About the Report

The 2024 Annual National Snapshot of United States Museums survey, conducted by AAM and Wilkening Consulting, was fielded in August 2024. It tracked key metrics the Alliance began to collect in June 2020 to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on museums and, more recently, gauging new opportunities and challenges for the sector.

This is the sixth “snapshot” report of the museum field that the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) has produced since 2020. In that time, the purpose of these reports has shifted from monitoring the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on museums to helping us track recovery from those impacts, and more recently to gauging new opportunities and challenges for our sector. The data collected for these reports has become critical to national advocacy efforts, especially when advocating for funding for US museums.

Over 400 museum directors responded to the survey on their organizations’ behalf, representing a broad cross-section of the field in geography, size, and discipline. This year, thanks to more robust participation, the data has been disaggregated by geographic region, museum discipline, operating expenses, and governance type.

Read the full report.

Key Findings

This year’s report offers a window into the state of the museum field in 2024, with information on attendance, employment, finances, disruptions, DEI backlash, cybersecurity, and exhibitions. The data shows positive trends in employment and individual giving, but illuminates challenges in recruitment and growing concern around shifts in philanthropy. Four years after the pandemic closed museums across the United States, the field’s recovery is trending upwards, though it is still incomplete.

In the face of these and other challenges, it continues to be critical to advocate for funding and policies that support the museum sector. During the height of the pandemic, AAM’s advocacy work helped secure billions of dollars of federal relief funding. As we recover from this global catastrophe, our collective efforts will be required to help our sector thrive for years to come.

The findings show encouraging improvement over the statistics reported in the 2023 Snapshot report. Still, recovery remains uneven, and many museums have not yet returned to their pre-pandemic attendance or financial health:

• Four years after the pandemic’s start, only half of museums (51 percent) have recovered to 100 percent or more of their pre-pandemic attendance levels. This is an improvement from 2023 when only one-third of museums had fully recovered to their pre-pandemic attendance levels.

• Museums support a broad range of American jobs in their communities, from security and administrative positions to educators and exhibition designers. 89% of museums have maintained consistent staff sizes or grown their staff over the past year.

• Financial recovery from the damage of the pandemic has been inconsistent, with 19% of museums seeing decreases in net operating performance as compared to 2019, 57% experiencing increases, and 24% seeing no change.

• Looking forward, 46% of respondents project their bottom line will increase this year compared to 2023, 17% expect decreases in their bottom line, and 37% expect no change.

• While charitable donations are up, 61% of museums report that the number of individual donors to the museum has stayed the same or decreased in the last five years. This indicates a sustainability challenge that comports with the broader nonprofit sector and demonstrates the need to provide the charitable deduction for the vast majority of taxpayers who do not itemize.

• When asked what they anticipate to be the most significant disruptions to their business strategies in 2025, almost half of respondents identified shifts in philanthropy (48%) and financial/market instability (46%), followed by a reduction or elimination of government funding (33%).

This research makes clear that disruptions to philanthropy, market instability, and threats of reduction or elimination in government funding have the potential to radically impact an already fragile sector. While the museum field’s recovery from the pandemic is improving, significant support is still needed to secure this vital sector.

Read the full report.