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.

--

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.