The art of Escape lectutr

Let us tell you about transforming museums into adventurous, mind-changing, magical escape games, that turn the museum experience into something completely different.

How is magic related to escape rooms? How can an escape game function as immersive storytelling? How can all this take place within the museum’s spaces – and how does it transform the visitors’ experience of the museum? A unique collaboration between the Israel Museum and Escape Artist Magus Cagliostro has made this magic possible.

In his MuseumNext talk Cagliostro told the audience how it all began: “I was working with the Israel Museum, and they were searching for solutions to some problems having to do with visitor traffic-flow”. Museums always search for new ways to draw visitors to the “less popular” galleries, for special content for children and families who visit the museum and for ways to draw new audiences to the museum.

Together, they decided to use Immersive storytelling as a way to go inside the visitors’ minds and lead them into a journey through the museum’s galleries and exhibitions: “Immersive storytelling creates a total experience, where everything is both fiction and reality, both sleight of hand and true magic. This experience is deep, it’s emotional, and it is unforgettable.“

This immersive experience was created in the form of a limitless escape game: no walls, no time limit and an unlimited number of simultaneous players.
First, the entire Israel Museum was turns into a huge escape room, and five other projects in different museums in Israel and Europe followed the success.

Cagliostro described the principles of the game, gave examples of riddles and told about the amazing feedbacks from both the participants and the museums in which those projects took place.

It is no surprise that Cagliostro said:

“Just until recently, when people asked me what I do for a living, my answer was: ‘I’m fucking with people’s minds’.
Now that I’ve been working with museums all over the world, maybe I can change my answer: ‘I’m MASSIVELY fucking with people’s minds!’ “