When the Museum of Ice Cream opened in New York in 2016, it was more a temporary curiosity than a rival to, say, the Whitney Museum of American Art, which stood just across the street. The walls were painted a soft shade of millennial pink. In one room, ice cream cones hung like pendant lights. There was a giant ice cream sandwich swing. And a sprinkle pool. Even the museum’s co-founders, Maryellis Bunn and Manish Vora, often wore some shade of bubblegum pink around the museum as if they, too, were on display.

One year and three cities later, the Museum of Ice Cream has graduated to cult status on Instagram. More than 241,000 people follow its page, and countless more have posted their own photos from within the space. (Instagram doesn’t show how many photos have been posted at a particular geotag, but there are over 66,000 images with the #museumoficecream hashtag.) All those grams have made the Museum of Ice Cream a coveted place to be: In New York, the $18 tickets to visit—300,000 in total—sold within five days of opening. At its San Francisco location, which opened this month, single tickets went up to $38. The entire six-month run sold out in less than 90 minutes.

Katie Gibbs/Museum of Ice Cream

Bunn denies that Instagram played a significant role in how she shaped the museum. “I don't think that social is what is driving what the Museum of Ice Cream does,” she says. Yet it’s hard to walk through the space and imagine it as anything but a series of Instagram backdrops. One room in the San Francisco space is filled with giant cherries and marshmallow clouds; in LA, there’s a room with strings of pink and yellow bananas strewn from the ceiling. Visitors are allotted about 90 minutes to explore the museum, but it’s hard to imagine what you’d do during that time if you weren’t taking photos.

Bunn, who is 25, seems to understand the appeal of a well-styled Instagram photo. Her personal feed includes photos of her snorkeling in Hawaii and suspended in a hammock above turquoise water in the Maldives, as well as many photos of Bunn inside her museum, hula hooping in the sprinkle room or licking an ice cream cone while sitting on a white unicorn. So while maybe the goal of the Museum of Ice Cream really is bigger than Instagram alone, there is no denying that social media plays a major role in its success. And in the rise of other installations like it—ones that offer just the right lighting, the right backdrops, and the right amount of whimsy, all for the price of admission.

Art in the Age of Instagram

If “made-for-Instagram” exhibits suggests something about our selfie-dominated culture, it didn't start in places like the Museum of Ice Cream. It started on the internet and then spilled out everywhere else—in nature, in restaurants, even in the contemporary art world.