{"id":2186,"date":"2017-04-23T08:08:11","date_gmt":"2017-04-23T15:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/?p=2186"},"modified":"2017-04-23T08:08:11","modified_gmt":"2017-04-23T15:08:11","slug":"metrics-at-the-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2017\/04\/metrics-at-the-museum\/","title":{"rendered":"Metrics at the museum"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"too<\/a>The Washington Post<\/em>‘s Philip Kennicott decided to try visiting the popular Kusama exhibit at the Hirshhorn not as a critic, with all its special viewing privileges, but as an ordinary member of the public. The crowds and the rush, as we might expect, reduced the quality of the experience. We might enjoy a play or concert more when the house is full, but that doesn’t apply so well to museums. In one well-executed piece of research, Maddison and Foster<\/a> found visitors would be willing to pay a significant entry fee to the British Museum if it would have the effects of reducing crowd sizes (and having visited that museum, had I been polled I would have had a high willingness-to-pay as well).<\/p>\n

Kennicott observes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

… the mad crowds of the Kusama exhibition raise important questions about the basic experience museums offer, and whether they can continue to offer it in an age when success is measured in foot traffic, admission and other revenue (if the museum has an entry fee), and a host of crowd-based metrics (social media success, including Instagram posts, among them).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The arts, at least in the nonprofit and public sectors, live in the age of metrics, even when appropriate ones can be hard to find. The thing about audience numbers is that it’s an easy metric: easily counted, and who could possibly be against a museum being popular? And so, for example, if I look at the strategic plan for the Philadelphia Museum of Art<\/a>, it includes a target of reaching one million visitors per year, from its current rate of around 800,000<\/a>. What will an increase of 25% do to the museum experience? I’m not sure. Nor is it clear why this would be a target – why is 800,000 somehow ‘too low’? But it’s a metric and a target, nonetheless.<\/p>\n

What are metrics good for? In a thoughtful essay<\/a> from 1994, when the metrics wave was first beginning to appear, Stephen Weil, reporting from the Wintergreen conference, suggests that metrics can be a good tool for which management could make ‘intuitive’ use of what’s going on. But:<\/p>\n

In general, the Wintergreen participants resisted the temptation to devise indicators that attempted to reflect the total performance of museums and confined their discussion of performance indicators to particular aspects of management and to the outcome of specific substantive programs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Good advice. There do not exist sets of purely quantitative metrics that can capture the overall performance of any arts presenter, or arts funder for that matter. And insisting there are will do more harm than good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Washington Post‘s Philip Kennicott decided to try visiting the popular Kusama exhibit at the Hirshhorn not as a critic, with all its special viewing privileges, but as an ordinary member of the public. The crowds and the rush, as we might expect, reduced the quality of the experience. We might enjoy a play or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2188,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26,1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2186","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-issues","8":"category-uncategorized","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/too-many-people.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3dIW5-zg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":424,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2013\/03\/why-does-the-indianapolis-museum-of-art-have-free-admission\/","url_meta":{"origin":2186,"position":0},"title":"Why does the Indianapolis Museum of Art have Free Admission?","author":"Michael Rushton","date":"March 4, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Preamble: I know what I don't know. Specifically, when looking at any arts organization and its menu of prices, I do not have insider knowledge of its current or potential audience, its donors, or its costs. So when I comment on the price structure of any specific museum or other\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "issues"","block_context":{"text":"issues","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/category\/issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"free love","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/ima-300x168.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2005,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2016\/03\/selfies-in-the-museum-victorian-edition\/","url_meta":{"origin":2186,"position":1},"title":"Selfies in the museum, Victorian edition","author":"Michael Rushton","date":"March 9, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Pacific Standard reports that \"Surprised museum researchers find many visitors snap photographs of themselves with the masterpieces.\" I'm not sure which researchers are actually surprised by this. But by coincidence I am now reading John Carey's The Intellectuals and the Masses: Pride and Prejudice among the Literary Intelligentsia, 1880-1939. He\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "issues"","block_context":{"text":"issues","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/category\/issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"the end is near","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/selfies.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/selfies.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/selfies.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1189,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2014\/03\/deaccessioning-as-a-singular-event\/","url_meta":{"origin":2186,"position":2},"title":"Deaccessioning as a singular event (updated again)","author":"Michael Rushton","date":"March 26, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The Delaware Art Museum is planning on selling some works to pay off debt. The New York Times reports here, noting that \"selling works to pay for operations or capital projects is widely considered an ethical violation, a betrayal of a museum\u2019s role of holding art in public trust\" (and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "issues"","block_context":{"text":"issues","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/category\/issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"in debt","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/DAM.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/DAM.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/DAM.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/DAM.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1522,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2014\/09\/night-at-the-museum\/","url_meta":{"origin":2186,"position":3},"title":"Night at the museum","author":"Michael Rushton","date":"September 19, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Back in February, Business Week reported: When Maxwell Anderson took over as director of the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) two years ago, he told the board he wanted to offer free memberships to anyone willing to share some data\u2014even when it\u2019s just their name and e-mail address. 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It does cost money to run the place. However, because they are tax exempt, art museums already count the public as a major, indirect source of revenue. Required admission fees add\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "issues"","block_context":{"text":"issues","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/category\/issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"And everybody should have one","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/pony.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/pony.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/pony.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/pony.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/pony.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":567,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2013\/03\/about-those-museum-prices\/","url_meta":{"origin":2186,"position":5},"title":"About those museum prices","author":"Michael Rushton","date":"March 28, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"My post staking a claim that $25 to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art was not expensive generated some comments. 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