This year’s Snapshot Report sheds light on the challenging year the museum field has experienced, as well as the bright spots that offer opportunities for innovation and changing traditional models. Watch this engaging webinar exploring the findings with Carys Kunze, Research & Data Manager for AAM, Elizabeth Merritt, Vice President, Strategic Foresight & Founding Director, Center for the Future of Museums, AJ Goehle, CEO at Luci Creative and Jennifer Ortiz, Director at the Utah Historical Society. Together, they dive into key findings and discuss what they mean for the museum field.

Transcript

From Numbers to Narratives: Exploring the Annual Snapshot Survey

Carys Kunze:

Hello, everyone, and welcome to today’s webinar, From Numbers to Narratives. Exploring the Annual Snapshot Survey.

My name is Carys Kunze, and I’m the research and data here at the American Alliance of Museums and the lead researcher for the snapshot survey.

I will be joined today by Elizabeth Merritt, vice president for strategic foresight and founding director of the Center for the Future of Museums here at AAM, as well as two AAM board members.

AJ Gailey, CEO at Lucy Creative, and Jennifer Ortiz, director at the Utah Historical Society.

We will be starting today with a poll, so we can go ahead and put that on screen.

Today, we’ll be going over the data from the directory who took our survey earlier this year, but we also want to know the concerns of the people here in the room. So we’re asking, which of these potential disruptions to the museum field are you most concerned about for 2026? You can select multiple answers, so please select those that you are most concerned about for the next year.

Depending on what device you’re using, you may have to scroll down to see all of the answer options. And if you choose other and you’re comfortable sharing your concerns, you’re welcome to share those in the chat.

So as we’re getting started and as everyone is taking a look at that poll, I’ll also share a bit of housekeeping. If you would like to turn on closed captioning, for this webinar, that option is going to be on your bottom toolbar. Also, this webinar has a chat function. You are welcome to introduce yourself in the chat, such as sharing your name, where you’re joining from, and what type of institution you work for as you’re comfortable sharing.

Webinar also has a q and a function that is separate from the chat. If you have questions for today’s speakers, please add those questions to the q and a feature, and we will have time to answer some of those questions at the end the webinar.

Also, you can find today’s slides in the handouts section of Airmeet. All of the charts you’ll see today are drawn direct from the snapshot report, which you can find on AAM’s website. We’ll be sure to share the link to that in the chat shortly.

So if you want a closer look at any of the charts shown here, you can find them all in that report.

Today, we’re going to be taking a look at data that is drawn from a survey of over 500 museum directors across The United States. The survey was fielded in July and August.

This year’s snapshot report documents the quite challenging year that the museum field has experienced as well as the bright spots that offer opportunities for innovation moving forward. Today, we’ll be diving into key findings and discussing what they mean for the museum field. But first, let’s go ahead and we can take a look at our own poll results now. So we can go ahead and put those on the screen. Thank you very much.

So taking a look at our results, it looks like the, we’re seeing definitely a lot of the same concerns in the room right now that we see in the results that we’ll be taking a look at. We’re definitely seeing plenty of concern for shifts in philanthropy, for financial and market instability, and for the reduction or elimination of government funding. And slightly less, but still definitely showing up changes to travel and tourism and inflation. Thank you all very much for sharing your perspectives on that. It’s always very helpful. Helpful to know who’s in the room and what they’re thinking about that, I think we can go ahead and dive into the 2025 snapshot report. So first, we’re going to be taking a look at attendance and finances.

As we all know, museum attendance was severely impacted by the COVID nineteen pandemic. And recovery has been inconsistent. Less than half of museums are currently seeing the same or greater attendance than they did in 2019. That’s a troubling decline from twenty four’s survey, when 51% of museums reported that they had reached or surpassed pre pandemic levels.

Relatedly, nearly one third of museums report a decrease in attendance this year due to changes to travel and tourism and economic uncertainty, and we’ll see more about that on an upcoming slide later in the presentation. Over half of museums report lower attendance than in 2019. These museums that are seeing lower attendance report a median of 81% of their pre pandemic numbers. As a whole, museums overall are currently experiencing a median of 95% of their pre pandemic attendance.

We can take a look at our next slide to take a look at finances. So financial pandemic recovery remains uneven across the museum field as well. In this year’s survey, half of museums reported that their bottom line or their net operating performance in 2024 was stronger than their pre pandemic bottom line in 2039. These museums report a median increase of 20%. On the other hand, one quarter of museums report that their bottom line in 2024 was weaker than in 2019 with a median decrease of 24%. 21% of museums report no change compared to pre pandemic.

This demonstrates a troubling downturn compared to last year’s survey when 57% of museums reported that their net operating performance in 2023 had improved compared to 2019. And at that time, only 19% reported the reported declines. This indicates that 2024 may have been more financially challenging for museums than the year prior. Even before the challenges of this year.

Looking ahead to the rapidly approaching end of 2025, 37% of museum directors projected that their museum’s bottom line will increase in 2025 compared to 2024. Another 26% of museum directors project declines to their bottom line in 2025. 37% of directors expect no change compared to last year.

These projections are less optimistic than those from last year’s survey. Moving on to our next slide, we’ll see that working within this challenging financial landscape, museums are exploring many new approaches to generating revenue. Within the last two years, over half of museums either begun or meaningfully increased their effort to secure corporate sponsorships or brand partnerships. Many have also created or revamped membership programs, expanded or introduced facility rentals or private events,

or added fee based public programs, workshops, or events. It’s notable that only 14% of museums were report no significant changes to their funding strategies in the last two years.

These museums are comparatively more likely to report that their 2024 bottom line is the same as 2019.

We’ll now have a discussion about these data points that we’ve seen so far. And then next, we’ll move on, to our next category. But first, I’d like to welcome the other speakers for today to the stage. Welcome, Elizabeth, AJ, and Jennifer.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Thank you for that great data summary, Karis. I’m looking to in forward to diving into the data.

So I’m gonna kick this off; by asking AJ can you give me a few of your reactions? When you see that data, what springs to mind? What are your thoughts on how the field might react to these figures?

AJ Goehle:

I think it you know, hi. Thank you, Elizabeth.

Excited to be here and to talk about this today with everybody. You know, one of the things we’ve been talking a lot about related to this is, you know, how to think about your strategy

related to the demographic reality.

Our visitors are getting older.

And the crazy fact about this is if you think about who’s coming to our museums today and actually what the climate of the individuals within The US of who’s coming, by the age of 65 and older in United States, are mostly our visitors today. And by the year 2034, and 2035, our adults are actually expected to outnumber our kids.

And so when we think about that data point, when we think about how we plan forward and who’s coming to our museums and why they’re coming there and how do we think about creating experiences to bring in those different types of visitors.

We need to think about a shift in the kind of experiences we’re creating for them because those primary visitors are actually older.

And so those people that are making those decisions and I think when we think about those visitors, one of the things that we know about them is they really appreciate loyalty, habits, and not one off visits. And how do we start to plan for that? How do we use the museum to as a place to enhance and increase memberships?

Reoccurring programs, opportunities for social rituals, bring people back monthly or even weekly with events like studio nights, clubs for older adults, late hour socials, books, and film circles, and how do we actually make that museum more of the core to the community to support that? You know, people who came once might be one way to look at it, but now how do we treat the museum as part of the fabric of people’s everyday lives? And I think as we talk to more and more museums on our end, we’re really seeing is how to start design a future for them and an infrastructure that can support that, not only operationally, also experientially.

You know, as we think about this structural shift and what audiences want now, those experiences, as I just talked about, are really about They’re about creating experiences that are emotionally resident.

They’re about creating memories that are relevant of interest to people’s lives. And so how do we create spaces and places that really strive and thrive within that memory making so people feel like there’s a sense of belonging. You have that stronger loyalty. They’re staying longer in their dwell time.

And there’s a reason for them to come back. And I think as we think about supporting museums or even internally within museums, rethinking the strategy to support that older audience right away instead of kids or student groups that are coming in, it’s gonna immediately unlock a lever that’s gonna open up a whole new audience that you might not have been talking to before that now you can invite in Elizabeth, do we have a second for me to just to jump in and add a thought?

Elizabeth Merritt:

Awesome. Jennifer, you’re in an interesting position of preparing to open a new museum into this troubled climate. What are you thinking of when you look at statistics like this?

Jennifer Ortiz:

Yeah. Thank you. Everyone. Jennifer Ortiz. I’m here based in Salt Lake City, Utah over the Utah Historical Society. And, you know, the data is really interesting. In that it’s something I think the community is already thinking about. You know, how do we shift we had, you know, big, big changes with federal funding. And so how do we shift as a community to rethinking our approach to philanthropy, work, that we need to be doing. And that’s really evidenced in the data. Some of y’all already thinking about shifting membership programming and that’s really that’s really great. I think we need to collectively rethink our approach to philanthropy.

One of the things that we’re doing at the historical society is moving away from that donor centric model to rethinking our approach to community centric fundraising. Now this isn’t a new idea. Idea, but the way in which we’re investing in that and sort of looking ahead to thinking, okay. How does every person who walks our door kind of to what AJ is speaking to you about knowing your audience really, really well and then shifting appropriately you know, really refocusing ourselves towards that community centric fundraising as every individual becomes more and more important to us?

So you know, through that membership process to donation, that that we’re going to really focus on that process for us. So that’s one of the things that we’re doing to be a little bit responsive to the moment. I also think another thing that we can consider, being responsive to in this moment is as executive directors and CEOs, really our responsibility can and should be in working with foundations to really illustrate the need of the whole organization rather than project based funding, which historically that’s how foundations fund. That’s even how organizations like the NEH, IMLS have funded in the past. You know, really shifting the model to you need to fund us as whole organizations, and that includes overhead. That includes the full health and sustainability of the organization, not just the project. And so these are, again, not new ideas, but something that, you know, again, people in leadership can really take that opportunity to carry the weight and the water in that message. To our foundations that we work with.

Elizabeth Merritt:

That’s so important. I

one of the things I’ve been discussing people recently is we think of advocacy often as being museum people talking to legislators and representatives But it’s equally important to do advocacy to our funders. Because we’re not just passive recipients of the largesse they have.

Jennifer Ortiz:

Mhmm.

Elizabeth Merritt:

We are instituting practices that achieve their goals. And we’re equal partners. And more and more, I was just reading a research report this week saying more and more funders are beginning to say, oh, you’re We should go back to general operating support. It’s not just about project based funding. And it should be multiyear to provide more stability We should be more flexible about people saying, well, circumstances have changed. Can you give us some room to change what we had originally proposed? I think that’s tremendously important.

I also wanted to point out we focus a lot on income. Which is great. But I think in coming years, it’s gonna be a balance between income and revenue. Some of you may follow the research from Impact Colleen Dilschneider, who runs an excellent research project, large scale, public facing organizations like museums and performance based institutions.

And she pointed out in a post this week that museum operating costs have been rising fast than income.

And part of that’s driven by the rising cost of doing business. And the cost of goods and services. So I absolutely believe the truism. You can’t cut your way to financial stability. You can’t if you’re if you’re having financial problems. I don’t think you can simply become successful by lowering your cost. But I do think it’s gonna be necessary for museums in coming years to give equal attention both to growing income and to containing costs because it’s the balance in the end that matters. Oh, no. Please do. That’s a perfect time. Yeah.

AJ Goehle:

Okay. Good. You know, as we think about different ways to position museums to increase opportunities for revenue, You know, one of the things that we are thinking a lot about is how to make the museum a third space.

And how to use the collections and the stories that you have to act and bring in more people with other alternative ways of using the museum. It might be a Sunday afternoon brunch, or it could be a bar that you’re bringing opening up for the evenings.

People to come and socialize or use a date night spot. And so really starting to think about different ways to increase the usage of the building, the usage of your facilities, the, the stories and the objects and the invitation to create community connections there and using revenue as a driver for that through the lens of how can we give people a reason to come and add a value proposition to that so that they spend more.

So I think it’s really important when you think about the social hub that you can take your museum and place it into the community, to think beyond what you might be doing today.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yeah.

Yes.

Jennifer Ortiz:

Well and to build on that, right, thinking of what are our spaces uniquely positioned to offer. Because in this increasingly competitive world, we cannot do everything. So, again, to Elizabeth’s point, right, we’re not gonna cut our way to financial stability, but where are we appropriately aligning our work? How does our strategic plans allow us to get there, right, the long term planning that we’re doing. While still being responsive to this moment in time, what are we uniquely positioned to offer? I think it’s something we need to consistently be asking ourselves.

AJ Goehle:

Yeah.

Always think true to your mission. Right? Does it support the mission of what you’re trying to achieve? It’s not

Elizabeth Merritt:

Absolutely. And I think what

AJ Goehle:

Yeah.

Elizabeth Merritt:

I think one of the things we’re seeing right now is museums that are being aggressive, true to their missions are being the most successful in attracting philanthropic support.

Because people that resonates with people when they see them doing the good work. I think another comment I’d like to make is there’s a there’s a tension

AJ Goehle:

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Between maximizing earned income and not leaving money on the table that people are willing to spend and equity remaining accessible to people who may not have the means I was just hearing about a museum that, after some analysis, doubled the cost of its memberships and there was no pushback. People were saying, yes. Fine. We’re happy to spend twice as much on memberships to support you. So how can museums do that balance testing of what can we actually charge that people are happy to pay and then remember who might be being left out by that and how can we make sure that they still have access to the services?

Jennifer Ortiz:

Absolutely. I think and we’re seeing that in the data. Right? Where our organizations are rethinking approaches to membership, which is appropriate. For us to be doing in this moment and time, not just pivoting to what sort of services do we offer, programs we offer. You know, how do we appropriately value the work, the expertise, the time, and energy it takes to put on the amazing exhibitions and programs that museums do. So, again, appropriately valuing the work that we’re doing.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Right.

Right. And remembering that some people become members because it’s an expression of loyalty and appreciation. It’s not just about what do they get in the basket that’s worth that amount of money to them.

Well, this is one of our great challenges in designing this discussion is we could spend an hour talking about any of these. Things, but I wanna make sure Cara says time to get through all the data. Is this a good time to pivot to our next section?

Carys Kunze:

It certainly is. Thank you all so much for your insights.

Next week, we’ll be taking a look at the impacts of executive actions. On museums this year. So we’ve seen definitely a lot of very significant impacts of executive orders and federal actions, which have affected museums in many significant ways in 2025 with wide reaching consequences for the communities that museums serve.

As a reminder, this data was collected this past summer, and it doesn’t reflect recent news regarding IMLS. My colleague Elizabeth will be sharing an update on that after our next few slides. So taking a look at, this next, next data point, this year, one third of museums suffered the cancellation of government grants or contracts. 18% of museums reported changes to the scope of their government grants or contracts, and 7% reported that they were not reimbursed for existing expenditures.

Nearly one third of museums have seen decreased attendance because of changes to travel and tourism and economic uncertainty, which, of course, connects to the slides that we saw earlier about, impacts to attendance. Additionally, we’ll point out that 14% have lost key project partners or resources due to federally mandated layoffs. And 13% report that they’re subject to new legal restrictions on diversity, equity, and inclusion related activities. Notably, at the bottom of this chart, you’ll see that only one third of museums were reported no impact at all.

Among these museums that were affected by canceled government grants or contracts, and unreimbursed expenditures, the median loss was $30,000.

Most commonly, lost grants were from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Although I’ll mention that, of course, the number of government entities that museums receive grants from is vast, and many museums receive grants from other less commonly thought of branches of the federal government, or, sections, agencies.

I’ll also mention that of those museums that have lost federal funding, 67% of these impacted museums reported that the loss funding had not been replaced by foundations, sponsors, or donors. And only 8% of these affected museums reported that the loss funding had been fully replaced by foundations, sponsors, and donors while 24% had reported that the last funding had only been partially replaced. Taking a look at our next slide, we’ll see that these financial impacts have, of course, forced difficult decisions.

One fifth of all museums report that they have had to defer or delay facility or infrastructure improvements or construction as a direct or indirect result of executive orders or actions. This number rises to 35% among those that have suffered the cancellation of government grants or contracts, or that have not been reimbursed for existing expenditures from these grants or contracts.

Looking at these museums that have lost federal funds, about one quarter, so 24% report that they have had to cancel or reduce programming for students, rural communities, individuals with disabilities, the elderly, and or veterans. And 28% have had to cancel or reduce programming for the general public.

Looking at impacts on staffing, 5% of all museums report that they have had to lay off staff as a direct or indirect result of these executive orders or actions. And this number rises to 10% among those that have lost federal funds.

This has, of course, been a really important time for advocacy. So taking a look at our next slide, it’s encouraging to see that most museum directors report that they or their staffs have engaged with their policy makers in some way in the past five years. Which is definitely very encouraging. We see that about two thirds have invited lawmakers to visit their museum. About 62% have advocated to lawmakers on behalf of their museum. 61% have attended their local city council or county board meetings. We see that almost half have shared the their museum’s economic impact with lawmakers.

And then a little bit over a third, 36% have attended an event sponsored by their legislators’ offices, and 35% have engaged their board in advocacy activities. Only 11% of museum report that their staffs have not engaged in advocacy in any form within the last five years. If you or your museum are interested in becoming more active in advocacy, a AAM, of course, has many resources to help you do that. We’ll share some links in the chat, both to AAM’s advocacy resources. And then you can also register now for the twenty six Museum’s Advocacy Day where you can make the case for museums at AAM’s annual group outing to congress, which will be this February in DC. And we’ll share those links in the chat momentarily.

At this point, I’d love to bring, my other co speakers back, to talk more about the impacts of these data points. Thank you all so much for joining me again.

AJ Goehle:

Yeah. You know, picking up on what you said, Jennifer, is thinking about how you put advocacy into practice and what are different things you can do. We talk at…

Elizabeth Merritt:

Thank you, Carson. I wanted to start out by citing a sterling example of the success of Museum advocacy. You may know AAM was part of the amicus brief that was filed in the case Rhode Island versus Trump that led to a permanent injunction against the presidential order that dismantled the Institute of Museum and Library Services. So yay to all of you out there who engage in advocacy to raise pressure on Congress about this issue. Yes. Let’s see some hearts and thumbs up on the audience. Now so all of the terminated IMLS grants have been restored, which doesn’t entirely erase the harm, but it’s better than not. And all of awardees should have been contacted about next steps. So look into that if you’re waiting for notification. We’re watching for the passage of the fiscal year ’26 labor HHS appropriations bill. At this best point, our best guess is that will be in January. And both the senate and the house versions would fund the IMLS at slightly lower levels than 2025, but it does fund them. So this is very strong. IMLS expects their next round of grant Apple applications will open in mid January for the same grant programs that were available in 2025. So that’s all pretty good news.

Now for some analysis, Jennifer, over to you. What are your thoughts on this?

Jennifer Ortiz:

So I love seeing those numbers of people who you know, organizations that are inviting their lawmakers to come to their museum, that they’re doing their own advocacy work. And I just wanna plug, as a state institution, you know, me and my role advocacy looks different for those of us online who might be in similar spaces or roles. You know, I work under the governor’s office. And so we can only advocate within what’s, you know, what’s into the governor’s agenda. But advocacy doesn’t necessarily mean advocating at that national level.

Advocacy is a lot of different things, and I just really wanna emphasize the significance and importance of local advocacy. It’s not just one time a year. AAM, doesn’t incredible job with AAM’s advocacy day on the hill in DC, and is a big champion of advocacy year round. But it’s so important to remember contacting your local legislators, whether that city, you know, municipal, county, or state. We work a lot with our state legislators, but we also work really closely with regional, municipal representatives as well.

And those are the key players who can unlock policy for you that is helpful for your organization, can unlock potential funding or connections to funding. And so really keeping your organization at top of mind at the local level is something that is super beneficial, and, really, we should not discount that at all. I don’t wanna say it’s more important than federal, but sometimes it can be depending on the situation. And so I would like to also plug your local museum, your statewide museum associations. Those are often the organizations that coordinate local history days on the hill. If you aren’t aware of who might be coordinating that, I believe AAM has a resource available of, museum associations, both regional but also statewide. Please get in contact with those individuals if you’re not already, but those are some powerful, powerful connections. That you can make. It’s more than just inviting a legislator in. It’s about education, and especially for those that again, can’t directly advocate like myself, I do a lot of educating.

Just conversations with legislators of telling them, you know, who we are, what we do, and how it impacts our communities. It’s not unlike what we do with donors or what we do generally with the public of sharing the impact that we have. Legislators are an important audience that we absolutely need to educate. Along the way they don’t forget about us when they start planning for their budget bills. In the new, new fiscal year. So that’s something I wanted to plug, local advocacy work.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Hey. EJ, any thoughts you’d like to add to that?

AJ Goehle:

our teams and our clients a lot about how do we create ways for them to invest in their museums so that the health and social services become just as important in the most culturally rich way possible. And we always were thinking about things like well-being and resilience to demonstrate these explicit outcomes that we’re seeing around the world globally as these health trends is the outcome of what museums can do.

I don’t know if any of you know this, but there are countries where doctors can literally prescribe museum visits as part of the care plans.

They use those models to build partnerships with hospitals, insurers, social service agencies, the museums can become recognized and funded as part of the well-being and public health ecosystem. I think that they’re in places like Canada and Switzerland where doctors are now allowed to literally prescribe museum visits part of a mental health and chronic disease care.

And it’s backed by growing evidence that museums will, in visits will improve your well-being. And I think I saw that in the chat earlier about the health benefits of museums. So, you know, as we think about advocacy and we think about different ways to tell the story about why museums this really becomes a great blueprint for The US to think about and look at of how you can start to partner even locally with hospitals that are local to you, insurers, public health agencies, are opening up new funding streams and audiences to provide that.

We look at different ways like programming for caregivers.

People with dementia, Parkinson’s, and other health related communities, and they’re building on models like arts and minds that are creative, creating these aging initiatives.

The other thing we’ve been talking a lot about is you have these amazing buildings.

And this infrastructure. So and when we have all of these emergencies, how do museums start to have a role in those communities beyond just the stories we have to and the programs that we put into place.

We can use museums as cooling centers, crisis convening spaces, hubs for local information, and AAM’s community infrastructure framework, talks a lot about that, I think.

The other thing that, you know, I wanted to tap into that, Jennifer, you talked about was that efficacy doesn’t have to look or feel like lobbying. You know, how do you take your team, the already have in place in your institution, and make advocacy part of their daily museum practice?

How can museums describe the public value that reporting outcomes, how you’re serving educators, veterans, seniors, families?

And partnering locally to clarify the story you would need to tell about your impact, how you’re part of the community, even the framework to clearly articulate what you’re doing every day and what your goals are in the for how you’re gonna make a change or provide more support to, your visitors or your community.

And then lastly, you know, how do we start to shift? And I know the board, as we start to plan for advocacy day coming up here, we’ve been talking a lot about shifting the narrative from nice to have to essential infrastructure.

And how do we start to give all of our institutions the tools to talk about that and demonstrate that? Where public funding, as we’ve seen in all other types of practices where there attacking right now, is really eroding the value and it’s not well articulated.

So how do we start to lead with things like outcomes?

Things that are measurable, things we can demonstrate?

And really finding ways to demonstrate that there is a tangible impact to the work that we’re doing and how we’re doing it.

So, I’m excited to continue talking about that, Elizabeth. I could talk about it all day, and, obviously, probably have multiple pages of ideas to continue sharing if anyone wants to talk about it.

Elizabeth Merritt:

That’s awesome. I wanna point out this question of making the case for museums as essential infrastructure You know, we’re not just great art museums and great history museums and contributing to education, all true. But really making the case that we’re part of what holds our communities together and lifts them up when there’s an emergency or make sure that people don’t fall through the cracks in our very poorest social safety net.

We have a lot of resources. I hope you’re making taking advantage For example, follow the AAM project on museums and the measurement social impact. We’re about to come out with a new toolkit about museums and health, including social prescriptions program. And you might want to revisit the 2020 edition of TrendsWatch, which is a summary of the case for museums essential infrastructure. Which can help with that kind of case making. As a futurist, since we’re talking about federal funding, I just wanted to take a minute before we move on to add a provocation It’s great that lawsuits are beginning to bring back some of the funding that was cut, and it’s great that Congress looks like it’s going to sustain funding for federal programs.

I am worried though that the current situation has set a precedent showing how easy it is for a presidential administration to use funding of arts and culture as a mechanism for censorship or control or controlling behavior about things that they like or don’t like. Like DEI or addressing issues like LGBTQ rights. So I wonder in the future if museums are going to have to really see federal funding as a risk benefit analysis. What are the risks of counting on funding that could be canceled or could be, suddenly have provisions attached about what you can or can’t do because you’ve accepted the funding.

And may in the future that fundamentally change museums practice when it comes to planning for income.

And it had lead to second thoughts about whether museums in some cases want to either rely on federal funding as something essential for their operations or they even want to take the risk of accepting it if they think it may curtail what they can say or do.

Little sobering thought from the future there.

Carys, I’m betting you want to move us on to the next session.

Carys Kunze:

I would love to. Thank you all again so much for your perspectives on this data. Next, we will be taking a look at potential disruptions for 2026.

So as we take a look at this next slide, just to talk you through what you’re seeing, the orange bars are showing you the results from this year’s survey, and the teal bars are showing you results from last year’s survey. We asked directors what they anticipate will be their biggest disruptions to their business strategy in 2026. And this was one where they could select multiple items, and we asked them to select those that they felt would be the most significant disruptions. So when we asked directors this question for 2026, for the upcoming year, museum directors most commonly cited shifts in philanthropy as a concern.

We also see that roughly half of directors pointed to inflation, financial and market instability, changes to travel and tourism, and, of course, the reduction or elimination of government funding as potential disruptions for 2026. I’ll also point out that one third of museum directors identified Ideologic and political polarization as another likely disruption in the year ahead. With lower percentages of directors also pointing to a crisis in trust and spread of misinformation, environmental disasters, and then a labor or skills shortage. I’ll also point out that you can see that for most of these items, a higher percentage of direct were concerned about them in this year’s survey compared to last year’s survey.

And so we’re definitely seeing that increased sense of concern in the field reflected in this particular, data point. And so, I’ll go ahead and bring my co panelists that wanted to talk about potential disruptions that we’re looking for or looking ahead to potentially see in 2026. And then I’ll also take a moment to remind you that if you have questions about this or any of the other points, in this presentation, please feel free to go ahead and put those in the q and a q and a feature, and we’ll take a look at those, shortly. But for now, we’ll go ahead and turn it over to my co speakers.

Elizabeth Merritt:

After that grim list of disruptions, I don’t mean to look so cheerful, but this is my happy places thinking about the future, because for any of these challenges, there are things we can do about it. So it’s good to know they’re on our radar because then we can be prepared. So let’s spend some time digging into these potential disruptions. Jennifer, what are your thoughts on what we might face next year and what museums might do to prepare?

Jennifer Ortiz:

Yeah. Absolutely. And I did wanna start with a question, actually, Carris. For that that data point on inflation, is that because we did not ask that question in previous years?

Carys Kunze:

That’s correct. That’s an answer option that we added this year. So since it’s one where, respondents can select all, adding an answer option doesn’t disrupt the integrity of the question. But that was one that we added this year and saw that it was indeed a really big concern for a lot of directors.

Jennifer Ortiz:

Yeah.

Mhmm.

Mhmm.

Mhmm. Right. And not unlike, you know, other businesses, us as individuals. Right? We’re experiencing this in real time. And so, I and I know my brain keeps coming back to the conversation around philanthropy. How can we shift our approaches in philanthropy? There was a comment about making sure that you know, museums as third spaces were not just prioritizing and privileging those that can afford or that are privileged to attend museums.

And that couldn’t be true. How are we, again, valuing each individual who comes through our door, our individuals and audiences as ambassadors or champions of our work and then shifting the ways in which we fundraise to meet that moment appropriately. That crowdsource funding approach or community centric fund funding approach we’re seeing in real time the pullback of foundations or the narrowing of funding priorities for foundations, foundations are going away, especially in regional and local spaces. They’re sunsetting. And so how do we as, again, director, CEOs, those in leadership positions pivot to make sure that we are still meeting our funding needs. And that really changes the conversation of how we’re bringing money through the door. Again, not just in income generation, but valuing every person that comes through the door as a potential significant donor in some way, shape, or form. And so I just keep coming back to I see this data. We’re all really concerned about it.

I know I’m thinking about this in my own capacity. And so, you know, I look forward to more conversations around how do we get creative with our philanthropic approaches, and how do we how do we work together. Right? And instead of working in a vacuum, how do we make sure that we’re collaborating with one another in order to achieve what we’re ultimately wanting to achieve in our communities because we are not gonna get through this moment and this this new shift in our community, our field, our culture without collaboration. And so that’s something that I’ve been thinking about a lot, that do we move forward as an organization on our own or always in partnership with another. It’s these are active conversations that we’re having, and I hope to see us in the AAM community continue those conversations.

Elizabeth Merritt:

AJ, what’s on your mind when you think about next year hopes, fears, strategies?

AJ Goehle:

Well, you know, as Jennifer mentioned, you know, 2025 is challenging, and I think 2026 is gonna be even more challenging.

And beyond. So as you think about this, and I always love to say this to our clients, our teams, or even to my family. Every crisis comes opportunity.

And so how do we take the darkness and find the light within that and use this as a way to say, how do our businesses because even though we’re in your institutions and your museums are still a business, How do you use this time and these inputs that are coming at us as different ways to rethink our systems.

Our processes, the way that we’re staffing things, the way that we’re engaging the community, the way that we’re finding ways to drive revenue opportunities that you talked about earlier, Elizabeth. And how do we start to think about stepping back and rethinking the strategy for that? Because 2026 will not be easier, and I guarantee you 2027 will be even worse.

You know, the other thing that we’re thinking a lot about is, especially with storytelling and the role that museums play in building trust and being the trusted source, is now before we were dealing with how do we design experiences to get people off of their phones?

Now we’re dealing with, how do we design experiences they see that the museum is actually the trusted source not the AI input that they’ve been researching on at home or in school or in work.

And so how do we start to battle and balance with the information people are getting from AI?

And I think we joke, you know, Steven Colbert calls it truthiness. AI is has this sense of truthiness to it. And create a space and a way for museums to still maintain the trusted source for misinformation. Because that is one of the values and the benefits of having this in institutions and the role, we play in all of our communities and in the world and the stories that we tell.

You know, the other thing we’ve been talking a lot about in designing spaces is one of the big disruptors in how we’re running our businesses and our buildings is the environmental impacts that we can’t control, like climate change.

How do we start to think about designing our spaces that are actually getting need to be more robust with infrastructure?

We have things that happened this year, like flooding has happened in our institutions that are our friends and institutions. Extreme heat, storms, fires in LA. You know, one of our friends in the museum industry said their insurance premium increased tenfold after the LA fires.

So now think about the different business inputs that are happening to them and how they need to find revenue or funding to support that. And then, you know, the last thing here is really about your staff.

I know we’re seeing it even, you know, with who’s coming into the sector that wants to create museums, a part of the making of them. But also in terms of who’s coming into the sector to support running museums and staffing museums.

Where are these people? Where do we find them? Are they going to school for it? In the digital landscape that we’re living in, are they interested in this field anymore? And we’ve been talking a lot about this on the board. It’s like, how do we start to create more ways to go out into the world of these young students that are in school and encourage them and invite them and show them the amazing opportunities that can unfold for them by being part of the museum field. And so creating more specialist roles, finding more ways to bring them in is partners early.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Mhmm.

AJ Goehle:

It really just demonstrates that there is this really urgent need for all of us to rise this new level not only for us to reinvest in museums as a trusted source, but also an experience and resilience more importantly, Jennifer, as I’m sure you’re experiencing in the peep side, of running your business and your staff because that’s really the forefront of the engagement that you’re gonna have with your visitors and, like you said, your potential future donors.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Awesome.

So I have a couple of thoughts as you might expect. As a futurist, I have a couple of thoughts to add to this. And it’s really, it’s two pieces of advice.

For people in the audience. And the first is everything that was listed in this survey are absolutely mainstream high probability risks. And it’s quite appropriate to take some seriously to do planning around them.

I want to remind you, don’t forget to look around the edges. In addition to focusing on likely high impact events, spend some time thinking about things that are possible but less likely, that if they occurred would be extremely disruptive. And some of these are things where, for example, climate disasters.

Which are becoming more frequent, a wildfire, a flood, an extreme heat event.

These are things that if they happen, even if they’re relatively unlikely in your area, would be tremendously disruptive. And your perception of risk may be off because becoming more frequent.

Another one is we’re going to see if there’s gonna be a tourism boom or bust. Around Museum 2 around America 250 and particularly depending on where you are and what kind of museum you are, that could have a big effect on your visitation.

One that I’m keeping an eye on is the possibility of a the I was just reading that the billions of dollars that are being dumped into AI, a account for 40% of US growth domestic product gross in 2025 with no signs of slowing down. And AI companies are accounting for 80% of the growth in American stocks. But if you look at the financial plans for these companies, none of them are projected to turn a profit until 2030 at the earliest, and people are becoming more cognizant of the negative externalities and the environmental damage and potential negative effects on human ability to do our own work. If it collapsed, this would cause a worse crash than the mortgage loan crisis of two thousand and nine. So these aren’t things that we directly as a museum feel. Well, I have thoughts on what we can do to educate the public about AI. We don’t have an direct effect on the stock market or investments there, but we can be thinking about how would you if you went back in time to 2007, prepare your museum for a major economic collapse. There are things you can do to try and buffer your yourself.

The other thing I want to do as a piece of advice is these are very hard times. And as you both have said, as AJ and Jennifer have noted, next year is gonna be hard. The following year may be even harder.

And we have to help plan for our organizations to survive that short term. But don’t forget to think about the long term too. Because if all we do is navigate these hopefully short term crises that might get somewhat better and say, oh, three years We could be blindsided by the next big crisis we can see. I was just reading that NOAA, which still exists, updated its risk maps for flooding.

For The US. And there are a significant number of coastal cities that will be largely underwater in a hundred years.

And there are many, many important museums serving vibrant communities in those in those communities.

So how do we think about the long term risks too? We need to navigate these media challenges, but we also, as long term institutions that are here to steward art and science and culture, for the future, we have to think about how we’re preparing for those long term risks as well.

It’s a lot. It’s a lot. But that’s part of why we’re here to help and to support conversation and provide resources to help you cope with it.

Would this be a good time to go to some q and a?

Okay. I’m I am seeing some questions coming in through the chat, and please throw more in. But I am seeing that someone had invited AJ and Jennifer to comment on collaborating with other non museum groups, for example, performing arts professional organizations, hospitals, etcetera. So how do you see that factoring in the strategies for navigating these disruptions? And any comments on successful models you’ve seen or advice for looking into it?

AJ Goehle:

Well, it’s actually, one of the things that I was just at this event in Boston with one of our clients, and a woman from Tufts came up to me. She actually she teaches a class on Holocaust interpretation through theater.

Mhmm.

And acting and performing arts. And she said to me, I would love to find a way in your in the projects you’re working on to bring that into the gallery space to find different ways to interpret story and create spaces where you’re interpreting and telling the historical aspect, but also the impact of it into anti semitic today through performance based art. And so we’re talking with our clients around the country about how do you design gallery spaces to be flexible, to allow for those moments to happen so you don’t just get stuck with this box and permanent cases and you can’t move anybody through it.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yeah.

AJ Goehle:

To actually multifunctional, multipurpose spaces allow you to find different ways to engage your audiences and your visitors and stories in many different ways. So it’s just very fascinating that the world around us is looking for those collaboration opportunities, and we have the opportunity to bring that in and do that for ourselves. Cool.

Jennifer Ortiz:

Mhmm. This is a little bit different, but one of the, the things I was looking at that I was really interested in was the recent, brand partnership that was the Muse Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco recently launched with Costco. So Bay Area Costco’s you can buy tickets for their upcoming exhibit exhibition on the art of manga, and

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yep.

Jennifer Ortiz:

what an amazing opportunity to do outreach to perhaps people, individuals, communities who you might not otherwise reach. Right? You buy your little cardboard ticket at the Costco checkout and now you have a great gift to give to somebody in your family. That’s, you know, unique, I think, for that particular institution. But even thinking of the ways in which not only the partnerships that we have for programming, but the partnerships that we have again to drive revenue or attendance in the future. Again, that collaborative piece is going to be so critical in the coming years to help broaden the audiences that know about us as organizations and about us as a field.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Absolutely. I’m seeing a comment from Laura Roberts. Hello, Laura.

Noting theater folks can also help exhibition developers think about how exhibits are structured, the pace, the tension, the chapters. Think of them as a living experience. Thank you for that, Laura. I absolutely agree.

AJ Goehle:

Yeah.

Yeah.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Keep those questions coming. Meanwhile, do you have any observations, AJ, Carys, or AJ about surprises that you saw on the data? Is there anything that left out where it was like, I didn’t see that coming as opposed to reinforcing something you expected?

And, also, thinking about next year, are there any things you think we should be asking next year that didn’t appear on our radar this time around?

And people in the audience can weigh in on that as well, things that you think might be good to ask museums for a snapshot like this.

Carys Kunze:

I’ll take the opportunity to also sort of sideways answer a question from the q and a tab, which is that someone asked were there also stats on workforce impacts of lower attendance? Great question. No. That’s not something that we asked directors about directly. When making a survey like this, it’s always a big challenge to decide what ultimately makes it into the survey while keeping it at, a length, that’s not going to be overwhelming for the folks that are taking it. But like Elizabeth said, we’re always really, really interested in the field’s impact, in the field’s input on what they want to learn and what they want us to ask. So if anyone has thoughts about that.

AJ Goehle:

Do you wanna go first? Or I’m happy to jump in.

Carys Kunze:

Always more than more than happy to hear, from the field. But I’ll also hand it to AJ Jennifer on that as well.

Jennifer Ortiz:

Go well, I just wanted to mention, I know AASLH has recently come out with their report sorry. The American Association for State and Local History, for our history organizations out there has recently come out with a history work survey, just to look at the landscape. This is the first time they’ve ever done this, and some really interesting data has come out of that. And so as a partner institution to AAM, I think it’s worth checking that out of course, it’s not going to be applicable to everybody on this call, but it would be really helpful for those history organizations.

AJ Goehle:

I think, you know, the thing that I was most surprised about was seeing that attendance was down to the 2019 pre-2019 levels.

You know, when we’re seeing in the experience design and just that people are looking to go to do destination based experiences. And so the big question for me was, what is causing the gap between having something that’s authentic and experienced and a place that people wanna come to and seek out what we’re offering or what we’re communicating that the offering is.

From the institutional perspective. So it was just I would love to dive in deeper to that even with some people who reported that just to like…

Elizabeth Merritt:

No.

AJ Goehle:

what are you doing today and what can what are little things we can start doing for incremental change? Because you have something that nobody else has.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yeah. It’s difficult. Again, I know I keep citing Colleen Dhillonschneider. I’m a fan. I encourage people to subscribe to her data if, think it would be useful. But she was writing an analysis recently where she was looking at, museum gay going behavior of frequent museum goers and she was concluding that the biggest competitor for somebody who’s already inclined to go to a museum is their couch.

People are just feeling so stressed and battered that they are cocooning at home, so it’s thinking about an experience that is both so attract and also makes them feel like they’re going to feel positive when they get there. It can pull them away from that couch.

AJ Goehle:

Yeah.

Yeah.

Elizabeth Merritt:

I don’t wanna ignore this question. It’s a very important one I’ve heard people ask before. How do you cover loss in membership dues revenue if you decide to be free? Before I pass it to you two, I’ll just note this is an issue that Max Anderson, when he was direct of Newfields, was on the road about because he did an analysis where he concluded that at least for art museums of the size that he had been director of, it actually was a wash because what you had to spend building the infrastructure for collecting admissions, was just as expensive as what you took in an admissions. So max is a big proponent of you can go free, and it doesn’t cost you money. Other museums disagree with him.

You have thoughts on that, Jennifer, and AJ?

Jennifer Ortiz:

I’ll speak to our experience, which, again, we don’t yet have a location open. So this is all very new for us. But we have had a membership program, for quite some time as an institution without a location. And, again, that has helped us really build our champions for us as an organization, leading up to the opening of the museum. So for us, it is a different calculation where state run history organization, and so we have state funds that help support us in ways that maybe traditional nonprofits don’t have. And so for us, it isn’t a loss of revenue. We were always going to be free when we opened our museum. But I will say, even if you know, we did do the calculation and making that deciding factor of do we charge it some sort of admission, or do we be free organization? And it really was in our budgetary projections. It was going to be that wash because we

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yeah.

Jennifer Ortiz:

We knew that even in the amount of the comps that we would be giving out, or you know, field trip tours, that would be happening to see amount of children coming through. It didn’t it really did not make sense for us to charge admission. And, again, being able to build those champions from day one, you know, allowing people to come through those galleries, but maybe the membership allows for you to opt into additional programming, other kinds of events. That’s the area in which we can have growth and have that financial support.

AJ Goehle:

Yeah. I can’t speak as non as a non museum op operator, to how to financially model that. Right now. But I do know that we’re working with a lot of institutions are creating tiered ticket systems for different types of visitor groups that are coming in to ensure that they are

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yeah.

AJ Goehle:

providing inclusivity and accessibility. And that even includes bus busing funding, to bring in students that might not have access from a regional perspective to visit.

As well as different ways to allow more for more free days. Or free hours of times a day to make it more possible.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yep.

Yeah.

I will add one more observation, which is, some museums that have had periods of free admission that were underwritten, for example, by local banks,

Jennifer Ortiz:

Okay.

Elizabeth Merritt:

have reported that there was a delayed backlash because the accustomed people to come for free, and then the subsidy ran out And they had to reinstitute admissions fee, and then people got cranky. So there’s also a question of what’s the long term plan. If it’s free on a short term basis, it may have negative implications for the long term because you’ve taught people that the value of getting in is paying $0.

AJ Goehle:

Or like Jennifer said, which is, you know, make it your visitors are your donors. It’s pay what you can. Pay what

Jennifer Ortiz:

Mhmm.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Exactly.

AJ Goehle:

Right? So it’s come in and create that space and opportunity for them to contribute what able.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Right.

Exactly. With a sustainable long term commitment to that instead of just saying two years free, and then we go back to business as usual. Yeah.

AJ Goehle:

Yeah.

Jennifer Ortiz:

Alright.

AJ Goehle:

Exactly.

Jennifer Ortiz:

Yeah.

Elizabeth Merritt:

I think this is a great place to pivot to some closing thoughts. I hate that we’re almost out of time because it’s been so delightful to talk with you about this. But I mean, since you were, talking, AJ, any final observations to offer before we sign off from our audience?

AJ Goehle:

I think, you know, more so is this is an opportunity, like I said earlier, like every great crisis comes a moment to rethink how you might approach the next phase of where you are in your journey. And I think we shouldn’t be afraid to be bold right now and to rethink how we’re modeling the role of museums, the role in communities, role we play with visitors, and who our visitors are.

And like we talked about earlier, is who those partners might be that can help support the mission and help us create more ways and more access to reach out into the world and pull more people in. And I think, not being afraid to rethink what you’ve been doing forever is gonna be critical moment and for all the leadership out there to be bold and brave to do so.

Elizabeth Merritt:

And be bold and brave to stay true to our missions in the face of adversity. Jennifer, any last thoughts from you?

AJ Goehle:

Yes.

Jennifer Ortiz:

Yeah. I think as an AA and board member, I know both AJ and I, when we opted in to participate in this con conversation, and we’re so grateful to participate, I just wanna acknowledge as a board member this data is sobering. And I think it’s really important for us an organization, as a field to recognize that, that we didn’t wanna come in here with disheartening information. We wanted to come out with some practical…

AJ Goehle:

Yeah.

Jennifer Ortiz:

tips and feedback, but also what are the realities and have a genuine converse around how do we pivot? How do we to AJ’s point, what is our opportunity here? And so I do wanna see us leave on a positive note. Yes. This data is hard to hear. It might be frustrating to see to maybe discouraging. But I think we can take from that what opportunities might come out of this, what collaboration can we move forward that we may have not even thought of previously because we were sitting in a more comfortable place. So this is truly a moment of opportunity to move forward in a new way, and I think that that change can be really exciting if we embrace it.

AJ Goehle:

Yeah.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yes.

I agree.

And on the philosophy of ending on a positive note, we’re not just here at AAM to provide depressing data. We’re gonna be providing updates and resources and opportunities throughout the year to engage with these topics on our blogs and webinars I hope you can join us at the AA Annual Meeting and Museum Expo in Philadelphia this May. And I encourage you to contact us with feedback, with stories, with information and questions you have.

Please join Museum Junction, AAM’s discussion board, either the general discussion board or interact with me specifically on the future of museums community. Or write to us. I’m emerritt@aam-us.org. We’d love to hear from you that we understand what you’re going through, and we understand what we can do to help you do your work.

Thank you so much for joining us today, and thank you, Carris, for all this wonderful data that supported the conversation.

Carys Kunze:

Of course. And I’ll also add in with a final note of thanks to the 511 directors that took this survey this summer. This, this was the best response that we’ve had so far to the annual snapshot surveys, this sort of data is completely impossible without the participation of everyone who took the survey. And we’re very, very, thankful for all of you who took part in it. Thank you for that and thank you for being part of this conversation today.

AJ Goehle:

Thanks, everyone.