Museum Magazine

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The Visitor is for Keeps: Engaging Audiences with the Nurturing Model

By John Connolly

Does admission pricing limit access to museums? At the Harvard Art Museums, we stress-tested this question by launching free admission in 2023. The beautiful entrance piazza transformed into the bustling town square it was conceived to be. …
Building Brand Equity: How Strategic PR Boosts Long-Term Sustainability

By Addison Dover

In recent years, museums have begun to recognize that public perception plays a critical role in long-term sustainability. Audiences, businesses, and philanthropic partners increasingly look to support institutions that demonstrate clear …
From Social Night to Strategic Asset: Rethinking Adult Programming

By Katye Brought and Beth Stricker

Cocktails & Culture, an after-hours, adult event series at the Witte Museum, reached its peak in 2018. A regional natural history museum serving 350,000 visitors annually, the Witte had just completed a yearslong $120 million …
Force Multipliers: Forging Purposeful Partnerships and Cross-Sector Campaigns

By Kaziah I. Searles

Most museums are working with small teams and tight budgets, while expectations for accessibility and community engagement continue to grow. This creates a challenge: how can museums increase impact without increasing resources? One …
From the President: Getting Strategic About Telling Our Story

By Marilyn Jackson

This issue of the magazine focuses on a part of the field especially close to my heart: public relations and marketing, where I began my own museum career in Chicago as director of marketing at what is now the Griffin Museum of Science and …
School’s in Session…in the Museum: A Four-Day Immersion in Museum-Based Learning

By Leslie Hayes

The New York Historical offers New York City sixth graders four full days of museum-based learning. If you visit my place of work between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. on a weekday, you are likely to hear some remarkable sounds: restrained …
Achieving the Unforgettable: Engaging the Senses with Whole-Body Learning

By Tedi Asher, Matthew McNerney, and Sarah Cole

“Hey!! They just made the ruler larger!” It had been more than a month since my (Matthew McNerney’s) 5-year-old son visited the Field Museum’s iconic “Underground Adventure,” a worm’s-eye journey into the soil where children meet the …
Meeting the Moment: Creative Aging Programs for Older Adults

By Marjorie Schwarzer

“It’s promising and comforting to know that the very things in our lives that we find so pleasurable, like the arts, also have short- and long-term benefits for health.” —Daisy Fancourt, author of Art Cure: The Science of How …
Entering the Vault: Making Collections Storage Visible

By Nancy Bateman

The National Building Museum has given visitors access to a trove of previously uncatalogued artifacts through its “Visible Vault.” The National Building Museum, located in Washington, DC, in the historic Pension Building, …
Learning from the Next Generation: Transforming Museums with Youth-Driven Storytelling

By Paul Best and Rorujorona Ferrell

Youth-driven storytelling, like that at Penn Museum, can transform museums into spaces where identity, belonging, and community voice are actively shaped. “Did you know Mali dropped French as their official language?” Samantha …