Renegade Museum Tours Lure Newbies, Bros, and the Easily Bored

Advising museums on audience development isn’t a scenario Nick Gray had in mind when he first turned his hobby—giving friends oddball tours of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art—into a small business. An entrepreneurial type who founded a web-hosting service while in high school, he always found museums “cold, both emotionally and physically.” Then a date led him through the Met with an emphasis on her individual passions—and the museum became a favorite spot.

Gray perfected his tours by pestering friends with feedback forms. Thanks to attention online, he went pro in 2013, settling on a name, Museum Hack, hiring guides, and expanding. Tours of institutions in five cities, with titles such as “Un-Highlights” or “Badass Bitches,” soon captured the attention of museum professionals. “There was immediate intrigue with these renegade museum tours,” says Andrea Feller, the curator of education for the Arizona State University Art Museum.