Museum Audience Insight

School Field Trips Up in Smoke (Traveler's Rest isn't, though)

When I was in fourth grade, we were scheduled to go on a field trip to a historic house museum, Traveler’s Rest.  We gathered that morning in the school lunchroom, ready to board the buses.  The air crackled with excitement.  Someone had heard there was Indian blood on the stairs of the house from an attack!  The titillation of seeing that.

And then Miss Fannie Mae Baker, one of the teachers, came in and told us, in grave tones that, sadly, Traveler’s Rest had burned down just last night.  We were all devastated. 

Turns out Miss Baker was just teasing us (she is a lovely lady, by the way).  Traveler’s Rest is still calmly standing and welcoming visitors, mysterious red-stained stair and all (though the “Indian” story is pretty well debunked). 

I remember that trip fondly and vividly, and I bet at least some of my White County Elementary School classmates feel likewise. 

This morning, the Wall Street Journal ran an article about school field trips, sharing the excitement kids felt about taking hikes, going to plays, and visiting museums.  But, as the article continues, those trips are increasingly being cut as school budgets shrink.  Even free museums, with travel funds to give to schools, are seeing fewer bookings as schools cut back every incidental penny they can find. 

It is a shame, and could have long-term ramifications that will haunt museums for years.  Why?  Our preliminary research indicates about a quarter of Museum Advocates had seminal childhood memories of museums . . . from school field trips.  School field trips appear to be a critical pathway to lifelong learning for children who may not otherwise visit museums with their families.  These cuts shut out important experiences for children that can, ultimately, lead to a habit of learning, curiosity, and museum-going in adulthood . . . . and in future generations. 

We have posted on this subject before, and as we continue our research on Museum Advocates this winter, we will undoubtedly post again.  Bottom line, school field trips are important.

Do you have fond memories of childhood field trips?  How has your museum dealt with school budget cuts?  We would love to hear your thoughts.  Simply click on “comments” below to share your thoughts (and if you are reading this from your e-mail subscription, go to our blog to comment).

 -Susie

What Not To Do (or, why I hate (most) guided tours)

It was, as a friend of mine would say, a GD.  A Great Disappointment. 

Yesterday another dear friend, Pauline Eversmann (retired from Winterthur Museum), and I were on one of the worst guided tours either of us have ever experienced. 

Now I have made no secret that while I love historic house museums, I dislike their standard interpretive format – the guided tour.  I am not alone.  Turns out many Core Visitors to museums are not fans either, as our previous research has shown. 

So what made this tour so egregiously awful?  It wasn’t the house and was completely the guide, who in this case was a (supposedly) trained professional.  Based on this tour, here is a “do not do” list for guided tours.

• Don’t shut out your audience.  This guide never, not even once, invited us to ask questions.  He did not even hold out the possibility of asking.  He totally missed out on the opportunity to engage his audience by sharing information about the things, and stories, that may have interested us more.
• Don’t talk about yourself.  Not only was he disinterested in us, he was supremely interested in, well, his interests.  And was constantly interjecting his preferences and thoughts into his spiel.  I really didn’t care how many languages he could speak and/or read (this is relevant how?).  I don’t mind a guide saying “this is my favorite room” or “this is my favorite object,” and lending personality to a tour, but this was constant, irrelevant, and annoying.
• Don’t gripe.  Yes, it is too bad that the property is much reduced and is now surrounded by heavy traffic.  Acknowledge it, tell us why, and move on.  Don’t constantly gripe about it.  Of course, on this tour, it was only one of a few things he griped about.  Unnecessary and off-putting. 
• Don’t mumble.  Enunciate.  Pauline cannot hear out of one ear, and she struggled to understand what he was saying.  There is a reason why many older audiences prefer audio tours – you can control the volume, direct it in the ear, replay if you miss something, and the narrators tend to speak clearly. 
• Don’t look at your watch.  OK, yes, you can sneak a peek once or twice to make sure you are pacing yourself.  He looked at his watch in every single room.  In an obvious way.  It made us feel that we were being herded, almost like an unwelcome intrusion that must be dealt with and gotten rid of. 
  

I also have four more “don’ts” from other terrible tours I have suffered:

• Don’t tell us about your own genealogy.  Especially when it is totally unconnected to the house and the people who lived there.
• Don’t start your tour by singing the theme song from Gilligan’s Island.  Enough said.
  
• Don’t make bad jokes.  Including the sexist ones. 
  
• Don’t forget to bathe.  Honestly.  I cannot believe I had to include this one. 

While most tours I have been on have been indifferent at best, I have had stellar guided tours (thank you, Drayton Hall, for the best tour I have ever, ever experienced).  And I have been on supremely funny ones (bless the guide at Boscobel who said that Thomas Jefferson had the “hots” for Campeche chairs – which is, by the way, true).

But, ultimately, our research tells us that guided tours are not a preferred form of interpretation for many of our visitors, and our experience yesterday illustrates why that is so.  I certainly do not want to return to this house museum, or take other guests there, even though the house, and the story of the truly remarkably family that lived there, is absolutely fascinating. 

With many historic house museums struggling to survive, guided tours may be a contributing factor to their diminishing audiences.  I realize that, for small organizations, they are the most cost effective way of securely sharing a property, but isn’t it time to find more compelling, and engaging, ways to do so?

Do you have any do’s or don’ts from guided tours you have experienced?  We would love to hear your thoughts.  Simply click on “comments” below to share your thoughts (and if you are reading this from your e-mail subscription, go to our blog to comment).

-Susie

Okay, you have GOT to check out that bathroom!

This summer, when visiting the Newseum for the first time, I stepped into the restroom.  And it ended up being one of my favorite spots in the museums.  Why?  It was tiled with giggle-inducing headlines like this one: 

Restrooms.  We all have to have them, we all have to use them.  We have talked about restrooms before on this blog, primarily in the context of how clean they are.  Totally important.  (The Newseum's restrooms were very clean.)  But is there an opportunity for engaging our audiences more deeply . . . in the loo?  

Well, yes.  In some recent research we conducted on behalf of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, one young woman made the case for also having a remarkable restroom:

Everyone loves a clean restroom. I like an interesting restroom. It bugs me when I go to an art museum, for example, and the walls are bare white. It's like a blank canvas - couldn't they even find a university student to come in and do a mural for them or something? Or maybe even put some of the collection that's rotated out in the ladies' waiting area (and gentleman's equivalent, if they have them). Or at a science museum - paint the periodic table on the walls, tile in the Fibonacci sequence. It just shows such attention to detail, and how neat is it to come out and tell your friends, "Okay, you have GOT to check out that bathroom!"

                                                        - 25-year-old woman

The USS Constitution Museum has been using their restroom as an interpretive tool for years (an interpretive panel can be seen in the image below; why my beloved dog, Shadow, is posing with it wearing a holiday scarf is a completely different story).  Asking, and answering, where the sailors "went" is educational, funny, and gives people something to talk about. 

Yet there is something else about this restroom that makes people talk.  As Robert Kiihne, the museum's Director of Exhibits, recently posted on their excellent Family Learning Forum, their restrooms are also ". . .  dark, grey . . . and poorly ventilated. Visitors complain about them - even when the restrooms have just been cleaned. I am sure that for every visitor that complains 10 more are just turned off."

Which takes us back, of course, to cleanliness.  So clean restrooms, yes.  You do not want to be remarkable for your dirty (or just dimly lit) restrooms.  But now that you have that covered, what can you do to make your restrooms remarkable in an exciting and creative way? 

(Finally, the excellent Elizabeth Merritt of AAM would likely badger me if I neglected to mention the splendid Art Museum Toilet Museum of Art.  Check it out.)

Are the restrooms in your museum remarkable?  Why?  Or have you seen particularly remarkable restrooms?  What makes them so?  Simply click on “comments” below to share your thoughts (and if you are reading this from your e-mail subscription, go to our blog to comment).

And if you do have remarkable restrooms in your museum, send us a photo and we'll post it for you.  Send photos to susie (at) reachadvisors (dot) com.

-Susie

Check out these fantastic photos from the Pacific Science Center.  These Grossology restrooms are truly remarkable.  Felicia Maffia, the Director of Exhibit Development, shared with us, "It's really fun for staff to overhear some of the great conversations that happen when visitors encounter these two restrooms."  Thanks, Felicia, for sending these along!

 

 

Iconic Museum Photos

We need your help.

Reach Advisors is in the midst of redesigning our website, and are looking for a couple of iconic museum photos to feature on it.  You know.  That picture that just screams "museum."  Preferably with an inter-generational group in it.  And an exhibit, objects . . . anything that a typical person would look at and instantly think "museum." 

If you have one or more photos that fit this description will you send them our way?  While we won't be able to use all the photos submitted, if we do use your photo we will let you know and give appropriate credit on the website.  And send you a free copy of our book, Life Stages of the Museum Visitor.

Send photos by Friday, October 16 to susie (at) reachadvisors (dot) com.

And thanks!

'Curating' in a new world?

Interesting article on the cover of this week’s SundayStyles section of the New York Times on how the “curating…has become a fashionable code word among the aesthetically minded, who seem to pass it onto any activity that involves culling and selecting.”   The article mentions ‘curators’ who run sneaker stores, flea market swap meets, consignment shops, music websites….  It’s such a sought-after moniker that the article mentions that serving as a guest curator of a design blog, craft fair or department store has become an honor.

It’s easy to write this off as a fad, but in the past few years that we’ve been talking about the concept of the public embracing the role of ‘curating’ their worlds outside the museum sphere, there are a few points that have been fun to kick around:

The obvious driver behind this is the continued acceleration of the internet.  Sure, some of us of a certain age may have made mix tapes in our younger years, but it’s a rather different ballgame when the depth and breadth of creative inputs are far greater than ever before, as is the potential to build a sizable following.  Simultaneously, in a digital world where we’re bombarded with inputs, there’s a real role that these new ‘curators’ fulfill.   Given that we don’t see the internet slowing down anytime soon, this shift clearly fits in our model for fundamental trends likely to continue rather than short-lived fads likely to fade away.

But perhaps a bigger driver behind this shift is that there’s a generation under 30 years old that’s simply far more likely to be wired this way.  That might mean they assume that the curators in their lives are their peers or strangers online…or they think of themselves as curators for their peers…or they view their digital time as a means to curate their own lives.  In part, it’s a logical extension of how young adults have always tried to separate themselves from prior generations.   But our museum audience research and our broader consumer research is pointing towards an entirely new level of generational separation.  The segment within this generation that we call “Extremely Creative Consumers” is a real force, dramatically reshaping the definition of creativity for themselves and those around them.   We’re pretty certain that this shift will end up as one of the defining characteristics of this generation of young adults, even as they progress through later life stages.  The folks at the AAM's Center for the Future of Museums have cleverly coined this as part of the "MyCulture" trend, and we view this as a real force that we're going to see play out for decades to come.

So here are a few interesting questions to ponder:

First:  Does the use (or overuse) of the word "curator" help or hurt museums?  We would argue it might be negative for museums that simply ignore this trend.  Likewise, acknowledging this trend could really help open up the eyes of the public about the role and value of the curating that museums do...but that might take some 'curating' of the work of curators to help audiences see more of how the curating work of museums really matters.

Second:  As more of the public (at least among younger audiences) redefine the role of curating in their lives, does this mean that museums will have to redefine that role as well?  While it’s highly unlikely that this trend gets to the point where we’ll see people mounting their own Calder or dinosaur exhibits from home, is there a way to help passionate amateurs engage more with museums?  We’ve seen some museums start to engage community groups to help curate exhibits or even ‘crowdsource’ some of the key decisions for an exhibit.  Will we see museums enlist amateur 'curators' to assist with online efforts?  Or will we see curators become a far more prominent public face of museums, where a younger audience that is increasingly migrating to a new type of curator can cultivate their passions someplace unexpected...like a museum?  (Any examples out there of where rethinking the role of curating is having positive -- or negative -- impact?)

Third:  We’ve seen in many fields how these shifts have decimated the role of the 'expert.'  The relevance of the editors at Britannica and the World Book has been completely blown to bits by the Wikipedians.  In many markets, for many subjects, the power of the newspaper editor has been usurped by bloggers.  One of the differentiating factors here is that museums deal with more than digitizable bits; there’s also a physical component that’s rather important to many out there. But it’s undeniable that we’re in the midst of a fundamental shift in public attitudes and expectations of the role of the ‘expert’ and their relevance in the lives of the audiences they serve.

A bit frightening…but also sort of exciting to think about ways museums can serve an audience that is increasingly hungry for curated work that enriches their lives.

As always, we look forward to the conversation…  Simply click on “comments” below (and if you are reading this from your e-mail subscription, go to our blog to comment).

What Happens in Vegas May Not Stay in Vegas (if you are a smart marketer, that is)

Reach Advisors is pleased to welcome a new guest blogger, LeAnne Ruzzamenti, Director of Marketing Communications at the Crocker Art Museum.  We have long been impressed by LeAnne’s work at the Crocker, and are delighted to learn where she finds inspiration.  Thanks so much, LeAnne, for contributing to Museum Audience Insight!

A few days in Las Vegas had me inspired: what lessons can museums and marketers learn from the marketing and retail pros? Here were some of my impressions:

These people know how to get a message across. From the moment of departing the airplane, I couldn’t help but be taken in by the advertising that appeared everywhere: in baggage claim (posters, billboard, standing signs on my carousel), on the “subway” within the airport (ads wrapped around the standing doors), on the cabs (roof signs AND trunk signs), and then as we approached Vegas Blvd.: billboards everywhere (ones with video, that light up, change, boast really great creative), buses completed wrapped with beautiful ads (the cost of producing the wrap alone probably accounted for one-third of my museum’s advertising budget). Over stimulation for sure, but after all the goal for the casinos is to get you to come through their doors – to play slots, eat, and shop in their high-end shops, and every message is strongly leading you to that end. As a marketing maven, I couldn’t help be impressed. I was hooked into reading nearly every billboard, video, cab, and bus ad and trying to decide who had the most powerful messages and creative.

They deliver on brand promise. Vegas promises that if you come, you are guaranteed to have a great time and feel good even while you gamble your money and spend sums of money on items that you’d consider outrageously priced back home. They know their brand now, “What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas,” and they hit it from every angle. Everything points to entertainment, and rest assured you will find the activities that energize, refresh, and entertain you.

Customer service is supreme. I was impressed when we walked 8 feet from the parking garage and were met by a hotel host who escorted us to the specific check-in line that we should join. After that I was harder to impress. A security officer stood outside the guest elevator doors and greeted us each time we went to our room, a presence for our safety, to feel as though we were “approved” to leave the casino floor and enter the guest room area, although they didn’t check keys or question us. Beautiful girls in matching suits wandered the casino floor and pool asking what we’d like to drink. Waiters, maître d’s, bus boys, sommeliers, all attended to our needs while dining.  Why the emphasis on customer service?  There are lots of options. I can easily walk across the street to another casino.

They sell in smart ways. While I snacked on nachos at a shopping mall, I heard a woman sell and upsell frozen daiquiris in such persistent ways, it made me want to recruit her to sell memberships at my museum’s front desk. We were offered opportunities to join frequent players’ clubs, spin wheels for free gifts, upgrade our show seats to premium location, shop during special hours, attend clubs with VIP status. They ask and sell and most of the offers were to customize our experience. 

So while taking all this in, I still wasn’t finding the direct ties to the museum field. After all, the Las Vegas Art Museum closed early this year and the Guggenheim at the Venetian closed nine months prior to that, closures that were blamed on Las Vegas abandoning the family and cultural tourist and not committing to greater cultural experiences. Then I happened by the Ferrari dealership in the Wynn Hotel where they charge $10 admission (most museums I frequent have admission rates at $10 or less) and this was a car dealership. It was then that I realized that there was much museums can learn from Vegas.

LeAnne Ruzzamenti is the Director of Marketing Communications for the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, California. 

Have any thoughts or comments?  Share them with us by clicking on "comments" below.  (If you are reading this from your e-mail subscription to the blog, please go to our blog's website to add a comment.)

Cultural Resource Center . . . Ticket Tuesday . . . and Don't You Think Macie Is the Cutest?

A quick roundup of some interesting things coming across our screens lately:

The Connecticut Humanities Council has pulled together a ton of resources in their online Heritage Resource Center.  From resources and links on audiences to leadership to finance, they have done a terrific job pulling together a lot of information, in one spot, and with annotations so you can better find what you are looking for.  I have already found it extremely helpful more than once. 

The Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance just released a study called Research Into Action.  One of their key findings was that African Americans and Hispanics in Philadelphia were more culturally active than Caucasians.  Since many museums struggle to effectively reach minority audiences, and since the minority population is increasing dramatically in the US (see the "Museums and Society 2034" white paper we wrote for AAM's Center for the Future of Museums for more information on that), this finding is intriguing.  I am still reading the report thoroughly myself, so stay tuned as I dig through it.

Finally, I love the recent activity on COSI's Facebook page.  Yesterday, for Ticket Tuesday, they awarded a pair of tickets to the first person to answer a trivia question correctly.  And last week they invited fans to post photos of their cute pets on COSI's wall.  Cutest one gets a gift card to a pet supply store and free tickets.  On Facebook go to COSI Columbus' Dynamic Hands-On Science Center and check out the activity . . . and the pics.  (Macie Marie Wilkening is the black-and-white dog with the rawhide.  Obviously she is cutest!)

We'd love to hear if you have seen anything interesting coming across your screens, from resources to fun social networking activity.  Simply click on "comments" below (and if you are reading this from your e-mail subscription, go to our blog to comment).

- Susie

Intellectual Intimacy . . . Gone Virtual

I had a chance to chat with Terry Davis of the American Association for State and Local History at an event last week, and we were reflecting on their recent annual conference that also included a bold experiment to run an 'online conference' as well.  The online conference was designed to increase the number of museum staff members that could engage with the conference programming, even if they couldn't travel to Indianapolis.  By my rough calculations, more than a quarter of the AASLH conference 'attendance' was in the online conference rather than in person (and that's probably heavily underestimated since many of the online registrations included the participation of multiple staff members).

 

Having presented online, and in a regular conference session with Connecticut Landmarks and the Connecticut Humanities Council, I noted a few things:  The live session was a small audience, but had a very senior level of rather engaged attendees.  The online session had about five times more attendees, almost equally engaged.  It ended up as a really great way for AASLH to leverage the content prepared for the conference, extending the reach to a much broader audience.  (I'm really curious to see if the session reviews are any different for the online vs. the live presentation.)

 

Afterwards, we had a more casual online chat with the online producer and Greg Stevens, who runs AAM's online professional education, and talked about how the online experience can be far more engaging than one might expect.  For example, Greg and I realized that we had a strong rapport and working relationship even though we had only met through work on one of his online programs . . . never face-to-face until that moment.  Online isn't such a bad medium for building social glue compared to face-to-face, actually even making it easier to do that with more people.

 

But here's the big question this left me pondering:  It's clear that serious content can be delivered in an engaging manner online.  Could this be a tool that helps museums expand public access to their knowledge and expertise, while engaging a larger audience that is curious and hungry for the kind of stuff that museums are so well suited to provide?  Some universities are doing this as a means to re- engage alumni...with the end goal of supporting their development efforts.  What might this mean for museums? 

 

We'd love to hear any thoughts or questions!  Simply click on “comments” below (and if you are reading this from your e-mail subscription, go to our blog to comment).

- James

Is Art Really Asynchonous? What About Museums?

Recently, marketing guru Seth Godin posted this chart on his blog:

Godin explains how to read the chart:

Here are a dozen or so forms of communication, arranged on two axes.

On the horizontal, they rank from asynchronous (meaning the creator and the responder are separated in time--like a letter) and synchronous (meaning the creator and the responder are in real time proximity to each other--like a phone call).

Up and down, I've charted the quality of the medium. Quality in terms of density of information exchanged. The 140 characters in Twitter is about as low density as you can get other than a stop light. A movie, on the other hand, is loud and bright and two hours long and there's audience reaction and it is edited and designed to evoke a response.

To be clear, then: movies take a long time to make, but they're high impact. Twitter takes a second to do, but there's not a lot of info there. One on one coaching is high enough bandwidth that it can change your life and make you cry, in real time, and the Mona Lisa, while less bits per second than a TV show, has enough emotional bandwidth to matter, even if it's 400 years old.

(To read his entire blog post, click here.)

When I saw this, my initial reaction was to think that museums need to move themselves into that upper right quadrant.  But, is that the right place for a museum to move?  Is the role of a museum to provide transformative experiences for its audience (transformative in the sense that one’s beliefs or understanding or knowledge about the world is changed as a result of the visit)?  And, if a museum seeks to be a place for transformative experiences (for those who seek such experiences) how much of the experience needs to be directed by the museum and how much of it can people accomplish on their own through their interactions with the museum’s objects?  Godin places one type of museum object, art, in the lower left quadrant (and nowhere near my initial thought) - do you agree with that?

Where do you think museums should fall on the chart?  Does it vary by type of museum?  Or type of museum experience?  To share your thoughts click on “comments” below (and if you are reading this from your e-mail subscription, go to our blog to comment). 

- Sally

"Museum going as compulsive consumerism?"

Michael Kimmelman’s recent New York Times article, At Louvre, Many Stop to Snap but Few Stay to Focus, sparked some discussion at Reach Advisors. While the point of the article was interesting, even more interesting were the reader comments that followed. They raised again the questions of why people should visit museums, and what a museum’s role could (or should) be in today’s society.

 

Quotes pulled from the comments following the article:

 

• “And watching the young people, searching out a famous work, focusing the cell phone, clicking - without ever having even looked at the painting. Proof for the folks back home - been there, did that. Museum going as compulsive consumerism.”
• “The majority of the public only goes to museums because they think that somehow they are 'supposed' to, and beyond that, it affords some status to say that one has been to the Louvre, or wherever. Most museum goers do not engage with the art objects or pictures because they simply don't know anything about them, and don't make an effort to prepare to have a meaningful experience by informing themselves. The roots of this, in US culture especially, come from the notion that arts are merely a pleasure, a distraction, and not a necessity or something worthy of intensive study.”             
• “Museums are exhausting. If you think about it, they are a much more concentrated bombardment of images than what the social pundits like to lament we are inundated with in our everyday pop culture, because few of them are trivial, throwaway images, and most people go in believing that. Add to this that we are conditioned to think of museums as some kind of temples housing sacred relics requiring hushed reverence. It's intimidating. Let people have their own fun in the museums. Not everybody's into what you're into, and they're not necessarily the worse for it.”
• “…running from one painting to another as though each was a commodity having no personal connection to the viewer…”

 

Additionally, last week Linda Norris had a complementary blog post about what she observed visitors actually doing at one iconic art museum (including take photos of famous work as well). 

 

It seems that there is a feeling in some quarters that many members of the public, especially those visiting iconic art museums as a part of their role as a tourist, are missing the point of visiting a museum.  They are not really looking at art, famous or not-so-famous.  A Reach Advisors colleague wondered if this is this a view that is shared by any individuals in the museum field?  If yes, do they believe that the visitor is at fault for treating objects as ‘commodities’…or is the museum at fault for failing to connect with its audience?  Is there an intellectual snobbism rearing its head or is there an argument to be made that not all museums are intended to be enjoyed or appreciated by all audiences?

 

What do you think?  To share your thoughts and questions, click on “comments” below (and if you are reading this from your e-mail subscription, go to our blog to comment).

The Magic of Seven-Year-Olds

Note - this article is identical to the one just sent out via our e-newsletter, which we archive via our blog.  For those who subscribe to both the blog and the e-news, we apologize for the duplication!

Over the past couple of years we have talked quite a bit about Museum Advocates - those curious individuals who love going to museums in their leisure time - but where do Museum Advocates come from?  And do they have childhood experiences that are similar?

To find out, we started digging into the patterns and backgrounds of more than 30,000 core visitors to museums to see what separated Museum Advocates from core visitors.  As we started wondering about some of the clues buried in the data, last summer, we asked 110 Museum Advocates in their 20s and 30s to tell us about their earliest childhood museum memories, and then coded those memories to look for patterns.  Additionally, this spring we gathered 501 early museum memories of museum professionals (one from a study of science museum employees, the other from a survey of New England Museum Association members).  While museum professionals are different than the general public, what we found generally reinforced the findings from our Museum Advocates outside the museum field. 

Before we dig into what we found, a quick caveat:  this is just the tip of the iceberg.  Thus far we have examined some early museum memories, and their patterns, among Museum Advocates, but there is far more research to do, such as comparing these memories with those of Core Visitors (those who visit museums often, but tend not to define themselves as curious or to be particularly engaged with museums) and other segments of the general public.  We will be doing much more research to continue to test our hypothesis and the results we have found thus far (and any feedback you have on our findings will be helpful!).
 
Common Themes

 

For all 611 respondents, the mean, median, and mode of earliest museum memories is age seven.  Seven (give or take a year) appears to be a particularly "sticky" time when memories are being made and retained, and museums have the power to create those memories.

 
For about 2/3 of respondents, memories include one or both parents.  Although some individuals specifically mentioned their mom or dad, generally respondents referred to parents or family, implying both parents.  Given that our research indicates that only about a third of moms visit museums with their spouses, this also implies that dad may be rather important to raising new generations of Museum Advocates.  We'll test this theory out in future research, when we will ask more specifically about the roles of both moms and dads. 

For about ¼ of respondents, however, earliest memories were of school field trips, with no mention of any parent.  We were heartened to see this as we were initially afraid we would see a pattern that Museum Advocacy was almost exclusively handed down from parent to child.  Instead, there is a clear path for youngsters to become engaged with museums regardless of the engagement of their parents . . . through school field trips.  School field trips appear to be incredibly important not only to learning and visitation in the short-term, but also for the long-term sustainability of museums and to create a strong pipeline of museum professionals.  So we are increasingly troubled not only by the cuts in field trips by school districts, but also in the number of museums that are discontinuing field trip programming.

What They See Is Important

And when it comes to those early memories, what they see may actually be more important than what they do.  About a third of early memories came from natural history museums alone, a disproportionate number, indicating that natural history museums may have a disproportionate impact on the creation of young Museum Advocates.  Additionally, art museums and history-based showed up at high rates.  Why these types of museums?  Memories tended to be of large-scale, static exhibits that promote internal activity and imagination.  Dioramas, dollhouses, suits of armor, dinosaurs, period rooms.  Objects and exhibits that tend to be highly narrative appeared time and time again.  One of our favorite memories clearly illustrates how a static object can spark internal cognitive activity:  "[I was] maybe 4 years old and running around under the huge whale . . . . I pretended I was swimming with him - and we were friends."

Other museum types do not appear in as many memories.  At first we thought age might be the issue, in that older Museum Advocates were young children before large numbers of children's museums and science centers, in particular, were around.  But when we control for age and only look at respondents in their 20s and 30s, still these types of museums do not show up at nearly the rate of other types.  The only exception?  Overall, current employees (of all ages) of science centers were more likely to remember visits to science centers. 

The low incidence of children's museums is relatively easy to explain.  Many families stop going to children's museums when they feel their oldest child has started to grow out of it, typically around age five or six . . . and before that magic age of seven.  So a smaller incidence makes sense.  The low incidence of science centers is a puzzle, however, though a few more details may shed some light on this, and give us paths of inquiry for future research.

First, the memories from these types of museums are less detailed from natural history, history, and art museums.  Memories tend to be less vivid, more concise.  A typical one might be "went to the science center with my class."  Quite a difference.  At this time, we are postulating that the different narrative quality of the exhibits may be key to this difference, though we will certainly test this theory, among others.

The second thing we noticed is that, overall, hands-on experiences were in very short supply in the collected memories, even, again, when we controlled for age and only looked at younger adults.  Overall, fewer than five percent of memories included a hands-on activity.  And, of course, children's museums and science centers are highly hands-on.

Does this mean hands-on activities are not as important as traditional, static, artifact-based exhibits?  Not at all.  Hands-on activities have been shown to be a tremendously valuable learning format.  Just, for whatever reason, they are not as memorable.  We would suggest that museums continue to offer both types of experiences as they provide different, but equally important, learning opportunities.  Besides, parents of young children view hands-on activities as absolutely essential for a visit.  No question.  They expect them. 

 
These results are, as mentioned earlier, only preliminary, and just scratch the surface of what we think is a very rich vein of future research.  We would love to hear your thoughts as we create the research plan for delving deeper.  (And if you want to share your early museum memories, we would love to hear them too!).  To share your thoughts and questions, click on “comments” below (and if you are reading this from your e-mail subscription, go to our blog  to comment.

Community Engagement and Objects - Mutually Exclusive?

Last week, James Chung, the President of Reach Advisors, was quoted in the Christian Science Monitor as saying "It's not about the collections anymore. It's about community."  Well, as you might imagine, this comment raised a few eyebrows (including my own, since I knew it was out of context!) in the blogosphere.  Chris Norris, of the Prerogative of Harlots blog, wrote eloquently of his visceral reaction to the comment, and we cannot help but respond.  The following is what we posted to Chris’s blog:

 

Hi Chris – Thanks for the provocative post. 

As you likely realize, when one talks to journalists one says a ton of things, and often only one snippet, one phrase ends up included in the article.  Yes, we at Reach Advisors do believe that community engagement is hugely important to museums, indeed, imperative to museums if they want to grow and prosper in the future. 

But we do not, by any means, believe that objects are unimportant.  Indeed, our research is indicating that real, authentic objects are more important than ever.  As we move into an increasingly digital age, the real object, whether a painting, a fossil, or a teaspoon, becomes more and more special to visitors, especially younger ones.  I like to spend time visitor-watching at various museums, and it is amazing how often I hear a child ask “is this the real one?” and a parent respond “yes, this is the real one.”  And both are looking at some object intently.

Additionally, in recent research we asked twenty-somethings specifically how they felt about real objects versus virtual representations, and they enthusiastically said that seeing stuff online only made them want to see the real objects in person even more.  Furthermore, their comments revolved around how important authenticity was to them because real authenticity is increasingly hard to find in our crazy world.  Yet they felt that museums were inherently authentic, largely because they have authentic objects that are unique and wonderful. 

So what do we feel at Reach Advisors about community engagement and objects?  They are both incredibly, incredibly important.  Without collections, many museums lose their core purpose – of using art, history, and science to educate and inspire our visitors.  You simply cannot replicate the experience of standing in front of a Vermeer (my favorite artist) any other way.  It is not the same, and museum visitors recognize that.  It is heartbreaking to see collections in dire need of conservation, cleaning, and simple care, and the Heritage Health Index report made me, for one, swallow hard.  I personally hate seeing curators and collections managers getting laid off during these difficult economic times.

Objects are also important tools that can be used to bring community together.  I have personally witnessed this when I was the Executive Director of the Saratoga County Historical Society in Ballston Spa, NY, where we used objects to tell the stories of our community, instigating conversation, and knitting that community closer together. 

Community engagement at the museum may not always rely on objects, but more often than not, objects are imperative to attracting audiences, engaging them deeply, inspiring them, and facilitating the connections we want museums to create not only between visitors and their communities, but also among each other. 

- Susie

What Does $150 Billion Buy You?

Recently, my son insisted on stopping at the JFK Library and Museum's exhibit celebrating the 40th anniversary of landing on the moon (some of you will remember that he has asked to visit this museum before).  The exhibit answered a question I had been pondering ever since he got interested in space:  Can this country ever accomplish something so bold again, or is the cost simply not feasible?

The answer found in the exhibit was that it cost around $150 billion (in today's dollars) for the entire Apollo program.  As I tried to put that in perspective, it struck me that the government has spent $173 billion (and counting) to bail out AIG.  Wow.  Can you imagine what productive purpose could’ve been fueled with that kind of money (which is actually less than 5% of the government’s total spending on the bailout so far)?   

As a result of the space program, most of us benefit from the acceleration of technological advancements such as personal computers, GPS, smoke detectors, cordless tools, etc.  Then there were more intangible but critical advancements such as an unmatched level of civic pride in a troubled era, and the spark for a generation of Americans who drove our country’s ascent to technological domination over the past few decades.  

While museums are unlikely to lead the charge in a similar, inspirational endeavor, some museums may be in unique situations to accomplish bold goals.  Perhaps it’s fostering an unmatched level of civic pride within their community.  Or perhaps it’s providing the spark for a generation of citizens who will grow our country’s depth of knowledge in topics as wide-ranging as technological wizardry, or advancement in the understanding of the natural world around us, or cultural knowledge in an ever-increasingly global world.   Or perhaps it’s having more direct impact on economic recovery through job re-training programs, or through the fostering of economic value created by an increasingly underemployed but educated and creative generation now entering the workforce, or through sparking smart urban (or even suburban or rural) redevelopment in ways that most real estate developers will never be able to do.  

These are all issues we continually ponder, and we welcome any comments or further exploration on what all this might mean for how museums firmly establish their value amidst an economy run amuck.  All done for less than $173 billion dollars.  

- James

Curiosity and Learning Motivations

A few weeks ago, I wrote about curiosity, wondering if we were putting the cart before the horse in our quest to spark creativity without nurturing curiosity first.  Jay Rounds, a professor at the University of Missouri in St. Louis, guided me to his 2004 article in Curator on curiosity, and it, of course, got me thinking.  (Now Jay, I am paraphrasing you some here, so if I goof, don’t hesitate to set me straight!)  This is one of my more mind-bending posts, so bear with me.

 

Jay states that a “curiosity-driven visitor” is not a personality type, but a behavior based on the goal of the museum visit.  We would argue that the “curiosity-driven visitor” is more of a personality type than not (though there is undoubtedly a sliding scale).  That is, those individuals who define themselves as “curious” in our studies exhibit very different behaviors than those that do not.  They visit a wider variety of museums more often, have higher satisfaction levels at the museum, are more philanthropic, and have more omnivorous leisure-time habits.  In short, they are much more likely to be what we call “Museum Advocates.”  So I definitely read his article through that lens.

 

But where I really became intrigued is when he differentiates between extrinsically motivated museum visitation, which he says can be “thought of as a process of acquiring knowledge for which we have a known use” and intrinsically motivated museum visitation, which produces “knowledge for which we have no known use.”  Extrinsic knowledge tends to be “narrow but deep,” while intrinsic knowledge tends to be “wide but shallow.”  We all possess some mix of the two.

 

When we overlay what we know about Museum Advocates and Core Visitors (explored in more detail in our recent book) then we can better see how curiosity can be a personality type.  Because those visitors who meet Jay’s description of “curiosity-driven” visitors who are intrinsically motivated generally fall into our Museum Advocate category, while those who are more extrinsically motivated generally fall into our Core Visitor category. 

 

Why does extrinsic motivation correlate with Core Visitor behaviors?  Because it focuses on “knowledge we need,” according to Jay, and Core Visitors are often moms who bring their children to museums to learn knowledge she thinks they need, or are individuals who are specifically interested in an exhibit or program a museum is offering (such as a guy who is really interested in trains, and goes to every train museum out there, but skips other types of museums). 

 

Both forms of learning are important.  In our professional lives, extrinsic learning is hugely important (we want our doctors to have the deep knowledge they need to help keep us well).  Yet intrinsic knowledge is curiosity-driven, and itself drives creativity.  It sparks cross-pollination that allows us to make leaps between two seemingly disparate subjects and find important connections.  Museums, with their wide variety of collections, are in a position to tap into curiosity-driven, intrinsically-motivated, free-choice learning in ways that schools and other more formal learning environments cannot.  No wonder they are beloved by curious Museum Advocates!

 

But we come back to our data yet again here.  Most of our regular visitors are not intrinsically motivated Museum Advocates.  Some of our visitors are extrinsically motivated in the subject matter of our museum, and that is great.  And moms bringing their children to museums because they think it is good for them to gain knowledge is hardly a bad thing either.  What I wonder about is how excited those moms are themselves – especially when those moms do not identify themselves as curious.  We’ve discussed this dilemma in previous posts, and hope to learn much more on the subject in future research. 

 

Interestingly, Jay posits that curiosity-driven visitors are seeking novel and interesting experiences he calls “wide-but-shallow.”  Yet our research indicates that visitors want deeper experiences.  On the surface, this appears to be contradictory, but I don’t think it is.  Instead, I think curiosity-drive visitors are looking for a wide variety of interesting experiences, but when something does pique their interest, they want to be able to dig deep.  Having that option to investigate further is important, as is the option to skip over things that simply don’t capture their interest.  This behavior would not be contradictory to Jay’s model or the behaviors we see in our research.  And indeed, as Jay explains further, this behavior would be, indeed, typical of curiosity-driven visitors.

 

We’ll be digging further into this issue of curiosity, and what it means for young visitors, moms, and both Museum Advocates and Core Visitors.  As we plan our research, we would love to hear your thoughts.  Click on “comments” below to share.  (If you are reading this from your e-mail subscription to the blog, please go to our blog's website to add a comment.)  Please include the name of your museum as well!

 

Want to read Jay’s excellent article?  It can be found in the October 2004 issue of Curator, volume 47, number 4.

- Susie 

Request for the Field: Successful Marketing to Latinos

We are working with Amy McDonald, the chair of PRAM, on a session proposal for the 2010 AAM Annual Meeting on marketing to Latino audiences.  The session will include an overview by Reach Advisors of the demographics and why the Latino market is quickly becoming critical for the future of many museums.  It will also feature a presentation from a Latino ad agency, including a case study and guidelines on best practices.

We are looking for museums that are successfully marketing to this audience. 

Have you had success reaching this audience?  If so, would you be willing to participate on this panel next May in Los Angeles?  Do you have a case study that you can share?  Can you provide “lessons learned” from your experience?  Or do you know of someone who excels at reaching Latino audiences?  If so, please contact us with your ideas!

Amy can be reached at amy (dot) mcdonald (at) yale (dot) edu, and James can be reached at james (at) reachadvisors (dot) com.

Many thanks in advance for your help.

Musée de l’Orangerie: Wow!

Two weeks ago, James was in Paris to present at the International Council of Museums meeting.  From Paris, he e-mailed me about an amazing experience at a local museum.  He was so blown away, and because we all seek to blow away our visitors, I thought his reaction was worth sharing:

The Musée de l’Orangerie is remarkable.  In part for the contents inside, but more for how the emotions it stirs inside.
 
First, it was about the collection.  Masterful.
 
Second, it was about curating.  Drawing me in with the masters, then introducing me to a modern artist I've never heard of, Didier Paquignon, but I loved.  He really caught the light and emotion that I see in France (even though I think most of his work was done in Spain).
 
Pretty quickly I was impressed with the museum.  But it also helped that a few museum folks were sharing their personal impressions that helped me learn more about art, which I admit to not knowing as much about as I would like. 
 
And then...there was Monet's Les Nympheas.  It's the first time I've ever really felt art.  Felt it was speaking to me.  Not like seeing art, or thinking about art, but felt that every single neuron was firing as soon as I turned the corner into that room.  As if there was a hand that tangibly reached out to welcome me into a different world.  It was respite and retreat in a way I've never experienced in a museum.  The realization of everything I always hope museums could do but have never found to come together so perfectly as I experienced in that one moment.  Music, marble benches, perfect diffused lighting.  And the art...stunning.  Now I understand why Monet's individual water lilies paintings fetch tends of millions of dollars, and why it's so wonderful that museums can keep the best of those for public enjoyment. 
 
Granted, someone pointed out that the room is typically packed with tourists, while we had the space all to ourselves.  And granted, they closed six years to get this right and have the support of a country that understands investment in culture.  But I'm not someone who can sit still very well, yet I could just saunter around that room in a simultaneously blissful and stimulated state and notice endless details while transporting myself to a different state without even trying. 
 
For me, it ranks as a top 10 wow experience, not quite even with, but on the same list as my wedding day, the days my kids were born.  Just plain and simple, a moving experience. 
 
I hope that everyone can get to experience something sort of like that in a museum at some point in their lives.

 
Pretty amazing, isn’t it!  We all want our museums to provide these kinds of “wow” experiences every day.  And many museums do, from mini-wows to these mind-blowing wows. 
 
We would love to see if there is a pattern to “wow” experiences at museums.  Have you ever had one museum, one object, one exhibit blow you away?  What was it?  Why do you think you were affected the way you were?  And was there anything about the physical environment that helped make it such a moving moment? 
 
Share your experiences by clicking on “comments” below to share.  (If you are reading this from your e-mail subscription to the blog, please go to our blog's website to add a comment.)  Please include the name of your museum as well!

Life Stages of the Museum Visitor - AAM Webinar and Book!

We are delighted to have worked closely with AAM in the publication of our new book Life Stages of the Museum Visitor, available from the AAM Bookstore, and in our upcoming AAM webinar on the same subject:

AAM Webinar!
Understanding Life Stages of the Museum Visitor
June 24, 2009
2-3:30 pm (Eastern)
In collaboration with the AAM Committee on Education (EdCom), the AAM Committee on Audience Research and Evaluation (CARE) and The AAM Press

Led by:
James Chung, President, Reach Advisors
Susie Wilkening, Senior Consultant and Curator of Museum Audiences, Reach Advisors

Why are seven-year-olds especially important to museums?  What are Museum Advocates, and how do they differ from Core Visitors to museums?  And what is going on with ultra-wired Generation Y and museums?  Delve into these questions and more as Susie Wilkening and James Chung share their research from over 30,000 Core Visitors to museums, just published in their new book from the AAM Press, Life Stages of the Museum Visitor:  Building Engagement Over a LIfetime.  This webinar will help you understand your museum's audiences, their needs, and how to better meet their expectations.

To register, go to:  http://www.aam-us.org/getinvolved/learn/understandingmuseumaudience.cfm
$25 AAM Member
$189 Non-member

To purchase a copy of the book go to:  http://iweb.aam-us.org/Purchase/ProductDetail.aspx?Product_code=I255

Kindle is My Paper, Too (Along with Facebook)

I cancelled my Boston Globe this morning.  Me, the newspaper junkie. 

In the past 15 months rates have doubled.  It is now well over $600/year to subscribe.  To a paper that has, in the same time period, shrunk in size. 

 

I decided it wasn’t worth it.  Especially when I can subscribe via my Kindle for only $120/year.  It was a no-brainer.  I will now be a Kindle subscriber to the Globe. 

 

A few weeks ago I posted that Facebook was my paper, and even in the past few weeks that function has, for me, increased.  I get news from NPR in my FB news feed.  And at least once a week I hear from organizations that are local to me, such as Historic New England or the Thomas Crane Public Library, reminding me about upcoming programs. 

 

And I projected that, in the next few years, all of us would have to get used to newspapers disappearing . . . especially metro dailies. 

 

Reactions were, shall we say, visceral.  Some wrote in that newspapers had become irrelevant to them because they were already old news by the time they arrived.  I agree as many times when I read the Globe I find stories that I read the day before online.

 

Others bemoaned the loss of quality news.  Where would they get it, if not from the paper? 

 

First and foremost, we should keep in mind that most newspapers have never had news as their primary business.  The majority of their revenues come from advertising, putting them in the business of print advertising more than anything else.  That revenue model has collapsed, and with smaller revenues they are unable to keep up the quality of the newsroom.  (Note:  If I felt the quality of the news in the Globe was worth $12.25/week, I would gladly pay it.  The quality is not there.) 

 

But the loss of daily metro newspapers does not necessarily mean the loss of quality news.  NPR is stronger than ever, providing quality news from the US and around the world in three formats:  live radio; audio streaming/podcasts; and online articles.  Some periodicals are providing juicy, stellar reporting, such as The Economist, The Atlantic, and now Newsweek, which revamped itself only a few weeks ago, improving their journalism many times over.  Wire services, such as AP and Reuters, have boots on the ground all over the world.  And I doubt I am the only person geeking out by watching PBS’s News Hour.

 

Additionally, hyper-local papers, such as my Quincy Sun, are still doing fairly well, providing quality community news that is important to me. 

 

So quality journalism is still going strong, but there is a gap I wonder about.  Metro and state news (including museum coverage).  In Boston, we have relied on the Globe to uncover corruption and scandal, lately centering around state politics.  Our excellent NPR station covers this as well, but not to the same depth. 

 

What will happen if (and I project, when) the Globe stops printing?  Who will fill the gap?  Some papers have ceased printing and gone to an online-only model, focusing on metro and state news.  Other cities that still have dailies have seen competition from very small, often nonprofit, websites that focus on investigative journalism.   These trends will likely increase, and likely increase reporting on arts and culture along the way as arts and culture reporting draws readers.  I don’t rule out the possibility of high-quality metro weeklies either.  But we are seeing new mediums for metro news that are starting to fill these needs.

 

Like many others, I don’t relish the idea of sipping my morning cup of tea over my laptop.  That is not how I want to start my morning.  Which is why, for now, I like my Kindle, and why I am switching my Globe subscription to it.  I already get the Wall Street Journal via Kindle, and have found the navigation experience to be similar to that of the actual paper.  I still flip through and scan every article (skipping the “boring” sections, just like if I had a hard copy).  Maybe handheld readers will take the place of paper copies, and provide subscription revenue, for news outlets.  Maybe something else will happen. 

 

So I am not worried about the death of quality journalism.  There is a need and a demand for it.  But newspapers?  Looks like I am joining most of my 30-something peers and doing without.

What do you think?  Is there anything you disagree with?  Or do you see these trends playing out as well in your community?  Click on “comments” below to share.  (If you are reading this from your e-mail subscription to the blog, please go to our blog's website to add a comment.)  Please include the name of your museum as well!

-Susie

Creativity – The Cart Before the Horse?

A couple of weeks ago a new publication coming out of the UK crossed my desk.  Overall, Learning to Live, which focuses on young people and museum education, is excellent.

 

But I couldn’t help being annoyed by one thing.  It keeps talking about creativity, and how important creativity is.

 

Don’t get me wrong.  I think creativity is incredibly important and should absolutely be nurtured in children, both in and out of museums. 

 

But I couldn’t help thinking that a critical step was missing. 

 

And that is the nurturing of curiosity.  If you are not curious about something, you are not going to bother to expend an ounce of creativity on it.  Right?

 

Granted, I have been curious about curiosity for a while.  And I must confess I have my colleagues curious about it too, now.

 

Why?  One of the things we have noticed is that museum visitors who are personally motivated to visit museums are much more likely to identify themselves as being curious.  And visitors who do not identify themselves as curious tend to be less engaged in the museum and its offerings (and tend to visit for reasons other than personal ones). 

 

We have been tracking curiosity as a motivation for museum-going in a few of our studies, and have found that visitors who identify themselves as “curious” are significantly more positive about the museum, more likely to believe the staff cares about them, and more likely to support the museum for philanthropic reasons versus just the family budget.  That is, curious adults are more likely to be what we call “Museum Advocates.”  

 

And we believe that curious adults are much more likely to raise curious children, for whom creativity is a natural outgrowth. 

 

We’ll keep studying this in our research, and would love to hear your thoughts about curiosity and creativity as we plan out future lines of inquiry.  To comment, please feel free to click on “Comments” below (or if you are reading this from your e-mail subscription to this blog, please go to our website to add a comment.

-Susie

Seeking your thoughts: Economic change and long-term shifts

We’re wondering if anyone out there might wish to share observations about how the shift in the economic environment has forced dramatically different thinking about the long-term future for their museums or the field in general.  

We’ve been asked to participate in an International Council of Museums event on this topic, and would love to hear from the field on this point.  Note that we’re not looking for topics such as having to crank back budgets in 2009.  Instead, we’re looking at the kind of fundamental rethinking that’s going on in businesses and households across America about how they’ve been forced to re-engineer hard-wired behaviors, reset their long-term expectations, or realize that reliable past patterns simply won’t hold up in the future.  

If you have any comments on this, please feel free to click on “Comments” below (or if you are reading this from your e-mail subscription to this blog, please go to our website to add a comment.  If it’s a sensitive comment that you wish to share with us, but not publicly, please feel free to email james @ reachadvisors.com.  

If this request for help generates enough interest, even if you don’t have a comment to share, let us know as we could always consider scheduling it as an upcoming Museum Conversation conference call for the field.

We realize that this is a different kind of blog post than what we typically send, but thanks for allowing us to call for input on this topic!