Museum Selfie Day Date in the current year: January 17, 2024

The importance of museums, art galleries, botanic gardens and arboretums, historic sites, science centers, and other similar institutions is hard to overestimate. They help preserve human history, educate and inspire us, provide a great excuse to spend more time with friends and family, enhance our travel experience, and serve as community centers.

Museum Selfie Day was started in 2014 by Mar Dixon, a British blogger, museum lover, and audience development and social media specialist working with museums, art galleries, and heritage sites. After visiting several museums with her daughter, she thought that museum selfies would be a great way to raise awareness of the rich collections found in the world’s museums and showcase fun experiences to be had at museums.

It is very easy to get involved with Museum Selfie Day: all you need to do is take a selfie in a museum and post it on social media with the hashtags #MuseumSelfieDay and #MuseumSelfie. You can visit your favorite museum or discover a new one; don’t be afraid to pick a museum or gallery that is out of your comfort zone and have some fun with filters, captions, and hashtags.

It is important to keep in mind that different museums have different rules regarding taking photos, so you should check with the front office before taking any pictures. Most museums and galleries don’t allow flash photography, and some may restrict certain collections or exhibits. If you can’t take photos inside a museum, take a selfie in front of the building or with your ticket stub. And of course it is important to understand that some museum selfies would be really inappropriate; for example, Auschwitz-Birkenau is a museum, but taking selfies there is generally regarded as poor taste.

Some museums, on the other hand, actively encourage museum selfies. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History even published an article titled How to Take the Perfect Selfie at the Smithsonian on the occasion of the 2020 Museum Selfie Day, listing some of its most selfie-worthy exhibits, including Charles Darwin’s statue, a moai stone figure from Easter Island, a 52-foot megalodon model, a lunging tiger mount, and a cave re-creation.

Museum Selfie Day is also a great occasion to visit a selfie museum. Selfie museums are art galleries or installations that provide visitors with creative backdrops, props, and even optical illusions for taking selfies. It should be noted that most selfie museums are commercial establishments rather than non-profit educational organizations like traditional museums, so selfies from such museums comply with the letter but not with the spirit of Museum Selfie Day. Nevertheless, it can be a really fun experience and a great way to improve your selfie-taking skills.

Even if you can’t visit a museum on Museum Selfie Day, you can still get involved with the holiday by posting an old museum selfie, liking and commenting other people’s selfies, sharing your favorite museum experiences on social media, taking a virtual museum tour, purchasing museum gift tickets for your loved ones, or re-watching the Night at the Museum film series.