Inside the Complicated, Business Business of Museum Rebranding

For the past several years, the board of trustees and senior staff at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, have been working to make the museum—founded in 1842 and one of the oldest continuously operating museums in the country—more user-friendly. The labels on the center’s website and the gallery are “nonsense, the way people talk,” April Swieconek, a museum spokeswoman, told the Observer. Guards in the galleries have been replaced by “gallery assistants,” whose role is to help visitors navigate the museum and find what they are looking for. Staff and outside consultants organized listening sessions to better understand how people in the Hartford area perceive the museum’s collections, exhibits and programs. Curators still lead the planning of the exhibition, but members of the public are now invited to participate in choosing what will be displayed and how it will be presented.

The institution also decided to stop using the word “Atheneum” in public affairs because, as Swieconek put it, “people don’t know what atheneum is” or how to pronounce it, and this word struck many as “elite, exclusive, too clubby, which is the opposite of what we are trying to express.” The museum did not actually remove the Atheneum from its name, which remains part of its official name as registered with the Connecticut Attorney General’s office, but it did, in December 2025, rename itself The Wadsworth. In the listening sessions, “we found that the word ‘atheneum’ really bothered people,” added Swieconek.

Institutional name changes are not uncommon, although they can be highly controversial. In October 2025, the Philadelphia Museum of Art became the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the redesign—including a new logo that the museum’s Board of Trustees had disapproved of—was widely derided, with critics calling the institution “PhArt.” Some rebranding, however, goes without a hitch. In 2024, for example, the New-York Historical Society removed the hyphen and the word “society” to become New York Historical. Like the word “atheneum,” the word “community” seemed to suggest isolation, and its removal, a spokesman told the Observer, signaled “that the institution welcomes all people.” The new name came with a new symbol—the letter H—that “reflects the history of New York state and Native American culture, and features a prominent cross that nods to the hyphen’s legacy and New York City’s history as a bridge of people and culture.” As New York Historical president and CEO Louise Mirrer put it, “with our new name and look, we embrace our responsibility not only as curators and storytellers of history but… as a contemporary leader in ensuring the future of democracy.”

More name changes are on the horizon. When renovations are complete, the Daytona Beach Museum of Arts & Sciences in Florida will become The Brown—short for The Cici and Hyatt Brown Museum of Art, Science & History, named for the couple who donated $150 million to fund the new building. Indeed, money often plays an important role in innovation. It cost billionaire real estate developer and art collector Jorge M. Pérez $35 million in 2013 to rename the Miami Art Museum the Pérez Art Museum Miami. (Other cultural institutions are also playing the name game. In 2014, film and music producer David Geffen paid $100 million to put his name on the former Avery Fisher Hall at New York’s Lincoln Center; Avery Fisher himself had donated $10.5 million back in 1973.)

Museum name changes are not always about money. They can show clarity, comfort or mechanical flexibility. According to the spokesperson, many visitors had referred to the Philadelphia Museum of Art as the Philadelphia Art Museum. That being said, when and why institutions rename themselves is not always obvious. Locals may say it’s the Philadelphia Art Museum, but the Federal Reserve is known as the Fed despite the move to change its name. The Italian Uffizi—“the offices”—is always the Uffizi because there is no confusion in Florence about why a museum is not called a museum.

In San Diego, the Museum of Man faced decades of pressure to change its name. “The public has been pushing back against the name for decades,” James Haddan, executive director of development for what became the Museum of Us, told the Observer. “In human terms, the word ‘man’ means ‘mankind,’ but that is not how the word is used in everyday language.

Since 2017, museum staff have held focus groups with members of the public, “buying several words” to understand the public’s preferences. The top choices included the Museum of Cultural Communication, the Museum of Humanity, the Museum of Us, the Human Experience, the Cultural Project, the Museum for Everyone and the final winner: Museum of Us. “We didn’t want the museum to be seen as a crowded place but a place for all of us,” he said, adding that there were discussions to drop the word “Museum” completely, although they ended up keeping it instead of “Institute.”

In November, the Hockaday Museum in Kalispell, Montana—named after local artist Hugh Hockaday, who offered art lessons in the area—was renamed the Glacier Art Museum. “We’re located just outside of Glacier National Park,” executive director Alyssa Cordova told the Observer. “People just thought of us as the Glacier Art Museum. Over time, it became more and more challenging to explain the name Hockaday to people who had never heard of him.” Kalispell has become the fastest growing city in Montana and a popular tourist destination. “When people look us up online, they’re looking for Glacier, art and a museum, so a light bulb went off,” Cordova said. “It made a lot of sense to rename ourselves the Glacier Art Museum.”

These changes don’t happen quickly—or cheaply. New logos, signs and business cards should be created. Letterhead and websites should be redesigned. Trademarks must be completed. Designers and directors are being hired. “We spent tens of thousands of dollars,” Haddan said of the Museum of Us reconstruction. There was also a transition period with a sign crossing out “Man” and writing “We” underneath before the final signs were added.

According to Cordova, “we didn’t throw out our old book. I’m still using it,” noting that the Glacier Art Museum’s slow rollout helped spread the cost over many years and the budget. Wadsworth was not yet there; Swieconek declined to say what the cost of the “Atheneum” takedown was, but the museum hired Saffron Consultants—a global branding firm with offices in London, Madrid, Tokyo and Vienna—for a 10-month engagement that included listening sessions and a strategic report.

The Philadelphia Art Museum’s renovation project spent $250,000 on “acquisitions, techniques and visual labs,” according to a spokesperson, with additional funds from the general operating budget that includes “paid media.” The existing signs of the museum, it is worth noting, were not very old; PAM, then PMA, was renamed Pentagram in 2014.

Museum name changes can be expensive because they often reflect not only an identity update but also an equipment update. In 2016, Seattle’s Experience Music Project (EMP) became the Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP) after interim ownership, including the Experience Music Project and the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame (EMPSFM). Founded in 2000 by billionaire Paul Allen, the institution has changed names five times.

Michele Y. Smith, MoPOP’s chief executive officer, told the Observer that the recent change reflects “the museum’s growing mission, programs and influence and finally celebrating a much broader art beyond music and science fiction, so it was a natural transition in pop culture.” The update required official documents, logo and website redesign, a trademark search and a comprehensive communication strategy. “A lawyer for legal guidance on name changes and ensuring compliance with local laws and regulations” was also involved—proof that sometimes a new name is a big megillah.

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