lighting, Sound, Color, Texture, Temperature, Smell  

Additionally, part of the experience offers an opportunity to speak with five different robots, one of which is reportedly one of the most advanced humanoid robots in the world: Aura. Aura is described as artificially intelligent, granting individual identity instead of artificial intelligence. The Sphere is similar to the Outernet in that it also offers several different music concerts. In the case of The Sphere, these concerts are pre-recorded “Concert Films” rather than live performances.  

The Sphere vs. London’s Outernet

There are two notable differences between The Sphere and Outernet:   

1. The Sphere shows music concert films, instead of featuring live artists in a music venue style. 

2. The Sphere production company discusses how they partner with “legendary icons” versus local artists or local partners. 

That’s not to say there isn’t cross-over, just that the two permanent entertainment experience sites have slightly different approaches to the art it provides.  

How Experiences at The Sphere Differ from Those at Museums

The main attractions at The Sphere emphasize music, film, and multisensory experiences. While moving (holographic) and re-imagined still-art are present, there is less space allocated toward it. Notably, The Sphere does highlight the intersection of art, science, and technology, particularly through interactive displays available in the atrium.  

This offering helps to center art blended with technology which is a subject that museums have and will continue to explore. It would be interesting to see what a state-of-the-art facility could do with art a la the Van Gogh exhibits—and perhaps The Sphere will eventually stretch into that space.  

Competition and Challenges

When immersive experiences first emerged, there was consternation from the museum field. There was a fear that these production companies would be competition for museums and, in many ways, they are.  

But there was also frustration with the absence of real artwork and professional staff to offer interpretation. Devaluation of collections and interpretive work is a real challenge for the field, and the removal of professional staff from an art offering makes it appear that such staff are obsolete.  

However, the popularity of these productions and venues offers insight into how today’s audience wishes to engage with artwork. Audience enthusiasm—measured in ticket sales—suggests they don’t need to see the original artwork to have a meaningful experience. Understanding this concept opens up opportunities for innovation in museum exhibit production and storytelling. Original artworks and professional staff are still incredibly important, but there is flexibility in how they are deployed.  

Lessons in Innovation for the Museum Field

Since 2010, there has been a clear and demonstrated public interest in art-based experiences. While perhaps temporarily fueled by a world emerging from the isolation of a pandemic, audience interest and attendance remain strong.  

There are a lot of ideas and lessons the museum field can draw from immersive experiences. These experiential forays offer incredible insight into how to be flexible and reactive to the cultural moment, and how to attract broader audiences—something every museum needs to do.  

Although museums are not as well-resourced as for-profit companies, the competition these production companies provide helps inspire innovation in an industry often viewed as stale or outdated by significant portions of the public.