CARE-apy: Belonging in Cultural Institutions
Approaches, Findings & Future Directions for the Field What does belonging look like in cultural institutions? We’ll share how two projects worked to understand belonging – across a diversity of institutions and visitor perspectives. …
CARE-apy: How to Measure Museum Social Impact: From Participant Recruitment to Retention
As the national Measurement of Museum Social Impact (MOMSI) study comes to a close, come learn how study sites navigated visitor participation in the project. Hear from three different museums – a rural museum, an art museum, and a …
How to Retain Participants in Visitor Research Studies
Research and evaluation projects allow museums to engage their communities, visitors, and non-visitors in various ways, but without anyone to participate in them, we are left with only our protocols and questions. That’s why strong …
Different by Design: A New, Inclusive Framework for Accessible Museum Exhibitions
In January 2020, I authored a post for the Alliance Blog about speechless: different by design, an exhibition that I curated for the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. The exhibition was an experiment—one …
“Wait, What? Toddlers in an Art Museum?”
Caitlin Mock Wilson, a mother of two young children and a Clyfford Still Museum (CSM) member, often went to museums with her parents as a young child. When she had her own children, she said it “felt natural” that she would also bring them …
Museum Accessibility: An Art and a Science
Over the past decade, conversations about accessibility have increased within the museum field, and many organizations including AAM have identified it as a priority. There is not, however, a straightforward and approachable blueprint for …
A Free Survey to Measure a Sense of Belonging at Museums
Not everyone wants to visit a museum. This is in part because of operational issues like cost, location, schedule, but these aren’t the whole story. Some don’t even reach the point of worrying about logistics, because the mere idea …
CARE-apy: Discussing Data Collection Methods
Watch this recorded CARE-apy session where we explore numerous evaluation methods that you can use to understand a variety of things, including: Information that will help you make decisions before you develop and implement a program or …
Family Interactive Spaces: Are They Necessary or Just Nice?
Cultivating a strong family audience is critical for museums, and as practitioners we use many different strategies to do this, including special family days and festivals, workshops, tours, backpacks, gallery guides, labels, in-gallery …
Recruiting Strategies: How to Find Community Members for Research Studies and More
Despite the ongoing effect of COVID-19 on museums’ daily operations, the national Measurement of Museum Social Impact (MOMSI) project has been forging ahead with thirty-eight museum participants since January 2021. The perseverance of the …
