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The place is packed, but there's a feel-good vibe, common to big, successful events. Like at any popular attraction, there are lines for everything: snack bars, restrooms, ticket counters. The air is even filled with the occasional scream or shriek of delight. A sold-out pop concert? An amusement park? No, it's London's Tate Modern, the world's busiest modern-art museum. The draw right now (and the source of those screams): the seventh annual commission to grace the Turbine Hall, the huge open seven-story interior of the former London Electricity power station. This year, German artist Carsten Höller has constructed Test Site, a set of five tube-shaped slides that twist and turn to the ground from levels two, three, four and five. The slides are open to the public, free and wildly popular. Is it good art? Critics are divided. Is it a gift to the museum's marketers? Clearly.

Welcome to the art world's most conspicuous success story. A decade ago, the building was decaying and empty, a massive eyesore just across the Thames from St. Paul's Cathedral. After a $200 million overhaul, including a redesign by architects Herzog & de Meuron, Tate Modern is now one of the city's must-see destinations, attracting more than twice the 1.8 million annual visitors originally predicted. Last July, the museum announced a $400 million expansion plan that it hopes will increase its size by 60% by 2012.

But Tate Modern isn't alone in exceeding its own expectations. Attendance at Paris' Louvre Museum last year reached a record 7.5 million visitors. Museum visits hit a whopping 100 million in Germany in 2005, while Madrid's three major museums — the Prado, the Reina Sofía and the Thyssen-Bornemisza — recently underwent costly upgrades to handle increasing throngs of visitors. "We are seeing a boom time for museums," says John Kieffer, senior consultant at AEA Consulting, a firm that specializes in advising museums.

Fueling the boom is a new savvy for the marketing and brand-building techniques long employed by big business. For example, Tate Modern and its sister museums (which also include London's Tate Britain — a repository of historic and contemporary British art — as well as outposts in Liverpool in England's northwest and St. Ives in the southwest) recently marketed a line of wall paints through B&Q home-improvement stores. "For a long time, the opinion toward marketing and commercialism from curators was quite negative," says Paal Mork, head of communications at the Norsk Folkemuseum in Oslo. That attitude, he says, is now ancient history.

Some curators may still wish that great art didn't require a hard sell, but a money crunch has done much to soften that attitude. Cash from governments and foundations is dwindling, and that forces museums to bring in more free-spending visitors to survive. The original Tate Gallery — now Tate Britain — got approximately 90% of its revenues from government funding 20 years ago. Now the group gets 40%. It's a similar picture elsewhere in Europe. Corporate sponsorship has filled some of the shortfall, but in return for their donations, companies expect to see crowds. According to Johanna Waterous, a director of McKinsey & Company's London office, which has worked with Tate Modern since its conception, the new museum had not only to be a showplace of great works, but "it was an imperative to make it a commercial success." That it has been, without question. But how are Tate and other museums staying competitive in this new era? Below, five rules.

RULE 1: BELIEVE IN, BUT RESPECT, THE BLOCKBUSTER
the most powerful marketing weapon museums wield is the blockbuster show. Once-in-a-lifetime retrospectives of artists or periods can entice people to line up for blocks to get in. The Louvre's retrospective of the French painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres earlier this year brought in 380,000 visitors. In 2002, Tate Modern's Matisse and Picasso show drew 467,000. "Undeniably, blockbusters drive attendance," says Kate Farmery, head of public services at Manchester Art Gallery in northern England.

But weapons can misfire, and some critics think that these megashows have skewed museums' priorities. In a recent harangue, Michael Henderson, an arts columnist at London's Daily Telegraph, called Tate Modern an "unappealing art factory that we are supposed to admire because it attracts so many visitors." Is a museum's purpose to enlighten and educate the public or to stage must-see entertainments? The real answer, according to McKinsey's Waterous: both. "How can you educate people if you don't bring in an audience?" she asks. Income from blockbusters, says Tate director Nicholas Serota, also enable museums to mount smaller, more scholarly shows.

RULE 2: GET CREATIVE, NOT CUTE
The economics of blockbusters are risky. A large show can cost from $1 million to $3 million to mount and requires publicity to succeed, so commercial tie-ins are increasingly common. This year, for a special exhibition on Modernism, London's Victoria and Albert Museum joined forces with British furniture chain Habitat. There were in-store events, including lectures, and the stores sold co-branded rugs and posters with Modernist themes. When Tate mounted a Paul Cezanne show, it hooked up with U.K. sandwich chain Pret A Manger, which added a sun-dried tomato and cheese "Cezannewich" to its menu. Fun idea, but one that almost crosses the line into frivolity.

Museums try to steer clear of promotions that might crack their academic veneer or turn a work of art into a parody of itself. (Think of what's happened to The Scream.) "If we generate 100 ideas, we'll likely use only 10," says Will Gompertz, head of Tate Media. "If you think you are belittling the art or overly commercializing it, you don't do it."

RULE 3: MULTIMEDIA IS NOT OPTIONAL
Some museums are turning to television to create buzz. Coming up at Tate Britain to help promote the Turner Prize — an annual, highly publicized (and often controversial) award open to artists younger than 50 — is a reality talent show for commercial network Channel 4 that will discover a new on-air art critic. High technology has proved helpful in wooing the digital generation as well. The new Clore Interactive Gallery at Manchester Art Gallery has more than 20 activities that encourage visits to other parts of the museum. The Louvre now offers audio tours based on The Da Vinci Code, downloadable from iTunes. Tate Modern, meanwhile, asked eight musical acts each to compose a song inspired by one of the museum's works of their choosing. For a month, the songs can be heard only at listening posts around the museum; then they'll be available for downloading at Tate Modern's website.

RULE 4: ARCHITECTURE MATTERS
The Guggenheim Bilbao kicked off the craze in 1997. The gritty, regional Spanish port city became an international art mecca virtually overnight when it unveiled Frank Gehry's amazing curvy, titanium-clad structure. Last year it attracted nearly a million visitors and the economic payoff for the region's gdp totaled $238 million. The pull of the museum's building appears to be as strong as the lure of the art inside, and there is little doubt that Tate Modern's iconic edifice and plum location are similarly among its best assets. The Bilbao Effect has cities worldwide scrambling to build new museums with attention-getting designs, dreamed up by top-flight architects, in hopes of generating urban renewal. The Musée d'Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, nicknamed the Mudam, opened in July in Luxembourg. Designed by I.M. Pei, it's an angular, three-story building of French limestone and glass. The bubble-shaped Kunsthaus in Graz, Austria — designed by British architects Peter Cook and Colin Fournier — opened in 2003.

RULE 5: CONTENT IS STILL KING
clever marketing, multimillion-dollar investments and breakthrough architecture still don't guarantee success. The National Centre for Popular Music in Sheffield, northern England, a steel-covered building shaped like a cluster of four kettle drums, expected 400,000 visitors a year when it opened in 1999. But only around 100,000 showed up. So pop went the music museum. It's the rare museum today that can avoid upping its marketing game, but they do exist. Florence's Uffizi Gallery, for example, with works by Da Vinci, Michelangelo and Caravaggio, does little to promote itself yet draws 1.5 million visitors annually. Museums that fail, or lag more successful ones, often have problems that no sales job can fix: lack of content, bad locations, unrealistic business plans, poor leadership. But when a museum strikes the right chord in the right market, and follows the Tate Rules, the effects can be artfully crowd pleasing.

• THOMAS K. GROSE
• Fuelled by a new savvy for marketing and brand-building, it's boom time for Europe's top museums. A guide to luring crowds — and cash