Museum Audience Insight

Got MAP?

Back when I was the director of a small historical society in New York State, I was always looking for help from whatever sources I could find it.  Consultants, books, you name it and I pursued it.

Fortunately, the American Association of Museums (AAM), through a cooperative agreement with the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), has a terrific program designed to help small and medium-sized museums strengthen and grow. And I am going to quite shamelessly promote it to you, our dear readers, because yes, I think it is just that important.   

The Museum Assessment Program (MAP) is designed to be a cost-effective (as in, for really tiny museums, as inexpensive as free!) way to improve museum operations and reach via three assessment programs:

• Organizational
• Collections Stewardship
• Community Engagement

In the program, museums conduct a self-study and consults with a museum professional, all to gain expertise, knowledge, and tools to help work through things from how to get your organization’s governance and operations ship-shape to advice on what to do with that collection of arsenic-laden stuffed rodents you have in the back room.  And the people I know who serve as MAP assessors are fabulous.  The best.  Curious, interested, friendly, and pragmatic. 

So no excuses.  If you are a small or mid-sized museum and could use some help, check it out.  All museum types welcome.  Go to www.aam-us.org/map to learn more, and if you want to apply, the postmark deadline is Feb. 18^th.

MAP staff at AAM are available to answer any questions at map@aam-us.org or 202-289-9118.

- Susie

A Rant About Wayfinding . . . or the Lack Thereof

Wayfinding is important.  Let me say that again.  Wayfinding – you know, the signs, floor plans, and the other stuff that tell visitors where to find things – it’s important.

Recently, my husband, Jeremy, and I visited a museum that had undergone a major building project in the past 10 years.  The wayfinding was abysmal.

First, the entrance lobby.  It was an impressive space.  But nothing told us where to go for tickets.  There were some people sitting at tables, but no sign that said “tickets” or “admissions.”  We had to guess. 

With tickets finally in hand, we passed through security and entered the museum.  While we were interested in the museum overall, there was one special exhibition in particular we wanted to see.  The floor plan provided noted where all the temporary gallery spaces were . . . but no mention of what the temporary exhibitions were, or where to find them.  Now I have no problem with a museum saving money by not changing their printed floor plans every time there is a new exhibition, so long as there is good signage or an insert that says where the temporary exhibitions are located.  In this case, however, we were provided neither. 

So we asked, and were told the exhibition was on the second floor.  We went up a floor and stood looking at the floor plan . . .  and still had no idea how to get to the exhibition.  Jeremy works in affordable housing and reads floor plans every day.  I am no slouch in this department either.  The printed floorplan seemed to have no relation to the reality in the building.  And signage?  Once again, forget about it. 

We eventually stumbled across the exhibition, which had some really, really cool objects in it.  But no coherent storyline telling us why all of it was important. 

Both of us became so frustrated that after visiting the exhibition, despite being interested in the rest of the museum’s contents, we decided to leave.  Walking out, Jeremy said “thank goodness we didn’t pay for these tickets . . . I would have been mad.”

I don’t think this museum means to make its visitors mad.  Or even frustrate them.  I just think they don’t care enough about their visitors to make the visit enjoyable.  And that may be even worse. 

Have you had a terrible wayfinding experience somewhere?  What made it so frustrating?  What would have made it easier?  To share, simply click 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.)

- Susie

Does Museum Visitation Yield More College Degrees? Maybe (though we are saying that cautiously!).

We all want to find a direct link between childhood museum experiences and adult educational attainment and engagement with learning.  And if there is a link, how much of an impact do those museum visits have?  A couple of weeks ago, we were asked just that question, and to see what, if anything, our large-scale study of museum goers from last winter could tell us. 

(Fair warning:  this is a very dense post.  We are getting deep into the data, and are totally geeking out with this, including some theory, some caveats, and lots of details.  We tried to keep this as clear as possible, but please don’t hesitate to let us know if are confusing.  Additionally, these findings are in addition to our findings on school field trip data we posted last spring.)

To find out, we went into our database and ran a series of filters, isolating respondents by 1: educational attainment of the parent of the respondent and; 2:  how often they remembered visiting museums during their elementary-school years. We then compared within each segment (based on parental educational attainment) to see if there were significant differences in the respondents’ educational attainment that correlated with museum visitation.

Turns out, we found some interesting correlations that appear worthy of future study.

But first, a few caveats to keep in mind:

• We’re seeing correlation, not causation.  We don’t know if greater frequency of museum visits by children actually yield better-educated adults or not, and we could not control for other factors, such as parental involvement in a child’s education.
• We asked respondents to make their best guess at how often they visited museums during their elementary-school years.  There really is no way, in this study, to know absolutely for sure how often they visited as children, and we are, at times, relying upon memories that are up to 80 years old for our oldest respondents.
• We segmented by the educational attainment of the respondent’s parents.  That means, for a 20-something respondent, their Baby-Boomer parents.  And for a respondent over the age of 70 it could mean the educational attainment of a parent born as early as the 19^th century.  Point being, read the findings below carefully to keep straight the educational attainment of the respondent vs. that of the respondent’s parents. 
• Finally, keep in mind that our sample is of core museum goers, not the general public, so we cannot extrapolate beyond what the confines of what this data actually shows us.

So what are those correlations we found?

First off, once a parent has at least some college, we saw no statistical differences in educational attainment for their child, our respondent.  That is, there was no correlation between museum visitation patterns as children and eventual educational attainment for those whose parents had some college, those whose parents had college degrees, or those whose parents have graduate degrees.  Oh well.

But we did find some differences among those whose parents have less educational attainment.  For respondents whose parents have no diploma at all, and those whose parents have only a high school diploma, we saw significantly higher college attainment rates among those who remembered going to museums 10+ times/year versus those who remembered going to museums only “every few years.”  To be exact, 77% of the museum-going children went on to attain at least a college degree, versus only 66% of those who rarely went to museums. 

Additionally, the museum-going children were more likely to attain a graduate degree as well, over 40% of respondents versus less than a third of the infrequent museum-going children.

So, to sum up, the correlation we have unearthed ties museum attendance with greater odds of college degrees among adults whose parents have only attained high school diplomas or less. 

But it is only a correlation.  It will take a whole lot more research, beyond the scope of our current studies, to determine if there is any causation!

What do you think?  To share, simply click 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.)