Thousands of Taylor Swift fans flooded museums in Vienna over the weekend after multiple institutions waived entry fees after three of the singer’s concerts were cancelled due to security threats.
“We weren’t really sure what to expect,” Haus der Musik managing director Simon Posch told ARTnews.
The participating institutions were the Mozarthaus Vienna, House of Music, KunstHausWien and the Jewish Museum Vienna owned by the City of Vienna; MAK Vienna (Museum of Applied Arts) and MAK Geymüllerschlössel; the modern art museum Mumok, the art museum The Albertina, as well as the museum at the House of Strauss. The Museumquartier also offered Taylor Swift ticket holders free guided tours in English and German on August 10 and 11.
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The initiative was publicized through the Vienna Tourist Board and statements by the city’s mayor, Michael Ludwig, especially on social media.
Several museum professionals in Vienna told ARTnews the slew of additional visitors were a pleasant surprise to their institutions. The demographics were mostly English-speaking young women, often between the ages of 18 to 25, traveling to the city from countries as far away as China, South Africa, Australia, Canada, and the United States. Many of them were also easily identifiable while wearing the singer’s concert merchandise, colorful outfits intended for the concert, and arms covered in friendship bracelets they intended to trade with other fans.
The Albertina fully embraced the moment, waiving its €19.90 regular entrance fee (€15.90 for visitors under 26 years) for more than 20,000 Swifties between Thursday, August 8 and Sunday, August 11. “On a normal and regular weekend, we would have, I would say 2,000 a day,” spokesperson Nina Eisterer told ARTnews, noting that these types of visitor numbers are usually for blockbuster exhibitions like the one for Claude Monet in 2018.
Eisterer said she and her colleagues in The Albertina’s marketing division were Swifties themselves, with several people planning to go to the concerts and personally devastated by the news of the cancellations. After the idea for waived entry fees was approved, the art museum’s security and ticketing teams were informed on August 6 that additional staff would be needed.
The Albertina’s line for Swifties was so long that some fans stood outside in the sun and 91°F heat for approximately 20 minutes. “But there was no fuss about it,” Eisterer said. “People were super nice.”
The museum also switched the soundtracks playing its in 20 historical staterooms from classical music to Taylor Swift albums, prompting several large singalongs that went viral on TikTok.
“I love classical music, I love Mozart, I love Beethoven, I love all these classical artists, but it was really nice to have a Taylor Swift singalong more or less in the state rooms that normally stand for something else,” Eisterer said, noting she had worked for the Albertina for eight years.
Other institutions also saw an unexpected bump in activity. For the Haus der Musik, 2,746 Swifties came to museum for its free entry between August 8 and August 11 instead of paying €17 for adults and €13 for students under the age of 27. This was almost half of the total number of visitors (5,862). The singer’s fans also increased gift shop sales by €4,500 ($4,918.88) over the weekend.
Mozarthaus Vienna said they had 2,663 Swifties between August 9 and August 11, with additional staff called in on Saturday and Sunday. “Due to the large number of Swifties, guided tours in English were spontaneously added,” spokesperson Jasmine Wolfram told ARTnews.
Mumok’s head of press, Katharina Murschetz said 884 Taylor Swift fans stopped by. Eva Grundschober, the spokesperson for Capuchin’s Crypt said “exactly 500 Swifties” used the option for the free ticket. And Josef Gaschnitz, the chief financial officer of the Jüdisches Museum der Stadt, said visitor numbers were “over 100 percent more” compared to normal days. “Our gift shop had around 50 percent more sales, same with our bistro.”
Several institutions also mentioned employees gifting and exchanging bracelets with the singer’s fans visiting the city.
Multiple people told ARTnews that social media played a major role in informing Swifties of the “super last-minute decision” for the city’s offers and attracting them to the various museums. “100 percent,” said Posch, a self-professed Taylor Swift fan. “I think social media is the only way to reach this target group, because it didn’t help if the Austrian National Broadcasting System showed it in the evening news and they put it on their web page. None of these kids is going to visit the ORF home page. Social media just reaches the audience in the fastest possible way. And then it goes viral.”
While the initiative may have been a temporary hit to museum revenues from entry fees, museum staff told ARTnews there were far more benefits, including merchandise sales, publicity, and greater accessibility to younger visitors.
“We didn’t think about the money or the losing the money at all,” Eisterer said, noting that its entry fees can be very expensive for young people. “It was, for us, important to set like a sign for this concert that had been canceled because of this horrible reason, and to give somehow a bit of hope and say to people, ‘Hey, we know it’s devastating. You can’t go to the concert, but hey, you can enjoy a bit of of art in Vienna, that’s what we can offer you’.”
“It’s helpful for our reputation,” Posch said. “it pays into the reputation of the city of Vienna, being friendly, being generous, being hospitable. And that is worth more, in the end, than not generating these few euros in ticket sales.”
Some museums, like the Haus of Musik and the Albertina, also planned on extending the free entry offer to Swifties for one or two days beyond the weekend. “We will definitely still give them free access if they come with the Taylor Swift ticket,” Posch said. “If they didn’t make it on the weekend and they’re still here, there’ll be no discussion, there’ll be our guests.”