This visual Data Story is based on findings from the 2024 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers, a national survey of American museum visitors from AAM and Wilkening Consulting. Every year, the survey partners with individual museums to research their audiences and yield insights about their behaviors and preferences, both on an institutional and national level. Interested in joining the 2025 edition on the themes of repeat visitation, social connection, and community trust and responsibility? Sign up by February 28, 2025, for a special early bird rate.
“I was impressed by this survey lifting cultivating hope as a significant role of museums — even while exhibits prominently evoke situations of lament. BRAVO!!!”
“It is not a museum’s job to force emotional responses on visitors. Do not manipulate us.”
“I don’t really see this as a museum’s purpose, but I do feel hopeless often.”
For many of us who work in the museum field, the idea of “hope” feels like a positive outcome of a museum visit, and thus worthy of cultivation.
Fortunately, most museum-goers agree! As we saw in our introductory Data Story on hope, four out of five agreed that the cultivation of hope was important.
But how important?
When we analyzed results more fully, we found that while 40% of frequent museum-goers are very enthusiastic about the cultivation of hope in museums, a similar number are actually more ambivalent. Additionally, a small but vocal minority of museum-goers disagreed with the idea entirely.
- Resistant
- Frequent Museum-Goers: 18 percent
- U.S. Adults: 13 percent
- Ambivalent
- Frequent Museum-Goers: 43 percent
- U.S. Adults: 42 percent
- Enthusiastic
- Frequent Museum-Goers: 40 percent
- U.S. Adults: 45 percent
In this Data Story, we will explore more about these differing attitudes and delve into open-ended responses to understand the “why“ behind the results.
The Enthusiastic
“Since the pandemic and political chaos that floods the TV and social media, we have a society filled with anxiety. A place of solitude and hope for the future on any subject is welcomed.”
“Very important, for the future generations. I personally feel like I don’t have much fuel left.”
If there was a common theme among enthusiastic respondents, it was that hope is needed more than ever in these tumultuous times.
Repeatedly, they mentioned mental health, emotional well-being, and that a feeling of hope was necessary for motivating people to work towards positive solutions.
For the most part, these enthusiastic respondents fall into the more “open” category of respondents we have been tracking: they are significantly more likely to be curious, empathetic individuals who want to be challenged, support climate action, and have inclusive attitudes. Additionally, people of color were much more likely to be enthusiastic about hope in museums: half fell in this segment versus 38% of white people.
There was a cautionary note from some enthusiastic respondents, however: warnings against false hope. They wanted the cultivation of hope to be realistic and backed up with proactive changes…not a “sentimental” hope that assumes others will take responsibility for solutions.
The Ambivalent (and sometimes perplexed)
“To me, it’s an odd word choice. Hope is always important, I guess, but it’s not why I go to museums. I go to be inspired and awed.”
“I haven’t thought about it too much, but in the context of the times, I think this is important to begin considering.”
Respondents in this segment were generally open to the idea of museums cultivating hope, but for many, the idea was a surprise.
It simply had not occurred to them and they had to take a moment to consider it. After that consideration, they indicated either a limited degree of support or outright ambivalence.
Generally, for most in this segment, hope is a perfectly fine outcome of a museum experience. But it isn’t the primary goal and they are also perfectly fine if it doesn’t happen.
For some, however, it was simply perplexing. They used words like “odd,” “vague,” or “strange.” A few also said that they didn’t feel this was the job or responsibility of museums…but not in a way that indicated they opposed the idea.
“I do not put this burden on the museum.”
The Resistant
“I don’t want the museum to manipulate my emotions in any way.”
“YOU’RE A MUSEUM! It’s not your job. NO MORE WOKE!”
For those who were resistant to the idea of museums cultivating hope, that resistance was often framed through lenses of politics and manipulation.
That is, they felt “hope” was coded language for “woke” ideologies (with “woke” being used as a pejorative term) or that museums were trying to tell them how to feel.
These knee-jerk, emotional responses sometimes yielded strong language. Additionally, these “resistant” respondents were over 2x more likely than “ambivalent” respondents, and 4.5x more likely than “enthusiastic” respondents, to hold anti-inclusive attitudes. They were also significantly less likely to hold community-oriented attitudes or think that museums should connect people to humanity.
This indicates that more “resistant” respondents are lumping together a collection of values, including hope, that they consider inappropriate for museums…likely because they fear that the hopes museums might cultivate in visitors would be hopes that these “resistant” individuals do not share. This suggests there is a fundamental trust issue at the heart of their resistance.
Overall, however, most museum-goers do want to emerge from museum experience with a feeling of hope for the future. And given their overall openness to imaginative experiences as well, museums can be fantastic places to help people imagine creative solutions and feel empowered to make a difference in their communities.
Additionally, follow-up questions in the 2024 Annual Survey indicate that, regardless of how individuals feel about hope in museum settings, there are common values that most of us share when we think about the future. We’ll explore those shared values in our final Data Story on hope.
“I am choosing ‘other’ [for this question] because I think it is even MORE important than ‘very important.’ The world is a mess. I believe art and all museums can give us [hope] and will save us all.”
Annual Survey of Museum-Goers Data Stories are created by Wilkening Consulting on behalf of the American Alliance of Museums. Sources include:
• 2024 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers, n = 90,178; 202 museums participating
• 2024 Broader Population Sampling, n = 2,154
• 2017 – 2023 Annual Surveys of Museum-Goers
*Data Stories share research about both frequent museum-goers (typically visit multiple museums each year) and the broader population (including casual, sporadic, and non-visitors to museums).
More Data Stories can be found at wilkeningconsulting.com/data-stories.
This is a fascinating article. Thank you for sharing it and for the accessible version printed below the image version.