This visual Data Story is based on findings from the 2025 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers, a national survey of American museum visitors from AAM and Wilkening Consulting. Every year, the survey partners with individual museums to research their audiences and yield insights about their behaviors and preferences, both on an institutional and national level. (Learn more about the purpose and methodology of the survey here.) Interested in joining the 2026 edition on the themes of earned income and the meaning and value of museum experiences? Sign up by February 28 to join the survey launch in March.

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The current national narrative tells a very stark story: we are a divided nation. Divided by politics. Divided by beliefs. Divided by values.

It is true that politics today is divisive. We’ve been saying for years that the number one predictor of how someone responds to content in museums is their political values. We still find that to be true.

But are we really that divided?

Or, have we allowed a false consensus to become a national narrative?

In the 2025 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers, we explored these questions as we examined public perceptions of museums, trust, values, and the perceived responsibilities museums have to their communities. What we found was more hopeful than we anticipated, while providing guidance for navigating these interesting times.

To start, let’s time-travel just a bit … to fall of 2024. The United States was in the throes of a presidential election and we were drafting the 2025 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers.

We didn’t yet know the outcome of the election. But we did know that regardless of who won, a significant percentage of people were not going to be happy with the outcome and we were going to enter a period of even greater polarization and instability.

When instability happens on a national scale, it can often feel abstract. Even though it matters, it may not be felt (at least not immediately) on a personal level. And so people tend to catastrophize the abstract, saying things like “nobody can agree on anything” or make dire predictions for the future.

At the same time, however, they tend to have more realistic views of their local community. They associate stability with local institutions and the people they interact with every day … even those with whom they may disagree.¹

To help museums navigate these uncertain times, we wanted to give museums concrete data to move forward confidently by being able to deliberately and obviously link your work to the things that most people value.

So, we started off this series of questions with this one:

Which of the following do you think most people in your community would agree are important?

This question was designed very deliberately. There are four important elements built into it.

1. This question is not about museums. There is nothing in this question, or in the answer choices we provided, that mentioned museums. It asked respondents to simply focus on people, community, and values.

2. We emphasized in your community. This mattered! By focusing on the local, we encouraged people to think about the people they interact with every day, keeping the question concrete and realistic. A broader phrasing, such as “most people,” tends to feel abstract and likely would have prompted a large percentage of people to say “I don’t think people can agree on anything.”

3. We dropped the noun. This question is, fundamentally, a values question. Yet the word “values” has become a bit loaded. So, instead of starting it “Which of the following values …,” we simply dropped the noun so that we did not prompt an emotional response to the word “values.” This helped make the question read more neutrally.

4. It doesn’t ask why. It does not ask why something is important, or how that importance should be expressed. Those interpretations vary widely from person to person. Instead, it is a simple point of agreement that yes, this thing matters.

Did it work?

Our first test was to look to see what percentage of respondents said “none of these / I don’t think people can agree on anything.” A response of 10% or more would mean it was a polarizing question, while a response of less than 5% would mean it was a neutral question that read as non-partisan.

3% of frequent museum-goers said “none of these / I don’t think people can agree on anything.”

The question worked! Virtually everyone chose at least one of the answers provided.

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Which of the following do you think most people in your community would agree are important? (Choose all that apply.)

Value of learning / education
76% frequent museum-goers / 58% casual (at least one museum visit in past year) / 45% sporadic (visits museums occasionally, but not in past year)

Importance of family
70% frequent / 62% casual / 55% sporadic

Showing kindness to others
69% frequent / 59% casual / 50% sporadic

Taking care of the natural world
67% frequent / 48% casual / 40% sporadic

Being civil to one another (even when we disagree)
66% frequent / 53% casual / 46% sporadic

Value of community, cooperation, and collaboration
65% frequent / 52% casual / 44% sporadic

Opportunities to gather around shared interests
63% frequent / 46% casual / 37% sporadic

Evidence-backed/truthful information
62% frequent / 47% casual / 36% sporadic

Having an open mind
59% frequent / 53% casual / 47% sporadic

Creative expression
58% frequent / 43% casual / 36% sporadic

None of these / I don’t think people can agree on anything
3% frequent / 1% casual / 2% sporadic

Frequent museum-goers are those who responded to a museum’s request to take a survey (and visit museums at the most frequent rate).

Casual and sporadic museum-goers were sourced from our demographically representative sample of U.S. adults, and said they visit museums at least “every few years” (that is, not “never”). A whopping 79% of U.S. adults fell in this category!

For frequent museum-goers, every single response choice received a majority of respondents affirming its importance.

Casual and sporadic visitors were also enthusiastic, choosing several options (and scarcely any said “none of these”).²

For respondents overall, the top answers focused on education, family, and kindness. All pretty wonderful things.

Do political values matter here?

Well … not really.

Let’s look at the first metric we considered: what percentage said “none of these / I don’t think people can agree on anything.”

None of these / I don’t think people can agree on anything

Conservatives: 2%
Moderates: 2%
Liberals: 3%

Politically, there was no difference.

There were also no significant differences about the importance of family, education, or being civil to one another.

And on the rest of the options, liberals and moderates had no significant differences, while conservatives were a bit less enthusiastic … meaning they were just a little less likely to choose them. That said, most of the answer choices were still selected by the majority of conservatives among frequent museum-goers.

The values we listed are largely bipartisan, allowing museums to anchor their work in these values with confidence.

To connect these shared values with the work you are doing, communicating them in a methodical, layered, and repetitive way is key. Our example (using families) is fairly straightforward, but you can effectively do this with any of the values we tested in our question.

STEP 1:
Start with community. Make an affirmative statement that you know is true for the majority of people.
“We all think family is important.”

STEP 2:
Connect with museum and mission. Add a statement that connects the value to the thing you are doing.
“Family is important to us and our work at our museum, too. That’s why we learned more about the families that lived here in the past.”
(Or, the families depicted in the artworks, or the families in our community … you get the idea.)

STEP 3:
Reconnect what you are doing with the shared community value.
“Because families were important to people in the past, just as they are important to all of us today.”

By connecting these values directly to your community and your mission, visitors are more likely to follow your reasoning for the work you are doing, increasing perceptions that the work is non-partisan, and reducing political pushback.

Will this eliminate political pushback? No. We can’t promise that.

But when there is pushback, it will likely be more rational (and less emotional), and that’s good because that can lead to productive conversations where people feel heard and respected … reinforcing the shared value of civility (even when we disagree).

These shared values do indicate that we have more in common with each other than the national narrative of division suggests. By promoting and building upon the values we share, museums can find opportunities to strengthen our communities in this uncertain time, while also strengthening support of our missions.

Over the next few Data Stories, we’ll explore more about the responsibilities museums have to their communities, trust, and how much language matters when we talk about these things.

“I think museums are trustworthy because I trust that they are telling the truth from their perspective and they often have background information, cite references, appeal to community consensus, use hands-on provocations, present opposing ideas, aren’t afraid to ask questions, be challenged, and revise based on current understanding. Museums present truth in context, and that’s what I want my children to learn how to discern.”

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Annual Survey of Museum-Goers Data Stories are created by Wilkening Consulting on behalf of the American Alliance of Museums. Sources include:

• 2025 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers, n = 98,904; 202 museums participating
• 2025 Broader Population Sampling, n = 2,079
• 2017 – 2024 Annual Surveys of Museum-Goers

1. Pew Research Center has noted the same trend. See “On issue after issue, Americans say things are going better locally than nationally, ” February 10, 2025.
2. It is typical in samples drawn from the broader population for respondents to choose fewer things and move on to the next question. Frequent museum-goers chose 6.5 items on the list, while casual visitors chose 5.2 and sporadic 4.4. That is still showing high enthusiasm for the question, but will result in lower percentages across the board.

Data Stories share research about both frequent museum-goers (typically visit multiple museums each year) and the broader population (including casual, sporadic, and non-visitors to museums). See the Purpose and Methodology (Update) Data Story from September 11, 2025 for more information on methodology.

More Data Stories can be found at https://wilkeningconsulting.com/data-stories/.

© 2025 Wilkening Consulting, LLC