How museums can help visitors keep their 2026 wellness resolutions

As the new year begins, many people are setting intentions around moving more, reducing stress, and finding moments of meaning in their everyday lives. Museums and galleries are uniquely positioned to support those goals, and often in ways visitors don’t immediately recognize.

Recent research highlighted in Good News Network reinforces what many cultural professionals already sense intuitively: visiting an art gallery can reduce stress and support long-term health. In one study at London’s Courtauld Gallery, participants who viewed original artworks experienced an average 22% reduction in cortisol, the body’s primary stress hormone, alongside decreases in inflammatory markers linked to heart disease. The physical environment, original works, and immersive context all mattered.

For museums, this is more than a feel-good headline. It’s an opportunity to frame cultural visits as part of a visitor’s ongoing wellness routine, and to design experiences that encourage people to come back, explore more, and stay engaged over time.

Museums as Places for Movement, Calm, and Connection

Unlike many wellness activities that require special equipment, memberships, or apps, museums already offer something powerful and accessible:

• Natural movement through galleries encourages walking without the pressure of “exercise.”
  
  
• Cognitive and emotional engagement supports stress reduction and mental well-being.
  
  
• A calm, intentional pace creates space for reflection that’s increasingly rare in daily life.
  
  

But the key question for museums is not whether these benefits exist; it’s how to make them visible, repeatable, and easy for visitors to return to.

How Empower Helps Museums Support Healthy Visitor Habits

This is where Pladia’s Empower platform plays a critical role. Empower helps museums design digital experiences that extend engagement beyond a single visit and encourage visitors to build a habit of returning.

Encourage purposeful movement through Tours

Empower’s Tours guide visitors through galleries with intention, encouraging exploration across multiple spaces rather than clustering in a single room. Visitors move at their own pace, supported by storytelling that deepens understanding without overwhelming them. The result is more walking, more discovery, and more time spent in the museum.

Create reasons to return

Rather than trying to deliver everything in one visit, Empower allows museums to offer multiple tours, perspectives, or thematic pathways. Visitors may complete one experience today and return weeks later for another, reinforcing the idea that the museum is a place they can come back to as part of their routine.

Support slower, deeper engagement

Audio-led and mobile-first experiences encourage visitors to slow down, spend more time with individual works, and engage emotionally with content. This kind of “slow looking” aligns closely with the stress-reduction benefits highlighted in recent research and supports a calmer, more restorative visit.

Build long-term relationships with data

Empower’s analytics help museums understand how visitors move through spaces, which experiences encourage longer stays, and what content draws repeat engagement. These insights enable teams to design programs and tours that better support both visitor well-being and institutional goals like retention and membership growth.

Positioning Museums as Part of a Visitor’s 2026 Routine

As visitors think about how they want to feel in the year ahead — calmer, healthier, more connected — museums can confidently position themselves as places that support those intentions.

With tools like Empower, museums can:

• Reinforce that a visit isn’t a one-off event, but something visitors can return to again and again.
  
  
• Encourage movement and exploration in a way that feels natural and enjoyable.
  
  
• Create layered experiences that reward curiosity over time.
  
  
• Strengthen long-term relationships by aligning cultural engagement with personal well-being.
  
  

In 2026, wellness doesn’t have to start at the gym or on a meditation app. For many visitors, it can begin (and continue) inside museum galleries, supported by thoughtful digital tools that invite them to keep coming back.

Curious how your museum could support visitor wellness while encouraging repeat engagement? Explore how Empower helps institutions create digital experiences that invite visitors to slow down, move through spaces with intention, and return again and again. Learn more at https://www.pladia.io/products/empower