FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Nov. 17, 2014

Wallace Report Presents Guidelines on a Major Challenge for Museums

WASHINGTON, DC—The American Alliance of Museums (AAM) is one of seven nonprofit arts service organizations partnering with the Wallace Foundation to share the principles for reaching and retaining new audiences embodied in “The Road to Results: Effective Practices for Building Arts Organizations,” the latest Foundation report, released fall 2014.

“The Road to Results” presents nine common keys to success for building audiences, based on the experiences and evidence from successful arts organizations participating in the Wallace Excellence Awards (WEA) initiative, a multi-year effort, concluded in 2012, that supported audience-building projects in 54 visual and performing arts organizations around the country. The report can be downloaded from the Wallace Foundation’s Knowledge Center at www.wallacefoundation.org.

The Wallace Foundation is partnering with AAM to ensure the report’s findings—which constitute a guide to success in what is a common challenge for all nonprofits—enable the wide-ranging U.S. arts community to succeed in sharing its enriching programs, exhibitions and performances with an increasingly diverse population. The October release of the report included a livestreamed discussion of its results with a panel of national arts leaders, including Jane Chu, recently confirmed chair of the National Endowment for the Arts. The recorded event can be accessed at www.ThrivingArts.org.“AAM is privileged to partner with the Wallace Foundation in spreading the word about these important findings,” said AAM president Ford W. Bell. “Museums face a formidable and ongoing challenge in reaching and sustaining new audiences in light of the ever-changing demographics of our country. American society is increasingly diverse, and for museums to achieve their mission of serving all the public, we need to reach more pieces of the American mosaic. This report will help museums do so.”

“One of the goals of every Wallace initiative is to share the insights learned by individual organizations, and so our partnership with AAM and other arts service organizations is critical in helping us to communicate with the field,” said Daniel Windham, The Wallace Foundation’s arts director. “We are looking forward to working more closely with AAM and developing a dialogue with its members so that we can develop programs that not only help arts organizations to survive, but to thrive.”

AAM will be sharing the principles in ”The Road to Results” throughout its digital  and print publications, in a series of professional development programs, as well as on its website at aam-us.org.

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About the American Alliance of Museums

The American Alliance of Museums is the largest museum service organization in the world, serving all types of museums, including art, history, science, botanic gardens, zoos and aquariums. The Alliance helps museums serve their communities by developing standards and best practices, offering professional training and resources, and serving as the national voice of museums for the public, media and elected officials. Working on behalf of all of America’s museums, more than 400,000 museum employees, thousands of volunteers and the visitors who come to museums an estimated 850 million times each year, the Alliance is dedicated to bolstering museums in promoting lifelong learning, celebrating cultural heritage and inspiring the creative skills to compete in a global economy. For more information, visit www.aam-us.org.

About The Wallace Foundation

Based in New York City, The Wallace Foundation is an independent national philanthropy dedicated to fostering improvements in learning and enrichment for disadvantaged children and the vitality of the arts for everyone. It seeks to catalyze broad impact by supporting the development, testing, and sharing of new solutions and effective practices. At www.wallacefoundation.org, the Foundation maintains an online library about what it has learned, including knowledge from its current efforts aimed at: strengthening education leadership to improve student achievement, helping selected cities make good afterschool programs available to more children, expanding arts learning opportunities for children and teens, providing high-quality summer learning programs to disadvantaged children and enriching and expanding the school day in ways that benefit students, and helping arts organizations build their audiences.

Media Contacts

Dewey Blanton
Alliance Communications
202-218-7704