Research Report #1: Museum Missions and Transparency

Almost all American art museums now center the public in their missions

Three or four decades ago, most American art museums defined their purpose around the idea of collecting and preserving objects for the benefit of the public. Today, most museums define their purpose in terms of engaging and connecting the public through art.^[1] The change from object to experience was captured famously by museum scholar Stephen Weil in 1999 when he wrote that museums needed to shift from being “about something” to being “for somebody.”^[2] The transformation that Weil identified, at least in mission statements, is now almost complete.

As Figure 1 illustrates, nearly 60% of American art museums^[3] now define their mission in terms of serving the public without even mentioning their collections; another 30% define their missions as a balance between the public and their collection. Only 11% still center objects at the heart of their mission.

Figure 1. Proportion of Museums with Goals Based on Their Mission Statements^[4]

Many important research initiatives (some identified below) have sought to evaluate museums based on goals selected by the researchers. This sweeping transformation of museum missions now offers common ground for evaluating their performance against terms defined by museums themselves. Remuseum seeks to help museums become more effective at serving those missions and to help the public evaluate and support that process. This report is the first step – and a very first step – in that process.

Institutions that center the public in their missions, legal status, and policies should share information with the public.

A commonality among mission statements offers a compelling reason for museums to share more data with the public. So do the legal status and policies of the field.

Almost all American art museums are organized under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code (or are part of a larger organization that is so organized). The language of that law requires organizations to serve a charitable purpose (for museums, that relies primarily on educational purpose), and it means they cannot be organized or operated for “private interests” (such as the benefit of founders or trustees who might use the organization to pursue their own private interests). The result? Museums pay no tax on their income or on the enormous value of their art and real estate, and their donors may deduct contributions (of cash and art) against their own taxable income.

In addition to the tax subsidies that they generate and the tax exemptions they enjoy, museums have also generated a unique dispensation from the rules of financial accounting that require all assets to be reflected on business balance sheets because the art they own is held for “the public trust.”^[5] And many receive meaningful operating funds from their municipalities and states.

In addition, the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) Code of Ethics states that “AAMD members are dedicated, first and foremost, to the fulfillment of their museums’ missions to serve the public through art and art education” (emphasis added). Similarly, the American Alliance of Museum (AAM) Code of Ethics for Museums, under which most AAMD members are accredited, emphasizes the “need to maintain the highest level of accountability and transparency.” Art museums have invited and earned an unusually high level of trust^[6], which the public increasingly requires transparency to maintain.

As this report documents, not all museums have embraced transparency in the information they share with the public. Beyond the information required in IRS Form 990 (which 501(c)(3) organizations must file annually with the Internal Revenue Service), many museums are not consistent in the data they share with the public, including their consolidated/audited financial statements or even their number of annual visitors.

When museums do share data, it has usually been confidentially restricted to other museums or on aggregated terms that make it impossible to understand the performance of individual museums.

The roughly 200 members of the AAMD have access to a statistical survey conducted by the organization itself. The AAMD gathers hundreds of data points from its members on an (almost) annual basis and compiles them into an online tool that is essential for museum leaders seeking to understand the field. But with only a few exceptions,^[7] the AAMD has not shared it in ways that would allow a broad analysis of this public field and how it operates.^[8]

From time to time, museums have shared other data publicly, but only with the understanding that it will be presented on an aggregated/anonymized basis. Individual research projects, some of which the AAMD has supported (often in partnership with research firm Ithaka S&R), have presented useful information about staff diversity^[9], collection diversity (and its pace of change)^[10], the attitudes of museum directors^[11] and museum workers,^[12] and the presence and roles of Black trustees.^[13] Research consultancies have shared data about how museums responded to the COVID-19 pandemic and calls for racial justice in 2020^{[14], [15]}, and how much museums are investing in new construction projects^[16]; and academic research projects, like SMU DataArts, compile information from the arts sector (including some museums) and use it to share aggregated data about the field.^[17]

But none of these projects allow the public (or even board members) to understand the performance of individual museums.

It is time for art museums to share more data, more consistently, with the public.

In almost every other area of civic service and public institution, there is publicly available data to help people better understand an area of interest and to find innovative ways to promote impact and change.^{[18], [19], [20]} Fields as different as universities, food banks, and zoos now share extensive information (including the number of people they serve) to help donors and the public evaluate their effectiveness.

This report represents a call to museums to share more data and to participate in this work. It starts with a highlight on two simple data points: number of annual visitors and consolidated financial statements. Remuseum’s research partner, I/O, has looked for and asked all AAMD museums for these data points. To date, fewer than 20% have shared them both.

With a focus on public accessibility to data as the real test of transparency, Remuseum now offers an for museums to provide these data points and to show where they make them available to the public on their websites.

In the coming months, Remuseum will work with its Task Force and with I/O to identify additional data points that will help the public evaluate the effectiveness of individual museums at serving their public missions. And Remuseum will continue sharing data while also highlighting museums based on both their level of transparency and their effectiveness and degree of innovation in serving those missions. Remuseum will also share qualitative information and success stories from those that excel at both.

Sharing data has been good for other public institutions and it will be good for museums. Successful museums may find that transparency brings them new sources of support. Information about other museums may help individual museums (including their boards) better evaluate their own operations and decide how they want to serve the public in their own ways. It will certainly open museums up to new and innovative ideas from outside; no field (even a field full of brilliant, hard-working people, as museums are) can generate all of the good ideas it needs internally.^[21] And finally, it may help resolve some of the ongoing debates in a field in which almost everyone has a strong opinion without the ability to know whether those opinions are grounded in fact, or not.

– Stephen Reily
Founding Director

Remuseum is an independent project seeking to promote innovation among art museums across the United States. Remuseum does this work through research, convenings, and catalytic support for innovators among museum leaders (directors, educators, curators, and trustees). With a focus on relevance, governance, and financial sustainability, Remuseum supports new ways for museums to sustain and fulfill their missions, almost all of which are now centered on the public.

Inspired and funded by entrepreneur and arts patron David Booth (with additional support from the Ford Foundation), Remuseum is organized by Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, in partnership with Art Bridges Foundation

Remuseum’s research work is informed and advised by a Task Force, whose members are

•  Rehema Barber, Director of Curatorial Affairs, Kalamazoo Institute of Art
•  Jim Bildner, CEO, DRK Foundation
•  Rod Bigelow, Executive Director and Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
•  Carol Colletta, President and CEO, Memphis River Parks Partnership
•  Miki Garcia, Director, ASU Museum
•  Sam Gill, President and CEO, Doris Duke Foundation
•  Juli Goss, Chief Strategy Officer, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
•  Daniel Hemel, Professor of Law, NYU School of Law ; Visiting Professor, Yale Law School
•  Diane Jean-Mary, Executive Director, Black Trustee Alliance for Art Museum
•  Colleen Jennings-Roggensack, Executive Director, ASU Gammage, and VP for Cultural Affairs at ASU
•  Adam Levine, President, Director, and CEO, Toledo Museum of Art
•  Kimerly Rorschach, Former Director, Seattle Art Museum
•  Stacey Shelnut-Hendrick, Deputy Director for Public Engagement and Learning, Chrysler Museum
•  Martha Winans Slaughter, Independent Curator/Museum Trustee
•  Scott Stulen, CEO and President, Philbrook Museum of Art
•  Vivian Zavataro, Executive and Creative Director, Ulrich Museum of Art

I/O provides Independent and Original research and analysis in cultural policy. We offer objective and unbiased analyses of broad-level issues in arts and culture that provide insight to decision-makers in organizations and government. We pride ourselves on delivering the highest quality research that will drive your organization to innovate and think beyond the boundaries of what is possible.

Visit io-research.org for more information.

In 2023, McKinsey & Company released a report, which outlines a five-step process for embedding data driven decision making into the museum sector. As part of the report, the authors note that, “the lack of high quality, up-to-date, and standardized data sets places limits on the perspectives that art-institution leaders can have of their organizations’ performance.”^[22]

This report is partly in response to this claim. Despite the fact that the Association of Art Museums Directors (AAMD) and other organizations collect data on museums, none of these organizations share these data on individual museums publicly. The goal of Remuseum’s research efforts is to challenge the culture of privacy among museums by identifying data measuring museum performance, assessing the state of affairs among museums for sharing data with the public, and beginning to analyze data on individual museum operations.

Through these efforts, Remuseum aims to strengthen the art museum sector, identify success stories, and share strategies and adjustments that enable museums to better serve their public service missions through, first and foremost, transparency to the public about how American art museums act as stewards and providers of key public goods.

The process of collecting data on art museums began with selecting the population of art museums to study. At least preliminarily, the study includes all American art museums with AAMD membership. In total, there are 199 member museums listed on the AAMD website as of March 2024. As a preliminary group for data collection, the AAMD museums are both convenient and appropriate. Their convenience lies in the widespread presence of these museums in forums where data might be available, whereas their appropriateness is in terms of their alignment with AAMD professional standards that will make them a suitable group to learn about. The focus is on this set of art museums first; however, as this research proceeds, the study can easily extend to other art museums as well as non-art museums.

The data collection process is guided by three principles: 1) get the best quality data available on art museums; 2) get the most consistent data available on art museums; and 3) get data for the largest number of art museums possible. The logic model pictured in Figure 2 provides a framework for this process.

Figure 2. Logic Model for Art Museum Data Collection Process

As shown in Figure 2 and detailed in the introduction in this report, Step One of the data collection process involved examining museums’ mission statements pulled from museums’ income tax statements. The mission statements were coded based on whether the statement centered on serving the public, on serving collections, or both. They were hand-coded first. The codings were then validated using a large-language (AI) model trained to assess text passages.^[23]

Step Two involved searching the internet for ‘baseline’ indicators that are consistently available across a large number of art museums. The focus was on finding a set of indicators relevant to the field^[24], which were identified through reviews of scholarly research on the state and performance of the museum sector^[25], and from speaking to members of the Remuseum Task Force. Often these baseline indicators are of reasonably high-quality, in that they have been verified by a reputable source. The goal with this step is to collect basic information on the resources that museums have at their disposal and of the products and services they produce.

As expected, Step Two of the data collection process produced many gaps in the data, which led to Step Three in the logic model: directly surveying museums to help fill in these gaps. This step involved emailing the full list of AAMD art museums asking for visitation numbers and financial statements for the most recently available year. The choice of the type of data to request – visitation numbers and financial statements – was made to make the email request as simple as possible for museums to fulfill and to collect a source that contains as many indicators as possible.

Step Four of the data collection process involved collecting ‘proxy’ data from third parties. Proxy data can be indirectly used to measure elements of museum operations, such as social media data commenting on audience experiences. These data may be of lesser quality than the baseline indicators in terms of the accuracy or direct relevance of the measures, but their strength is in being able to use them to replace missing data as a result of Step Two.

This process, as outlined in Figure 2, leads to Step Five – collecting and correcting the indicators, in turn, building and updating a data infrastructure for museums to be used as a resource for the field. This is a continued effort on the part of Remuseum and art museums to fill in data gaps that ultimately feeds back into the initial step of the process: a focus on museums’ accountability to their public missions.

Through the comprehensive data collection process outlined above, the hope was to amass a comprehensive set of data on art museums. In reality, the process has so far resulted in very little information on the collective set of art museums in the study.

Figure 3 illustrates the results of efforts in collecting visitation numbers and financial statements^[26] – two main components of museums’ ‘baseline’ indicators data.

Figure 3. Proportion of Art Museums Sharing Visitation Data and Financial Statements

After both searching for these data through public sources and asking museums to share their data through email^[27], only 17.1 percent of museums share both visitation numbers and financial statements; 43.2 percent of art museums share neither.

Figure 4 provides more detail on the types of data shared. A larger proportion of museums do not share their data than share them. Additionally, a larger proportion of museums share their visitor numbers (43.7%) than share their financial statements (30.2%).

Figure 4. Proportion of Art Museums Sharing Visitation Data and Financial Statements by Either
 Data Source

The research involves continuing to find methods to improve the coverage rates for museums sharing their data. Table 1 provides a list of select indicators that the research efforts are considering, mainly through the sharing of this information on the part of art museums.^[28]

TABLE 1: SELECT INDICATORS AND ATA SOURCES BEING CONSIDERED

It is difficult, if not impossible, for the public to uncover these basic indicators. For example, while the IRS 990 Form Part IX details functional expenses, including Program Service Expenses, most nonprofit art museums do not list expenses beyond the functional categories included in that form. Even for those art museums where there is a publicly accessible financial statement, the majority do not break out program expenses according to how expenses contribute to the pursuit of mission. Among the art museums in this study, only 37.6 percent of art museums share program expenses for art acquisitions, 29.5 percent share program expenses for exhibits, and 20.1 percent share any other form of curatorial expenses.

While these data may be hard to uncover, they are relatively easy for museums to share; more importantly, they would go a long way in adding to the transparency of how museums go about pursuing their missions.

The art museum sector largely remains a black box to the detriment of the public’s faith in this sector and museums leaders’ ability to leverage data for innovation. The goal of Remuseum is to support museums in their missions and in their responsibilities to the public. As such, there is an opportunity to leverage an infrastructure that consistently reports data on art museums for the purpose of public accountability and to learn about and build on art museums’ performance in pursuing their public service missions.

The next step in Remuseum’s efforts involves engaging with individual art museums in creating this data infrastructure over the long-term. We invite museums to share their data, allowing Remuseum to develop a publicly accessible database of information on American art museums. This database will act as a public resource for the the field, promote accuracy and transparency across the museum sector, and enable individual art museums to use the information for innovation in serving their public missions. As this database develops, Remuseum will work with museums to add, correct, and update their information, and even develop new metrics, so that the quality and relevance of the information continues to improve with the evolving nature of our dynamic sector. In providing their data, museum representatives can add, correct and/or update information to improve the quality and relevance of the data, and even suggest new metrics to be added to the database that reflect art museums’ evolving priorities.

Museums wishing to share their data can visit.

In the coming months, Remuseum will continue its efforts to build a data infrastructure and release additional products as a result of its research. This will include not only a publicly accessible database of museum information, but also the results from a series of analyses that explore the effectiveness of museums in pursuing their public service missions in the form of online visualizations and rankings.

As this report details, very little information on art museum operations is currently accessible to the public. Working collaboratively, art museum leaders have the power to change the culture around sharing information and as a result, bring greater transparency, accountability, and innovation to the museum sector.

Footnotes

^[1] The National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. provides an example. In the past, its mission was to “to serve the nation by preserving, collecting, exhibiting, interpreting and encouraging the understanding of original great works of art by the American public” (https://www.nga.gov/content/dam/ngaweb/notices/Financial%20Reports/FY2020financial-statements.pdf). In 2021, a new mission was adopted: “The National Gallery of Art serves the nation by welcoming all people to explore and experience art, creativity, and our shared humanity” (https://www.nga.gov/about/mission-vision-values.html).

^[2] Weil, 1999

^[3] As explained further below, this report uses museum members of the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD), a 108-year old organization that represents the largest collection of art museums in North America, as its representative sample of American art museums.

^[4] I/O collected mission statements from Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) member museums’ IRS 990 Forms. They coded them based on whether the statement centered on serving the public, on serving collections, both, or neither. They then validated the codings by inputting the mission statements into ChatGPT 4. The following prompts were used to identify the goals of museums based on their mission statements: “Provide a detailed analysis of the outcomes each museum aims to achieve based on their respective mission statements. For each museum, specify the outcomes using the exact words from their mission statement. Avoid inferring the outcomes; instead, directly extract and list them as stated in the mission” and “Analyze the following list of museums and their respective mission statements. For each museum, determine if their mission is primarily focused on serving the public, collecting art, or if it represents a balance of both. Provide a concise response for each museum, categorizing it simply as ‘Public,’ ‘Collecting Art,’ or ‘Balance of Both’

^[5] Tysiac, 2019

^[6] Dilenschneider, 2023

^[7] Feldstein, 1991

^[8] The AAMD does compile aggregated information on museum salaries in an annual document that is easy to find online: https://aamd.org/node/8871

^[9] Sweeney et al., 2022a

^[10] Halperin and Burns, 2022

^[11] Sweeney and Dressel, 2022

^[12] Benoit-Bryan et al., 2023

^[13] Sweeney et al., 2022

^[14] CultureTrack, 2020

^[15] CultureTrack, 2021

^[16] AEA Consulting, 2023

^[17] SMU DataArts, 2024

^[18] Education Superhighway, 2019

^[19] See https://www.walkscore.com/score/

^[20] See https://www.tpl.org/parkscore

^[21] Poetz et al., 2014

^[22] Cole et al., 2023

^[23] See Footnote 4 for a description of the validation process.

^[24] See Table 1 for an initial list of select indicators and their descriptions.

^[25] See the Appendix for a list of these sources

^[26] Most nonprofit organizations are expected, or required, to conduct independent annual audits of their finances. These audits are in addition to the annual filing of the IRS Form 990. The information presented in audited financial statements is often more reliable than the information in the IRS Form 990 since it is assessed by a Certified Public Accountant and it must adhere to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).For this reason, many foundations and governments stipulate audits of nonprofit finances as a condition for receiving funding, and a handful of states (e.g., Arkansas, California) require them by law. Annual audits, therefore, are already available, highly accurate, and allow for comparisons to be made over time and between organizations

^[27] The approach to collecting data on museums involved taking the perspective of the general public. The first step involved seeking information from museum sources (e.g. websites, annual reports. etc). The next step was reaching out to every museum in the full set of AAMD member museums with an email or contact method listed on their website asking for data. The second step of this process resulted in 44 museums (22%) responding, either providing data, asking for additional information, or denying the request altogether. Of the museums that already shared both visitor numbers and consolidated/audited financial statements on their websites, four of them (Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Milwaukee Art Museum, Portland (Maine) Museum of Art, and San Antonio Museum of Art) also responded to independent research requests by providing/confirming the same information, suggesting that transparency may have become a positive habit at these institutions, practiced across departments. We may have more to learn from these “super-transparent” museums.

^[28] This project’s data collection process involves collecting many more indicators that help measure museum resources and their products and services for the public, but which are relatively easier to access. These include website engagement measures, social media posts, total number of hours open, the number of free days, and others.

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Benoit-Bryan, Jen, Diane Jean-Mary, Mia Locks. “Workplace Equity and Organizational Culture in US Art Museums.” Museums Moving Forward. 2023. Available at https://museumsmovingforward.com/publications/7/download

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APPENDIX

Selected Bibliography of Museum Performance Studies

Basso, A., & Funari, S. (2004). A Quantitative Approach to Evaluate the Relative Efficiency of Museums.
Journal of Cultural Economics, 28(3), 195-216. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41810852

Basso, A., & Funari, S. (2020). A Three-System Approach That Integrates DEA, BSC, and AHP for Museum
Evaluation. Decisions in Economic Finance, 43, 413-441. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10203-020-00298-4

Basso, A., Casarin, F., & Funari, S. (2018). How Well ls The Museum Performing? A Joint Use of DEA and BSC
to Measure the Performance of Museums, Omega, Volume 81, 67-84. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.omega.2017.09.010.

Basso, A., Funari, S. (2004). A Quantitative Approach to Evaluate the Relative Efficiency of Museums. Journal
of Cultural Economics, 28(3), 195-216. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41810852

Basso A, Funari S. (2020). DEA-BSC and Diamond Performance to Support Museum Management.
Mathematics,8(9): 1402. https://doi.org/10.3390/math8091402

Basso, A., & Funari, S. (2004). Measuring the Performance of Museums: Classical and FDH DEA Models.
Business, Economic, Art. Corpus ID: 115010357

Bertacchini, E.E., Dalle Nogare, C. & Scuderi, R. (2018). Ownership, Organization Structure and Public Service
Provision: The Case of Museums. Journal of Cultural Economics, 42, 619-643. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10824-018-9321-9

Carvalho, P., Silva Costa, J., & Carvalho, A. (2014). The Economic Performance Of Portuguese Museums.
Urban Public Economics Review, 20, 12-37. https://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=50432637003

Castro, M. F., & Rizzo, I. (2009). Performance Measurement of Heritage Conservation Activity in Sicily.
International Journal of Arts Management, 11(2), 29-41. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41064985

Chen, Y., Yu, L, & Yin, P. (2023). Analysis of Operation Efficiency of Local Museums Based on DEA and
Malmquist Method. Advances in Economics, Business and Management Research. Proceedings of the 2023
4th International Conference on Management Science and Engineering Management (ICMSEM 2023).
2352-5428. DOI: 10.2991/978-94-6463-256-9 _ 128

Del Barrio-Tellado, M.J., & Herrero-Prieto, LC., (2022). Analysing Productivity and Technical Change in
Museums: A Dynamic Network Approach, Journal of Cultural Heritage, 53, 24-34, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.culher.2021.10.007

Del Barrio, M. J., & Herrero, LC. (2014). Evaluating the Efficiency of Museums Using Multiple Outputs:
Evidence from a Regional System of Museums in Spain, International Journal of Cultural Policy, 20(2),
221-238. DOI: 10.1080/10286632.2013.76429

Del Barrio-Tellado, M.J., Gomez-Vega, M., & Herrero-Prieto, L.C., (2023). Performance of Cultural Heritage
Institutions: A Regional Perspective, Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Volume 87, Part B, 101593.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.seps.2023.101593.

Del Barrio, M.J., Herrero, L.C., & Sanz, J.A. (2009). Measuring the Efficiency of Heritage Institutions: A Case
Study of a Regional System of Museums in Spain, Journal of Cultural Heritage, 10(2), 258-268.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.culher.2008.08.012.

Feldstein, M. (Ed.). (2009). The Economics of Art Museums. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Guccio, C., Martorana, M., Mazza, I., Pignataro, G., & Rizzo, I., (2020). An Analysis of the Managerial
Performance of Italian Museums Using a Generalised Conditional Efficiency Model, Socio-Economic
Planning Sciences, 72, 100891, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.seps.2020.100891

Guccio, C., Martorana, M., Mazza, I., Pignataro, G., Rizzo, I. (2022). ls Innovation in ICT Valuable for the
Efficiency of Italian Museums? European Planning Studies, 30(9), 1695-1716. https://doi.org/10.1080/09654313.2020.1865277

Guerrero, N.M., Aparicio, & J.,Valero-Carreras, D. (2022) Combining Data Envelopment Analysis and Machine
Learning. Mathematics, 10, 909. https://doi.org/10.3390/math10060909

Herrero-Prieto, L.C., (2013) Is Museum Performance Affected by Location and Institution Type? Measuring
Cultural Institution Efficiency Through Non-Parametric Techniques. The Institute for International Integration
Studies Discussion Paper Series https://ideas.repec.org/p/iis/dispap/iiisdp425.html

International Scientific Conference. (2016). European Financial Systems 2016: Proceedings of the 13th
International Scientific Conference: June 27-28, 2016: Brno, Czech Republic. Masaryk University.
ISBN: 978-80-210-8308-0
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1d5KvNM30 _ GN0LDrAiZXMJcMFjzfyxnXS/view?usp=sharing

Kim, S., & Chung, J., (2020). Enhancing Visitor Return Rate of National Museums: Application of Data
Envelopment Analysis to Millennials, Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research, 25(1), 76-88, DOI:
10.1080/10941665.2019.1578812

Mairesse, F., & Vanden Eeckaut, P. (2002). Museum Assessment and FDH Technology: Towards a Global Approach. Journal of Cultural Economics, 26, 261-286. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1019970325060 O’Hare, M. (1975). Why Do People Go to Museums? The Effect of Prices and Hours on Museum Utilization.
Museum International, 27(3), 134-146.O’Hare, M. (2005). Capitalizing Art Museum Collections: Awkward for Museums but Good for Art and for Society. Goldman School of Public Policy Working Paper No. GSPP0B-005. O’Hare, M. (2015). Museums Can Change-Will They? Democracy, 36, Spring. https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/36/museums-can-changewill-they/

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