How One Museum Turned a Podcast Into a Sold-Out Live Show

If you want to understand how The Object, a quietly loved podcast from the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) grew into a fully booked free live event, complete with celebrity guests, audience quizzes, and a small army of superfans, you have to start with a confession: the original concept was terrible.

Years ago, Mia’s director announced that the museum needed a podcast. Writer and museum staffer Tim Gihring gamely grabbed a curator, stood them in a gallery, and switched on a microphone. The result was… earnest, but lifeless. A second attempt in a bar produced something livelier, but for all the wrong reasons.

So Gihring fell back on his background as a journalist and rebuilt the idea from scratch. Well-crafted narrative, thoughtful writing, atmospheric music, this was the combination that finally worked. Seven seasons later, The Object had become a compelling audio series exploring the secret lives of artworks and what they reveal about us.

For anyone starting a museum podcast, the shift towards a narrative format is a useful starting point. For this team, a new question emerged: could that storytelling style succeed onstage?

Finding a live format for the podcast

When Dexter Carlson joined Mia as a programme specialist, she was tasked with creating a new suite of lecture-style programming. To understand how the museum talked about its encyclopaedic collection, she began listening to The Object. As a loyal consumer of live podcast shows, it wasn’t long before she wondered whether the museum could bring this podcast into a room full of people.

One afternoon, in Mia’s courtyard, she simply walked up to Gihring.
“Hey Tim, you do the podcast, right?”
“Um… yes,” he admitted, cautiously.
“Would you ever consider doing it in front of an audience?”

Gihring had done the occasional casual public version, but nothing that approached a full theatrical production. He said yes, setting in motion a production that would need colleagues across the museum.

What had to change for a live audience

The transition from podcast to live show required rethinking the format entirely. A podcast episode runs for about 25 minutes; a live show needs a full hour of content with natural rises and falls. A recorded story exists in a controlled environment; a live story needs energy, interaction, and a reason to keep people in their seats.

The live version would still revolve around storytelling, but the team added elements that didn’t exist in the podcast: audience participation, visual storytelling, special guests, and the kind of theatrical moments that can only happen in a room where people laugh, react, and gasp together.

Another major decision shaped the project early on. The Object LIVE would remain free. Mia is a free museum, and the show would serve as a form of fan service and audience building, a moment where listeners could meet the makers, and the museum could show its personality.

As they developed the idea, the team planned three events across the 2025 season, selecting artworks, dates and guests that would resonate with audiences and align with the museum’s calendar. Their plans for the third show connected it with Meet at Mia, the museum’s wider evening programme.

A fully booked pilot, with no-shows

The first performance debuted in January 2025, which in Minnesota is less a month than a national test of resilience. Still, 70 people signed up to celebrate Édouard Manet’s birthday in a small theatre space. All 70 free reservations were taken within about a week, though the team reported that around half of those booked did not attend.

Self-proclaimed superfans arrived early. They treated the space with reverence, as though they’d stepped inside the podcast itself. After the show, many wandered upstairs to find the Manet painting featured in the episode, carrying with them new context, new stories and a renewed sense of connection.

The pilot had passed its test.

Scaling up with Dessa and Dalí

With the success of the first event behind them, the team scaled up for the second. This time, the show moved into Mia’s Pillsbury Auditorium, a theatre with nearly 300 seats. The date coincided with Salvador Dalí’s birthday, and the focus was his surreal Aphrodisiac Telephone, better known as the lobster phone.

For a special guest, they invited Dessa, the musician and writer beloved across Minnesota. The event happened to fall on Mother’s Day, resulting in one of the more surprising statistics of the season: a notable number of mothers apparently adore Dalí.

Almost 300 free tickets were reserved for the second show, and the reported no-show rate fell to about 30%. The production grew more ambitious too, including pre-recorded curator segments and a lively “phone-a-curator” moment that merged expert insight with the show’s theatrical spirit.

The bookings showed demand, while the no-show figures gave the team a more realistic basis for planning attendance.

The Power of Edutainment

At the core of The Object LIVE lies a concept the team embraces wholeheartedly: edutainment. That word often gets a bad reputation, but here it describes a simple truth: learning lands differently when it’s joyful, surprising, or theatrical.

Lectures and classes continue to be essential. But some stories are simply better when delivered on a stage, with humour, visuals, and moments of delightful absurdity. One quiz compared Manet’s brushwork to mayonnaise. Another invited the audience to make their own lobster phones. These are experiences that shift museum learning from something formal into something playful, without sacrificing substance.

Rehearsal and production lessons

Though Gihring is the face of the show, the success of The Object LIVE depends on a sprawling team. AV technicians create the show’s professional look. Marketing spreads the word. Visitor experience staff welcome and manage audiences. Curators supply insight and occasional on-stage moments. Advancement staff and sponsors make the work possible. And fans, the listeners who come back, bring their friends, and share their enthusiasm, give the whole project its momentum.

Carlson and Gihring identified two practical changes for the next production: allow a more substantial dress rehearsal, and mark positions on stage for audience members and guests joining the interactive sections. Those details help a participatory show run smoothly alongside the story, visuals and technical cues.

Starting with a story you already have

Mia began with a narrative podcast and an existing audience, then invested in adapting it for a live setting. The story was already there, but the hour-long format, audience participation and production arrangements needed new work.

Your museum might already have a story, a project, a research initiative or a digital asset that could take on an entirely new life if presented differently. Sometimes innovation is less about invention and more about translation.

Start by identifying what audiences value in the existing work, then decide what a live encounter could add and which colleagues would need to help deliver it.

For another museum, the planning questions are practical: how will the format change, how many people are likely to attend, and what rehearsal and production time will it require?

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Dexter Carlson and Tim Gihring from the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) spoke at the Creative Museums Summit 2025.