Color Factory
Color Factory is an interactive art exhibition with brightly colored room-sized installations, each themed around the concept of color. It has permanent locations in New York City, Chicago, and Houston. Factory has commonly been cited as part of a trend of "Instagram museums", temporary art exhibitions catered towards younger millennial audiences which are designed to be photographed (especially in selfies) and shared on Instagram and other social media.
Color Factory
StephanieAnnFoster · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Name
- Color Factory
- Founded
- 2017
- Headquarters
- United States
VALÉORINE Encyclopedia
VALÉORINE documentary reading
Documentary summary
Color Factory is an interactive art exhibition with brightly colored room-sized installations, each themed around the concept of color. It has permanent locations in New York City, Chicago, and Houston. Factory has commonly been cited as part of a trend of "Instagram museums", temporary art exhibitions catered towards younger millennial audiences which are designed to be photographed (especially in selfies) and shared on Instagram and other social media.
Admitted source layer · organised and presented by VALÉORINE
Reference Check
Propose documentary evidence for Color Factory. A contribution is never written directly as fact: identity, source, rights and evidence gates still decide.
Sign in to contribute
World of VALÉORINE
Documentary connections
Only confirmed graph relationships appear here. Images are shown only when their identity and reuse rights both pass the documentary gate.
Documentary evidence
Documentary basis
Authority files
gnd · 7577538-4 · wikidata · Q60775747 · wikipedia · Color Factory
In this article
Overview
Overview
Co-founder Jordan Ferney has publicly pushed back against descriptions of Color Factory as an Instagram museum, stating that her goal “had always been to make something that was beautiful to experience, not photograph”. Artists whose works have been featured in Color Factory include Jason Polan, Lakwena Maciver, Molly Young, Tosha Stimage, and Tom Stayte. Exhibits include ball pits, balloon-filled rooms, and illuminated dance floors, with cameras preinstalled throughout the exhibition for photography.
A visitor to the Color Factory in San Francisco poses in front of a scratch and sniff wall.
Raphael Paolo
The Color Factory (sic)
Mig Gilbert from Brighton · The Color Factory (sic)
Key facts
Key facts
• Name — Color Factory • Established — August 2017 • Location — New York City, Houston, Chicago • Type — Multi-Sensory Art Experience • Website — https: colorfactory.co • Illustration — A scratch and sniff wall at the San Francisco exhibit in 2018.
History
History
Color Factory was founded in August 2017 by event-planner/blogger Jordan Ferney, artist Leah Rosenberg, and designer Erin Jang. It originally debuted as a one-month, 15-installation, 12,000 ft 2 exhibition in San Francisco, sponsored by Alaska Airlines and Method Soap. Due to its popularity (at one point causing its Eventbrite ticketing page to crash from high demand), this San Francisco run was later extended to last for a total of eight and a half months. In June and July 2018, Color Factory partnered with the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City to exhibit the “Manhattan Color Walk”, an outdoor art installation which painted the ground with several stripes of colors, each sampled from a different street of Manhattan. In August 2018, Color Factory reopened as a temporary 16-installation, 20,000 ft 2 standalone exhibition in New York City's SoHo neighborhood, sponsored by Maybelline and Gymboree. In November 2019, Color Factory opened an exhibition in Houston. Color Factory was voted the best immersive art experiences in the US to visit in 2024 and 2025 by USA Today's 10Best Readers' Choice Awards.
Institutional history
Dated record
Institutional history
The full dated record · 2 entries
2017
Color Factory established.
2017
Color Factory is recorded from 2017.
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
- United States
Primary material
Documents and archives
reference work
- Wikidata, structured authority record Q60775747: Color Factory
Reputable secondary · Wikidata
- “Color Factory”, English Wikipedia, consulted as further reading
Reputable secondary · Wikipedia
authority file
- Gemeinsame Normdatei 7577538-4, Color Factory.
General reference · Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Wang, Jenna. The Rise Of The Pop-Up Economy. Forbes. 2018-09-29.
- 2.Bedolla, Daise. The Ultimate Instagram Exhibit Is Headed to New York City. The Cut. 2018-06-20.
- 3.Lord, Emma. The Instagram-Famous Color Factory Has 16 New Rooms With Built-In Cameras For Photo Opps. Bustle. 2018-08-22.
- 4.Crenshaw, Madeline. Introducing Color Factory, The Latest Instagrammable Pop-Up Coming To NYC. Gothamist. 2018-07-19.
- 5.Winkelman, Natalia. The Color Factory Is Made for Instagram, but Is It Art?. The Daily Beast. 2018-08-21.
- 6.Hess, Amanda. The Existential Void of the Pop-Up ‘Experience’. The New York Times. 2018-09-26.
- 7.Yurieff, Kaya. Instagramable pop-ups can teach retailers a thing or two. CNN. 2018-10-04.
- 8.Vox. How "Instagram traps" are changing art museums. 2018-09-19.
- 9.Museum of Explosive Color Coming to NYC. NBC New York.
- 10.Keeling, Brock. Peek inside San Francisco’s newest Instagramable hotspot. Curbed SF. 2017-09-13.
- 11.Walk Displays Colors from 265 Blocks of NYC. NBC New York.
- 12.Carman, Ashley. How Color Factory keeps its Instagram-friendly pop-ups human-proof and camera-ready. The Verge. 6 November 2019.
- 13.Best Immersive Art Experience (2024) - USA TODAY 10Best Readers' Choice Awards. 10Best. 2024-03-03.
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
authority file
Gemeinsame Normdatei 7577538-4, Color Factory.Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
Secondary witnessreference work
Secondary witnessreference work
Secondary witness
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 16 August 2026.
Elsewhere in Institutions
3,152 published records in this field, each with its sources named.
- Collegio del CambioOrganisation
- Collegium ArtisticumOrganisation
- Collezione MaramottiOrganisation
- Colombischlössle Archeological MuseumOrganisation
- Colorado Springs Fine Arts CenterOrganisation
- Columbus Museum of ArtOrganisation
- Community Artists' CollectiveOrganisation
- Como Civic Art GalleryOrganisation
Best supported in this field
For owners
Own an object connected with Color Factory?
A specialist will read what you send and tell you what the house can establish, what it cannot, and whether the object is suited to sale. There is no charge and no obligation. The object stays with you throughout; nothing is shipped to us unless it is arranged in writing beforehand.