Last week, I attended a talk hosted by the Smithsonian titled “Demographics of the Decade: Understanding the Museum Audience of the Future.” The speaker was James Chung from a firm called Reach Advisors. First of all, I had never really thought about companies like Reach Advisors existing. But now that I do, I’m thinking of museums more than ever as competing enterprises, vying to reach the elusive consumer. I'm also more interested in the idea of predicting museum audience trends (especially given the drastic population changes that we see ahead) with the idea that if museums are prepared enough, they can keep up. In "Prescriptions for the Art Museum in the Decade Ahead," Maxwell Anderson wrote that while, "Once seen primarily as charitable and educational institutions, art museums are now being regarded as incubators of financial return." Sounds bleak.
James Chung's flashy Power Point presentation was loaded with terms like “macro trends” and “income dynamics,” which caused some anxiety in me-- an art student who can appreciate that unfamiliar world, but happily stands apart from it. But hmm, museums as enterprises. This intrigues me-- the idea of a non-profit, public-serving, donor-supported institution performing like a private sector, income-generating concern. How does this affect the prevalence of the nasty commercialism that we fear? That's your cue, Carol Duncan:
"But the idea of the museum as a sanctuary, a place set apart from more mundane concerns, is harder to sustain in big museums like the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Art Institute in Chicago, or the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. With their crowds of noisy visitors, big advertising budgets, and ever growing dependence on corporate sponsorship--these institutions look more like a part of the business world than a realm apart from it."
So, is it necessary to keep these realms separate? If so, what can we do to keep them apart, especially given the apparent necessity to market the cultural/entertainment value of museums?
TouchÉ, Madame, but indeed we are looking at such indicators to figure out how to stay alive. Reach Advisors digs up interesting info that we should pay attention to, such as men attend history museums and moms bring their babies to museums. Jargon terms such as income dynamics send shivers down my spine (and evidently yours) but don't mean much beyond the ways museums strategize to reach new donors, etc. If I had a development officer speak with me about income dynamics and incubators of financial return, I would run the other way. I suppose jargon gives the jargon-purveyors a sense of being on the inside, but honestly, straightforward language works much better. We need funds, we need new ways of engaging new audiences, we are an enterprise set up to do business. I hope Michael Kaiser (Nov. 15th) speaks in plain English (plain Spanish would be fine as well).
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