Philadelphia's Magic Gardens

Name

Philadelphia's Magic Gardens

Legal name

Philadelphia's Magic Gardens

Website

https://phillymagicgardens.org

Company type

Private

Founded year

2004

Operating status

Operating

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Art Museum / Cultural Attraction

NAICS

Museums (71211), Museums, Historical Sites, and Similar Institutions (712)

SIC

Services-Amusement & Recreation Services (7900)

akta.pro primary industry

Parks, Gardens & Botanical Attractions (THAJACAH)

akta.pro secondary industry

Educational & Edutainment Parks (Science/Discovery/Children’s Parks) (THAJAEAG)

Keywords

• Mosaic art museum
• Folk art environment
• Outdoor sculpture garden
• Art preservation services
• Community art programs

Headquarters

HQ city

Philadelphia

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices2 records

Markets served

GTM type

B2C

Offering type

Services

Cost components

Personnel, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Others

Revenue model

1. Admission Tickets: Revenue from ticket sales for general admission, guided tours, Morning Magic Tours, and studio tours. Ticket prices vary by tour type and visitor category.
2. Membership Program: Annual membership tiers providing free admission, discounts to events and shop, and reciprocal benefits with other institutions. Tiers range from $30 (Student/Educator/Military) to $500 (Partner in Preservation).
3. Donations and Grants: Charitable contributions from individuals and foundations including Lindback Foundation, Dolfinger-McMahon Foundation, Joseph Robert Foundation, PECO, Philadelphia Cultural Fund, and government arts funding from Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and National Endowment for the Arts.
4. Events and Workshops: Revenue from special events including Twilight in the Gardens ($20-$30 per person), workshops like the Two Day Panel Mosaic Workshop ($110-$140), and outreach program fees.
5. Gift Shop: Retail sales through the PMG shop featuring merchandise, catalogs, and art-related items.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels5 records

Marketing channels13 records

Core offering

Philadelphia's Magic Gardens is a nonprofit museum that operates two permanent mosaic art environments—the Magic Gardens Museum on South Street and the Magic Gardens Studio on Watkins Street—created by artist Isaiah Zagar. The organization sells admission tickets and guided tours (Morning Magic Tours, Guided Site Tours, Studio Tours, and Combo Tours), hosts paid events and workshops (Twilight in the Gardens, PECO Family Jams, Two Day Panel Mosaic Workshop), runs educational outreach programs for schools and community groups, operates an artist residency, and sustains the sites through donations, grants, and a tiered membership program.

Product overview

Philadelphia's Magic Gardens operates as a nonprofit art museum offering visitors access to Isaiah Zagar's mosaic art environments through multiple physical sites and programs. The core offering consists of two main locations: the Magic Gardens Museum at 1020 South Street and the Magic Gardens Studio at 1002 Watkins Street. Visitors can experience the sites through various guided tour products (Morning Magic Tours, Guided Site Tours, Studio Tours, and Combo Tours), each offering different depths of access including the normally restricted mosaicked basement. The organization runs seasonal event programs including Twilight in the Gardens evening concerts, PECO Family Jams, and mosaic workshops. Additional offerings include a Virtual Tour for remote access, Outreach Programs for schools and community groups, the Julia Zagar Residency for Women Artists, and a free Community Art Closet. A tiered Membership Program provides free admission and discounts across all offerings.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• Magic Gardens Museum The flagship outdoor sculpture garden and indoor galleries at 1020 South Street in Philadelphia, featuring Isaiah Zagar's massive mosaic installations, folk art collections, and public murals. Includes access to a fully mosaicked basement. Open to the public Wednesday–Monday.
• Magic Gardens Studio A 10,000 square foot warehouse at 1002 Watkins Street in South Philadelphia, completely covered with mosaics and opened to the public for tours in 2024. Three times larger than the Magic Gardens Museum and operated as a separate tour destination.
• Guided Site Tour

Segments4 records

Ideal customer profiles4 records

Technology focussed No

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Feature2 records

Partnerships

Seven partnerships are on record, tiered core and minor.

• Jim's SteakscoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 May 2024Jim's Steaks at 402 South Street (formerly the Eye's Gallery location) worked closely with PMG's Preservation Team to restore and reinstall Isaiah Zagar's original mosaics after a 2022 fire. The collaboration included installation of new mosaics chronicling the fire and rebuilding process. PMG staff participated in restoring mosaics inside the Jim's Steaks building.
• Dina Wind Art Foundation / John Wind StudiocoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerJoint combo tour offering exploring two South Philly art spaces. The Dina Wind Art Foundation houses over 300 welded metal sculptures by Dina Wind (1938-2014) and shares space with John Wind's working studio. Tours run second Tuesdays 10:00 AM-12:30 PM with $30 combo ticket.
• Museum Travel AllianceminorChannel Partner/ Reseller/ DistributorMembership benefit providing access to hundreds of international and domestic cultural voyages for Individual, Young Friends Dual, and Visionary Membership tiers.
• North American Reciprocal Museum Association (NARM)minorChannel Partner/ Reseller/ DistributorReciprocal membership organization providing Family and Visionary Members free admission and discounts to over 750 arts, cultural, and historical institutions.
• Reciprocal Organization of Associated Museums (ROAM)minorChannel Partner/ Reseller/ DistributorReciprocal museum organization providing Family and Visionary Members with access to museums participating in the ROAM network.
• Eye's GallerycoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerJulia Zagar's folk art store operated at 402 South Street from 1968-2022. The store is now located at 327 South Street. The building's mosaics were created by Isaiah Zagar as therapy after his mental health crisis. Julia continues to run the gallery, maintaining the Zagar family's connection to folk art.
• Clarence SchmidtminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerInfluential outsider artist whose House of Mirrors in Woodstock, NY inspired Isaiah Zagar at age 19. Schmidt's work shaped Zagar's understanding of what art could be and started his interest in art environments. PMG pays tribute to Schmidt and other art environment creators in its installations.

Scale indicators6 records

Recent moves7 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Direct peers

• Salvation Mountain: Salvation Mountain is a large-scale folk art environment in Niland, California, built by Leonard Knight over decades using paint, adobe, and found materials, preserved as a public attraction. It is the closest direct peer to PMG in terms of single-artist visionary art environment, nonprofit/community stewardship, and folk-art preservation mission.
• City Museum (St. Louis): City Museum is a repurposed-warehouse immersive art and play environment featuring artist-built installations using found objects, with ticketed admission, events, and educational programming. Its reuse of industrial space, outsider-art sensibility, and mosaic-adjacent folk-art installations make it a strong operating-model parallel to PMG's South Street sites.
• Grounds For Sculpture: Grounds For Sculpture is a 42-acre sculpture park and museum in Hamilton, New Jersey, offering ticketed admission, rotating exhibitions, workshops, and artist residencies. Its blend of outdoor sculpture garden, indoor galleries, events programming, and educational offerings parallels PMG's combination of outdoor garden, mosaic museum, and community programming.
• Meow Wolf: Meow Wolf operates large-scale, immersive, walk-through art environments built from a single artist's vision, supported by ticketed admissions, events, and memberships. Like PMG, its value proposition centers on a one-of-a-kind, narrative-driven art installation that visitors physically explore — though Meow Wolf operates at significantly larger scale across multiple U.S. cities.
• ARTECHOUSE: ARTECHOUSE runs immersive, technology-driven art installations in dedicated exhibition spaces with ticketed admission and time-based programming. While its medium is digital rather than mosaic, its operating model — single anchor installation, premium ticketing, event programming, and limited-run exhibitions — closely mirrors PMG's Museum and Studio product structure.
• Watts Towers (Los Angeles): The Watts Towers are a celebrated folk-art environment of 17 interconnected mosaic and steel structures built by Sabato Rodia over 33 years, now operated as a museum site by the City of Los Angeles. They share PMG's outsider-art mosaic medium, single-creator legacy, and museum-based preservation and public-access model.

Emerging players

• Color Me Mine: Color Me Mine is a franchise chain of ceramic and mosaic painting studios offering paid workshops and artmaking experiences. While commercial rather than nonprofit and broader than mosaic-only, its workshop pricing model ($100+ per multi-session workshop) and DIY artmaking audience overlap with PMG's Two Day Panel Mosaic Workshop offering.

Broad incumbents

• Barnes Foundation: The Barnes Foundation is a major Philadelphia art museum offering ticketed admission, memberships, and educational programming in a single-collector-built institution. Its membership-based operating model, focus on immersive single-site experience, and Philadelphia tourism market overlap make it a relevant incumbent peer for PMG.
• Philadelphia Museum of Art: The Philadelphia Museum of Art is the major regional art museum incumbent in PMG's home market, holding Isaiah Zagar works in its collection and serving the same visitor pool. While vastly larger and broader in scope, it anchors Philadelphia's art-tourism ecosystem from which PMG captures spillover demand and competes for philanthropic dollars.
• Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA): PAFA is a Philadelphia-based art museum and school that holds Zagar's work in its collection and offers ticketed exhibitions, memberships, and community education. As a fellow Philadelphia nonprofit art institution with a teaching and exhibition mission, PAFA is a natural institutional and audience peer.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• Xtwitter.com/magicgardens
• YouTubeyoutube.com/channel/UCHLxFpXmOAXRNo7jKSmBeaA
• Facebookfacebook.com/PhillyMagicGardens
• Instagraminstagram.com/PhillyMagicGardens
• TikToktiktok.com/@phillymagicgardens
• Pinterestpinterest.com/magicgardens

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles7 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Philadelphia's Magic Gardens