3 Action Items to Combat Declining Museum Attendance

Photo by Sergei Akulich on Unsplash 

Museums nationwide are feeling an attendance crunch.  Data shows a potential drop or stagnation in museum attendance across demographics, even as the number of museum expansions and new construction skyrockets.  What is causing this ebb, and what can museums today do to combat the trend? Two current articles begin to point to in possible positive directions.

Know Your Own Bone - Colleen Dilenschneider

"Potential Visitors To Cultural Entities Are Spending More Time On The Couch Instead" (9/19/18)


Arts and culture data-collection-guru Colleen Dilenschneider takes on the issue of declining attendance in this article. She cautions museum professions to consider a wider field of "competitors" who vie for the time and attention of the potential audience. Recent surveys show that at-home, personal media experiences may be taking people from out of home arts and culture consumption, including museum visitation. She shares that the preference to stay home has grown over 20% in the last seven years. Knowing this - museums are poised to offer audiences experiences that they can't get at home.

Hyperallergic - Seph Rodney
"Is Art Museum Attendance Declining Across the US? " (1/18/18)


Cultural-critic Seph Rodney takes a cautious approach to the alarm-bell of declining attendance...while summarizing a number of key national studies that do point in this direction. He underscores the need for further study in this area while also cautioning against arguments that coopt museum's missions in the service of market forces. Rodney also begins to suggest some potential reasons behind the national slump, including many museum's traditionalist approaches and focus on educative versus emotional experience.

Certainly, field-wide conversation and study on this crucial subject must continue. But what can museum facing dips in attendance do today to turn around attendance trending in a negative direction? These articles offer museum professionals a few immediate action items for consideration.

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Action Items

1) Quantify your benefits:

Today’s museums must embrace robust measurement of all aspects of their programs and offerings in order to be able to back up their value proposition to visitors.

2) Personalize your experience:

Data shows that museums succeed when they privilege the needs and desires of visitors, providing experiences beyond the old educational paradigm.

3) Cultivate Personal Experiences

Museums are competing with a broad range of cultural experiences for visitors, including the internet and streaming television – Success lies in prioritizing the museum as an opportunity for personal connection with our communities and each other.

Lindsay Bosch brings over fifteen years of professional experience in higher education, arts administration, and museum communications.  She is a graduate of Northwestern University, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the University of Pennsylvania's Executive Certificate in Arts and Culture Strategy. Currently studying Content Strategy at Northwestern's School of Professional Studies, you can connect with her on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Finding the Contemporary in Classical Music

Classical music has been slowly decomposing most notably over the past few decades, illustrated in declining ticket sales and CD purchases. My studies at Northwestern have exposed me to a variety of genres in music, with particular emphasis on classical music. The articles below share my passion for the arts, with varying concern for the future of classical music.  

A recent article on Slate.com commented on the not so subtle reality of classical music’s rapid spiral toward extinction. Author Mark Vanhoenacker lists declining figures in concert attendances (less than 9% have seen one per year) CD purchases (down approximately 21% in 2012), community opportunities and music education programs. This trend is perpetuated in television shows and generation gaps, discouraging concertgoers and excluding of classical music from acceptable music tastes. Vanhoenacker provides his support for local and large-scale inclusion projects like Groupmuse that engage communities, but fears for the future of the art form.

In response to Vanhoenacker’s article, Jay Gabler of Minnesota Public Radio collected responses from members of MPR as well as music directors, businessmen, and performers across the country. Gabler and his colleagues are enthusiastic for the future of classical music, listing new educational programs, exciting new literature and enthusiastic performers as building blocks for reestablishing, or in some opinions, growing the already flourishing genre. "The 500-year old tradition remains vibrant today because of [the American youth's] enthusiasm about the discovery of what it means to be alive," claims Michael Tilson Thomas, director for the New World Symphony.

With Vahoenacker and Gabler's insight, musicians, music directors and administrators should strongly consider the following action items to attract new and existing audiences to the classical genre and outlast declining sales and performance attendees.

1) Keep it relevant: Design concert programs that deal with contemporary issues, and can translate to current issues in culture, politics or relationships as an meaningful form of expression.

2) Share meaningfully: Describe how composers tackle modern issues through their music in relatable terminology for persons of all ages, ethnicities, religions and demographics to understand.

3) Respond: Allow followers to communicate with organizations and participate in thoughtful discussions via social media.

Given these action items, followers should be moved to resolve conflict and experience more of the discussion through the performance of these various works. The end goal is to promote the pieces performed by any organization or ensemble, and to encourage new audiences to understand how contemporary issues have been in discussion for hundreds of years, learning from the art of the past to inform the future.

Jack McHugh is a senior Music Education and Integrated Marketing Communications student at Northwestern University. Jack rotates through practice rooms on trumpet, piano and voice, and looks forward to teaching choral and wind ensembles in Shanghai this fall. Talk to him @mchughjn