This is a recorded session from the 2023 AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo. How do you demonstrate that your institution provides social value and community impact? This is a question that all museum boards, leadership, and staff contemplate, but supplying the data that policy makers expect can be challenging. This panel and discussion will offer one model for how museums can describe and corroborate the social and financial value they deliver to their diverse publics.

Download the session slides for Leaning into Value Measuring and Monetizing Visitor Experiences.

Lori Fogarty:

Well, it’s great to see you all. My name is Lori Fogarty. I’m the director of the Oakland Museum of California, and I am here with an esteemed panel that are tightly squeezed on this stage. So, let me first introduce folks. While I do that, you’ll see we’re representatives of the 11 museums that participated in this study with ILI and with John Falk. So, there are all of the institutions that are represented.

While we introduce ourselves and get started, this, as you may know, was a study that was really about wellbeing, and the length of impact visitors feel of wellbeing after a museum visit, and then actually how that is quantified. So as we’re starting, we wanted you to just begin to think like you were a visitor taking one of these surveys. So answer for yourself, based on the last museum you visited just for enjoyment. That can be your own museum. But if you visited another museum maybe here in Denver, you can think about that, and then these couple of questions.

So first of all, let me introduce the person behind me. John Falk, executive director of the Institute for Learning Innovation. Liza Herzog, who is the director of evaluation and impact at the Barnes Foundation. J.Z. or I’m going to try it. Okay.

Julian Zugazagoitia:

Go, go, go.

Lori Fogarty:

Julian Zugazagoitia. No. No, nope, nope. Zugazago-

Julian Zugazagoitia:

Zugazagoitia.

Lori Fogarty:

Zugazagoitia. I know I didn’t pronounce that right, but we’re going to call him J.Z. for today, director and CEO the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Tracy Kennan, curator of education at New Orleans Museum of Art. And I’m here representing the Oakland Museum of California. So I hope you’ve had a chance to take a look at these, give this a little thought, and I’ll pass it to John.

John Falk:

Thank you so much, Lori, and thanks everybody for being here. And I’m sorry that we don’t have more space for everybody. So I’m going to really quickly give you a sense of this study. The who was, as Lori said, there were 11 mid-sized US art museums. There’s a list of all their names. And what we did is we were trying to understand to what degree do institutions like museums create value and can we in fact define that value, measure that value, and dare I say, even monetize that value?

Put a dollar value on that, which is perhaps a little … I’ll talk about that in a second. But the gist of this is that we spend a lot of time not talking to people like ourselves, we intuitively think that institutions like museums are valuable, but invariably we are trying to convince others outside, including politicians, policymakers. And for better or for worse, the language of policymakers, the language of funders is money. That’s what they have to give. And so we’re going to talk about this in monetary terms.

Basically, we did a random sample of visitors at each of these institutions. The target was 500 visitors per institution. It was based on an assumption I made, which I’ll explain in a second, was an errant assumption. So it goes when you do research and we randomly intercepted people in the museum. We asked them if they would be willing to participate in the study. Then if they said yes, we handed them a device and they could enter their first name only, their email address.

And we asked them a few questions about what brought them to the museum today. And then one month later, these thousands of people, roughly 2000 people, were randomly sent one of two surveys. One survey was basically asking, “Did you perceive that you had one of these 16 experiences,” like the questions that we asked at the beginning, “And if so, how long did that last?” Did that last an hour or so? That last a day? Did it last a week, a month?

And then the second group of people were asked the same questions, but not whether they had the experience, but basically said that people who go to places like museums who have leisure experiences have these kind of outcomes. And what would you say the dollar value of being able to see things that you don’t ordinarily see? And what would the value be to you if that lasted an hour or two, if it lasted a day, if it lasted a week, if it lasted two weeks or a month, what would be the value to you if you got to spend quality time with your family? And then we put those two pieces of data together to actually come up with some numbers.

And actually I skipped, somehow there’s a slide that got missed in this process, but that’s okay, we’ll move right along. The basic finding was that lo and behold, this is from survey one, that people said that they not only had these experiences, but they lasted not just an hour or two, which is what most leisure experiences last, the length of time that you’re engaged them, but they actually lasted longer, on average, anywhere from one on the far right for physical wellbeing all the way up to almost a week. For some people, these experiences only lasted an hour or so. And I would say that something like 99% of everybody said yes, they had these experiences.

There were a really small percentage, a couple percentage of people said for any one of these that they did not have that experience. But the vast majority of people, overwhelming majority said, yes, I had this experience and they lasted these lengths of time. Some people said it lasted weeks or even a month. Since we surveyed people a month later, that was the maximum limit. But then we also asked people to assign a value, as I said, and they had on the survey they could select the value anywhere from zero to a thousand dollars in terms of whether this experience was worth something to them.

And lo and behold, when we combined those two data sets in terms of these 11 museums, the personal wellbeing was equal to $270 dollars per visit, $227 dollars for intellectual wellbeing, $208, $200 for physical wellbeing. But the value of that experience was the sum of these because everybody said they had multiple experiences, not just one of these. And I need to explain these values because people look at that and say, “Whoa, $900, how can that be? Nobody’s going to pay $900 to go to a museum.”

And that’s true because what we were measuring … And it is true, it is true. Wouldn’t it be better if it wasn’t true? And we can talk about what that might imply. But what we were measuring in the world of economics is what’s called economic value as opposed to market value. Market value is what you pay. So that would be the price of admission. Or the example I’d like to give is take this ring here, which is my wedding ring, and if I took this to a pawn shop and asked what is it worth, the guy in the pawn shop would say, “Well, it’s silver. I’ll put it on the scale. I’ll give you 20 bucks for it.”

But it’s clearly, if you ask me what it’s worth, it’s worth a lot more because it has all that emotional history, all kinds of things. And the value that I would put on this ring may well be thousands of dollars. That’s the economic value. It’s actually what people say in the abstract, “This is what this is worth to me.” It isn’t what I’d be willing to pay, but it is essentially the maximum value. And that’s what we were measuring. But once we had this number, turns out, as most of you know, not just one person comes to a museum for a day, but thousands of people come to museums.

And so the actual value created by the institutions was not that $905. It was actually $905 times all the visitors that come in a year, that’s the annual value. But of course, it’s not free to run a museum. So you can create a cost benefit analysis by saying, “Well, actually on average, these 11 museums created over $300,000 dollars in value per year.” But on average it was about $28 million dollars to run them. $325 million, I’m sorry, and $28 million. But if you divide those two numbers, you get a cost benefit ratio. And what that says is that there was $12 dollars in value created for every dollar spent.

And again, to give you a perspective on this in general, for not-for-profits, anything above a cost benefit of $2 is amazing, so these are really, really important numbers. And we have a technical report and we’re working on a public report which we can make available to everybody who’s interested. The technical report is already on the Institute for Learning Innovation website.

But the bottom line is that museums deliver measurable societal value by cost-effectively supporting the public’s personal, intellectual, social, and physical wellbeing. And that’s the slide that was missing when I told you what all those things mean. But we can talk more about that later. Here’s the basic theory, the logic behind this whole study. So we know that museums have value, intuitively we understand this. Literally millions, and worldwide I’ve estimated, more than a billion people every year go to museums. So they wouldn’t go if they didn’t perceive it had value to them.

But then how do we measure that value? Well, the good news is there’s 30, 40, 50 years worth of visitor studies research that’s actually asked people, “What do you do when you go to a museum? What is the benefit that you get from?” It hasn’t always been asked in that way. Often people, like I did early on, said, “Tell me what you can remember about the experience.” And it turns out that virtually everybody who goes to the museum can remember that experience. Well, that’s nontrivial because most of us can’t remember what we did yesterday, let alone what we did a month ago or a year ago.

But when you ask people, and I challenge you, if you haven’t done this, ask anybody, “Have you ever gone to a museum?” It can be your next door neighbor. They will say yes, “So tell me about it.” They will tell you about going to that museum. Well, there aren’t a lot of experiences in life where that happens. And research suggests that the only things we remember are things that are meaningful to us because if it wasn’t meaningful, we forget it. But then research also says, “Well, what defines some things that are meaningful?” Well, it turns out all of us define meaning in ways that affect us.

So what is meaningful to me is what has been meaningful in terms of my wellbeing that may not be meaningful to you. You’ll remember different things, which is why when you talk to people who’ve gone to museums, they all remember different things because everyone who went to the museum had a meaningful experience, but it was unique to them. But the good news is you can look at that data and you can see that they fall into four basic categories. People talk about awe and wonder. They talk about having spiritual experiences, that it’s fostered their creativity or sense of identity, which I’ve called personal wellbeing.

They talk about how it was curious, and they learn things that they didn’t know about before. That’s intellectual wellbeing. They talk about how they got to spend quality time with their friends and family and feel that they did something useful socially and found out more about the world in which they live, particularly their community. That’s social wellbeing. And people also talk about how these spaces make them feel comfortable. They feel safe, that actually for many people it’s a great escape from the day-to-day that’s physical wellbeing.

Well, it turns out you can measure those things, and that’s what we did. Thank you for the opportunity to say that.

Lori Fogarty:

Great. Well, John, you can stay up here because I think this first question is for you.

John Falk:

Okay.

Lori Fogarty:

I would say the Oakland Museum of California is interdisciplinary, but all of the other museums that participated in this particular study were art museums. So I would love to get your take, because I know you did a pilot study with different kinds of museums, if you think this kind of study, these same categories of wellbeing are as applicable to other types of museums, or would the measurements be similar or would they be different?

John Falk:

So for better or for worse, and I think it’s for better, by design, the questions that we asked were framed as generic questions that were applicable to any museum. So by the way, I also did a similar kind of study in Finland where we collect the data from eight different museums in Finland. And by the way, the dollar value was almost exactly the same.

Lori Fogarty:

The Euro value.

John Falk:

Well I translated, it was actually something like 830 euros. But when you round up for the dollars, it was in the neighborhood just a little bit north of $900. So basically there were cultural institution, science museums. The pilot study was also, these are generic questions. They are content neutral. And even in the pilot study, we collect the data from virtual experiences because it was during the pandemic.

Lori Fogarty:

Interesting.

John Falk:

So the answer’s yes.

Lori Fogarty:

All right, thank you. So we’re going to open it up to the panel now, and I think we have most cases one person who’s going to take the lead. But I invite us all to chime in if something one of us says, sparks an idea for the rest of you, and we’ll roll this down. So before the study, I am really intrigued by the concept of wellbeing and how John defines this and the study defines this, because I think often we think of wellbeing as this state that we feel after yoga or something, but it’s a very different way that you’ve described it. And so I’m curious for you all, if before the study, had you thought about wellbeing as a characteristic or impact of your work or mission and what was new or different about this framing for you and your institution?

Liza Herzog:

So thank you. I’m Liza and I’m with the Barnes Foundation. We’re in Philadelphia, and I volunteered for this question because we had indeed over the past year thought about it. So I’m going to say yes with an asterisk. And here’s what I’ll explain, the road of early 2022, when we partnered with a local university, colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania’s Humanities and Human Flourishing Project. We joined forces on an IMLS research proposal for a multi-phase project centered on art museum mindfulness. And I want to give you just a thumbnail on what those deliverables were because they’re very relevant to how we were thinking about wellbeing. One was an academic article for a research audience interested in arts and wellbeing. Another was a practical resource toolkit for museums. The third was an art ed publication and the fourth, much like what we’re doing now, was a presentation to museum audiences.

And so that work, and I’m using this as a model of how we were starting to think about wellbeing, was comprised of four key activities. We would both examine the structure of our existing programming. We would develop and pilot, and in this case it was a mindfulness program. We would initiate routine data collection and program evaluation around this new program. And then the fourth piece was to share resources with other art museums. And so the benefit to the program participants as we saw it and as we wrote it, and the asterisk is coming, the primary benefit was indeed improve wellbeing with two broader objectives. The first increased use of mindfulness programming nationally, and the second was increased recognition and appreciation of wellbeing benefits of art museum, and they happened to be all our museums, visitation. So a second and related way that we were thinking about wellbeing this summer we are offering a new class, art and wellbeing, designed and taught by a guest instructor who happens to also be the executive director of that humanities and human flourishing project.

So a footnote there, and then I’ll give you the asterisk, was that in 2020, HHF was designated as an NEA research lab through which came the initiative Art Museums, Institutions for Wellbeing. So that that research initiative will explore the connections between cultural institutions and the cultivation of human flourishing. And the designation does come with funding to support a conference in Philadelphia in the spring of 2024 in arts culture and wellbeing in which we plan to participate. The asterisk is we ended up not moving ahead with the joint research proposal for a few reasons, primary of which was our inability at the time to make that direct connection between wellbeing benefits and our strategic planning process. This I would say is evolving as we begin to map wellbeing outcomes to strategic priorities and wellbeing measures to strategic tactics.

Julian Zugazagoitia:

She [inaudible 00:19:11].

Lori Fogarty:

I can say a few words. There were a couple of dimensions that I thought were really interesting in the way this study and the way John has described wellbeing and in the analysis of it. One is this idea of the length of time that people continue to experience this sense of wellbeing, which for me really prompted thinking about how do we intentionally make space for people to create memories. You were saying people often, and we hear this a lot, that they’ve been as a kid to the museum or they came a year ago or they came to a specific event and they have a lot of recollection about it.

And so what is that Idea of not just having the experience in the moment but actually intentionally creating moments where people can take away memories? So that was something that I was intrigued by. And the other was something, I don’t know, the study was probably done 20 years ago, about different types of visitors facilitate. So if you’ve read other research studies that John has done there, they’re this whole concept of visitor motivation. People come as facilitators, as hobbyists or professionals, explorers I think is the main one. And what’s the fourth one?

John Falk:

Experience seekers.

Lori Fogarty:

Yeah. So that people actually come to a museum saying, “I’m going to facilitate this experience for my-”

John Falk:

And recharger.

Lori Fogarty:

Oh, rechargers, right. “For my child. I’m going to have a learning experience,” or, “Oh, I know a lot about maps. I’m going to go see this exhibit on maps because I’m going to take something away that I use in my life,” or, “I’ve got to get away from the stress. I’m going to go and have this moment of contemplation.” And I thought it was really interesting to see in some cases there was a correlation between which areas of wellbeing were highest based on the person’s motivation, but in a couple cases not.

John Falk:

Right.

Lori Fogarty:

So I think one key concept of wellbeing is this sense of balance is how you, I think, describe it, that it’s actually a biological and evolutionary sense of things are okay, physically things are good, things are in balance. So even if you think, “I’m going to go to this museum to recharge to, find inspiration,” you may actually have whole other dimensions of wellbeing that you weren’t deliberately seeking out. So I thought that was a really interesting part of the study as well. So next question.

Liza Herzog:

Well, and can I add to that?

Lori Fogarty:

Oh, please. Yeah.

Liza Herzog:

One really cool, Well this was part of the design, was we each contributed a set of custom questions for our own institutions so that those data on those personas and proportionally who we were most serving, at least during that three month period, representative of this random sample and were able to relate those data to the four facets of wellbeing. So that was another benefit.

Lori Fogarty:

Interesting. So we started to talk about how we’re actually using this. And I think in the conversations we’ve had, and that was also really a wonderful part of the study, there are very few opportunities for several museums to actually collaborate around a research study, which was a big reason that we wanted to participate as just finding like-minded institutions who are interested in this work. And we’ve talked about how we use this data externally and internally. And Tracy, I’m going to actually start with external. So I’d love to hear how you all are thinking about utilizing this information either to build relationships with existing audiences or to develop new ones.

Tracy Kennan:

Thank you. Well, I like to put this into two different buckets and also that this came at a very fortuitous time for us. We were in the middle of a strategic planning session, so this information has really fed into our new mission statement and our strategic plan in general. But I’d like to use two examples of existing programs and thinking about how we can expand and make those richer. And in our learning and engagement department, we have a couple of programs that are at either end of the age spectrum. One is our Mini Masters Program, which is a multi visit program for four-year-olds. We partner with four schools and we really try to make sure that we’re also engaging with parents and teachers. And so I think in looking at the wellbeing aspect is not only connecting to the curriculum that we are trying to do, connecting to the families, making sure that they’re participating in some ways, whether it’s coming on a field trip or coming to the showcase at the end of the school year.

And so I think that this is going to enable us to really emphasize the wellbeing for everybody, that they’re going to be learning about different cultures. Yes, they’re going to be learning together. There’s the social aspect as well and that it spreads out. It’s not just for the intended audience of the Mini Masters, but also for their families and teachers and their circles that can expand out from there. And then we also have at the other end a newer program, and perhaps some of you also have begun creative aging programs for people 55 and older. We have a program called Art Thrives that’s funded by E.A. Michelson Foundation. And wellbeing is really at the center of this program because yes, it’s about older adults coming and learning how to make or do something, but it’s especially about the friendships that they can make while doing that on a multi-session art classes.

And so again, I think that this just underlines the foundation of being able to offer the programs and the way that we’ve often said, “Well, everybody feels good about this, it’s going well.” But now we have the research to underline that, that we can now go to funders, go to our board and really explain the importance of all of the different aspects that they’re not only learning something but also making friends and that they are feeling better. And we have the research to show that.

Lori Fogarty:

Awesome.

Julian Zugazagoitia:

Yes.

Lori Fogarty:

Yeah.

Julian Zugazagoitia:

Just amplifying what you said and especially the timing of this research was perfect because it was coming out of COVID and if there’s a moment that we all have lived isolation, much more anxiety, pain, there’s all these forms of expression. So testing and seeing people coming again in person with others was I think very relevant. And then measuring how long that feeling stands and stays was very important. And how we utilize that, and I think the practical side for all of us … Here we’re all converted, so we’re talking to all of you for one reason or another, went to museum once, either had a great experience and all of a sudden were working in the field. So we know we are talking to ourselves, and that what feels intuitively to us, sometimes it’s different to translate.

And so what we’re trying to give ourselves to is tools to convince that aunt that says, “I like that you work at a museum, they pay you? Oh, it’s good for you, but no, I’d rather stay home.” So how do we convert all of the people, whether sometimes are politicians or policymakers, of the value of museums when they don’t see it? And so this gives us yet one more tool, the monetization of that and saying also how we create value. If you saw at the panel, the introductional panel, those are tools that it’s good to have, how much the industry that we are in brings to the community at large so that we can again, not be perceived as something good to have, but something that is an essential part. Last but not least, when you saw those numbers, you’re like, “Really?” And I was the first one to say, and I’ve been debating, “Well, is it really additive or is it just around one?”

But regardless of the real number, we know because all of us also are in fundraising and we know that our patrons, when we have those incredible moments where a member ups their membership beyond the level of when it’s transactional, the transaction is, “I’ll get free parking,” and when it’s just a little bit above, it’s, “I want to be a contributor because a great city needs a great museum.” Once we start reaching those, what I call the philanthropic levels or when our patrons, whether it’s board members or sponsor says, “This exhibition or this program is so important to our community, I’m going to fund it with millions.” So your numbers dwarf a little in comparison to what we have. So intuitively we know it, we have it with those who are, but we still have to make sure that we gain a better communication for those who are not yet convinced of the value that we do. And so I think that’s part of having yet one more tool that is super important.

John Falk:

Personally, I think the value of this study, and I should be clear, this is one way to begin to think about how to measure these outcomes. It may not be the best way, it’s certainly not the only way, other people have come up with other ways, but I think it’s a step in the right direction. And the reason I think it’s a step in the right direction is for two reasons. One, regardless of the outcomes, the specifics of the outcomes, that it begins to move us to be able to talk about value in generic ways that transcend the specifics and the esoterics, it gets to the heart of the human experience. These outcomes are the kinds of things that everybody strives to do every day of their life. And to be able to articulate that this does happen in these institutions for many people in substantive and significant ways is important.

But then the other comment I’ll make is that figure of $905 dollars per visit in part is shocking only because we’ve never actually been able to measure this before. And if we really start measuring the valuable experiences in our lives, we will find that they’re worth this much and move away from that transactional, that market value of what it costs. We have no sound market value for what admission to a museum is. And all the economic studies that have been done that are based on asking people at the museum, “What is the value of this,” to be honest, are tainted by the fact that we always subsidize admission.

We make it free, we make it really cheap because we’re highly motivated to make it cheap, but we live in a transactional world. So somebody assumes, “Well, because it was free or $10 dollars, that must be what it’s worth,” because that’s what we’re used to. So part of this is changing the conversation and changing the dialogue to say it’s actually worth a not $10 dollars, not even a hundred dollars, it’s worth closer to a thousand dollars and the things we value in life are worth that much. And that’s an important conversation to begin to have.

Lori Fogarty:

Yeah, I have to admit that at first, and I’m sure for some of you, it almost goes against the grain for us to put a number on an experience like that. And yet it’s reinforcing, and I think about as you were saying, Julian, where I can imagine using this externally is we receive pretty significant funding from the city of Oakland. And I think some of our individual donors I would talk to about the sense of wellbeing and that aspect of it and how we see our visitors having all of these experiences and all of these dimensions. But with the city of Oakland to say, “For every dollar you put in we’re generating $12 worth of value,” is an important tool to have. So I’m curious about one other thing though before we come off of the external and how we might convey this externally and how we think about it with new audiences.

There was a slide here that included information about the demographics of the study, which is one I know that you’ve given a lot of thought to and I’m curious John, both about if you saw, and granted it was a small number, any kind of difference in the wellbeing scores with people of different demographics and also just recognizing 75% of the folks who took the survey were white, which is not necessarily reflective of all of our institutions, but might be pretty reflective of the art museum field at large. So I’m curious your take on both of those aspects.

John Falk:

Yeah, thanks. So let me start with the second one first. In some ways it is the most direct. So even though we took a random sample of people in the museums and sent them these surveys, it is not clear that we got a random sample of response back. 75% of the people who responded were in fact self-reported that they were white. And by the way, we had 12 different demographic categories. And in talking to colleagues, it turns out that this kind of survey response bias as it were, because the institution said, “Well, our demographics are not 75% white,” is an interesting issue which we have to deal with in terms of how we collect this data and the future. You have to think about what’s going on about why people are responding, who’s responding to surveys and why. But in terms of demographic impacts, we did not see any significant demographic impacts by gender, by age.

There were slight age effects and we didn’t see any by race, ethnicity. But then we didn’t have a really good sample to be able to make that call. And to be honest, even if we did, I wouldn’t have felt comfortable talking about that because the truth is the way we have been conditioned to think about these issues like race, ethnicity, it’s a really, really blunt instrument. The truth is we all are much more complicated than those categories. And what is really important is life experience and the life experience of an African American is different in some ways from my life experience, but there are likely to be African Americans who have many commonalities with my life experience.

So depending on the question that I’m asking, that life experience may be a more important variable than their skin color. And not to mention the fact that we have a very complex and problematic way of even defining people’s race, ethnicity. So we don’t have good data at the moment. We need to have better data because we’re all concerned about equitability. But, and this is my personal opinion, that equity is a bigger issue than race ethnicity. And so we need to be much more sensitive and deal with complexity and nuance of these questions rather than formulaic. And so we don’t have any formulaic answers and even if we did, I wouldn’t have reported them.

Lori Fogarty:

Thank you. I think it was just important to acknowledge and something that I know the organizations thought about and grappled with as well. Whoops, I just … There we go. So internal, how are all thinking about what the application of these results might be? Is it influencing how you’re thinking about designing exhibitions or programs or hiring or training? What about on the internal front. Liza, you want to take it?

Liza Herzog:

Yeah, I will. And I also want to underscore the uniqueness that has been said of just being a part of the national effort with esteemed peers and it was such a robust research design. I think it’s something that enables for us, and this will bleed into how we use it internally, but a lot of cross departmental and cross role engagement within our institution. So the ways that we’ve already begun to use it internally are, I’m going to talk about four. One is we have presented a summary deck, which is the equivalent of what the public toolkit might look like with our senior staff in a regular senior staff meeting. So just really sharing the hypothesis, the design, the study approach, the methodology and the findings, and then collecting perceptions, questions about how can this be, implications, potential applications of the findings, and then did a detailed walkthrough of the cost benefit analysis.

We also shared the high-level findings across units and departments for whom the findings are most relevant. So for instance, education, membership, marketing, guest protection services, communications, curatorial public programs. We are also, the Barnes is active in a small work group that was co-designing the public toolkit and the issuance of a joint press release. So that was another internal effort working very closely with one of my colleagues who happens to be here, Erica Simonitis, who is our senior director of guest protection services. We engaged our frontline staff in our study participant recruitment and built in what we call these feedback loops or formative evaluative processes as professional development. Really great opportunity to do that.

And then next, and this is the last thing I’ll say, we plan to use our findings to build the case for our participation in the work that I outlined in my previous response and for potentially a more visible introduction or integration into marketing materials for our classes, for programming, and also to repurpose those survey items for our post-program course and our program evaluations and our adult ed course evaluations.

Lori Fogarty:

Wow, that’s great.

Liza Herzog:

That’s some other ways

Lori Fogarty:

Either of you want to share anything about that?

Julian Zugazagoitia:

Go ahead.

Tracy Kennan:

Yeah, well we have also shared the initial findings on a couple of levels to our board of directors who were also, we had a new board coming on, they were all gifted, John, your book on wellbeing to ground them in that, which I think our staff also needs. And then it was also shared at a curatorial and education meeting and we had really different responses. So the board was more questioning and wondering about the value and how we came to that number and trying to equate that with other things of the same worth, the same amount, like special seats at a sporting event or something like that.

Whereas curatorial, the response was a little more surprise but shocked that we would put a number value on the work that goes into an exhibition. And so that was interesting, but I think really underlines the need for the whole staff to be more than just the overlying, and here’s the numbers, but really an in-depth look at what we want visitors to get and what the different types of wellbeing are. And then to really deep dive into thinking about how could we maybe provide different areas that could even increase the sense of wellbeing.

Lori Fogarty:

Yeah, that’s where I’ve thought about it as well is a visitor mapping, that where are those moments where there’s real social experience or where are those moments where you can really foster the kind of recharging, the inspiration, the contemplation? So anything you want to-

Julian Zugazagoitia:

Oh, I think she just said it.

Lori Fogarty:

All right. So we are on the last question, and it’s a perfect segue. Is there a particular aspect of wellbeing that you’d like to improve in the visitor experience at your institution? So there was the collective study and then we all received individual studies based on our results. So we could actually see where we are doing a little better in each of these four dimensions of wellbeing. So is there one that you’re working on, and I’m curious, John, do you feel like there’s an area that museums in general could more broadly enhance? I think Tracy and Julian, your mic, please.

Julian Zugazagoitia:

So one area again that we’re particularly focused through different lenses, and again, one of the things that I want to just step back and make us all think is that if we had been here 10 years ago, notion even of wellness in museums would’ve been not discussed. Just take a look at how all of a sudden this is such a prevalent and I think perhaps one of the results of COVID. We recently even had in Kansas City a whole meeting on neuro aesthetics, yet another dimension, much more also very scientific, but trying to bring wellness into not only the museums but all of the creative areas. But one of the aspects, sorry, I will highlight for instance is the success that the Nelson-Atkins has had creating festivals that address different cultures and different based also on areas of the collection that are represented but also on the demographics of Kansas City.

And one of the things that we start seeing there is the bringing together of different generations, that partaking, the socializing, and not only learning about certain cultures, because now also we’re starting to see that it cross pollinates. So whether we had the lunar New Year, highly attended by Asian Americans, and all of a sudden starting to come to Dia de Los Muertos because they see that there’s a family event. So bringing down the threshold also of what would be intimidation of going to a museum by making it very accessible, very festive. I think that brings a [inaudible 00:42:49] because it connects people. So if there was one area, that would be one area to focus.

But just a total digression, all of this also, I was reading recently an article that in Europe for instance, in Belgium in particular, insurance companies, the health insurance that is also subset by government, are starting to send people to museums as part of wellbeing. So imagine if our healthcare insurance programs in America starts saying, “Oh, you went to a museum, 10 points,” or discounted your insurance all of a sudden. So I think the implications that all of this may have are tentacular and I think we just today scratching the surface.

Tracy Kennan:

[Inaudible 00:43:37].

Lori Fogarty:

I will just say, at the Oakland Museum of California, we focus a lot on the social aspect and creating the opportunities and the platforms for people, especially as you’re saying Julian, across difference to connect. And the one that has me intrigued and where we ranked lowest was physical. And I think that as you said, especially post-COVID, people are looking for ways or places of healing, places to reduce stress, places where they can feel safe physically. And this is an area where I think we have seen some demographic differences in some of the visitor evaluation we do, especially the Asian-American population in recent years not feeling safe in public settings. And so for me, one I’d really like to think about is actually how do we enhance the physical wellbeing attributes of the museum?

John Falk:

And I would second that, that museums are physical places that people actively go to. And yet when you talk to most museum people, they certainly are mindful of the specialness of our spaces, but then they immediately want to talk about it from an intellectual lens. They want to talk about the collections, they want to talk about the messages that we’re trying to convey or potentially even the opportunity for socializing. But ignoring that these are amazing physical spaces, but not always physically amazing for people’s relaxation, rejuvenation. Hard floors, no place to sit, hard to find your way around sometimes. We can do a lot better at making these really places that people not only want to come to for their minds, but for their bodies as well.

Julian Zugazagoitia:

Many of us working in the museums, we might say, “Why if going to a museum provides this wellbeing, why are we so stressed?” Well, because as you said, yes, we who all work there is like, “Oh, there’s a leak.”

Lori Fogarty:

Have you been to our place recently? You’re rubbing that in, aren’t you?

Julian Zugazagoitia:

Come to our leaks, all museums leak. That’s another study.

Tracy Kennan:

Especially in [inaudible 00:45:58].

Lori Fogarty:

See the session tomorrow afternoon.

Julian Zugazagoitia:

[inaudible 00:46:00] exactly. But one thing that during COVID, and sometimes we didn’t work at the museum, we had to be remote, but then we started coming back, one of the things that I personally did, but I also encourage everyone, is let’s not forget why we’re here in the first place. Walk the galleries, just take a little deep breath. And I think we don’t do it often enough. I will be the first culprit, but that in of itself, so because otherwise this seems it’s good for someone else, but we should be the first ones to take advantage of our beautiful places and forget about those leaks from time to time.

Lori Fogarty:

Absolutely. Well, we have a few more minutes for you to ask questions. I will try to help moderate and scan the room.

Speaker 1:

So I’m also somebody from the Oakland Museum and we put a lot of effort into our special exhibits, which sometimes make people uncomfortable. And that’s the whole point, is to get them to think. So I’m trying to think about how you put these two notions together to stimulate that thought, that thinking and those conversations.

Lori Fogarty:

That’s a great question.

Speaker 1:

At the same time, increase feelings of wellbeing.

John Falk:

I’d love to take that question because it’s a question that I’ve thought about. So the way I am defining wellbeing is not happiness. This is not a synonym for happiness. This is a synonym for feeling like you have some sense of balance in the world. So it is not a problem to create experiences that people find a little unsettling. You do have an obligation, I believe, to help them come to resolution. If they walk out the door without resolution, without feeling like there is a resolution, then I don’t think you’ve done your job. But this isn’t about happiness, this is about being able to navigate the world in which you live and feel better about that for yourself.

Lori Fogarty:

Yeah. And I thought about the same thing and thought the dimension around as both personal and intellectual are defined, there’s something about I’m growing, I’m challenging myself, I’m part of something bigger, I’m learning something new, that I think that fits into. But it is true because again, as I said, wellbeing has become a section of the bookstore for self-help. And this is a very different definition. So thank you for that question.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much for sharing all of this. I think it’s hard to be vulnerable in sharing all of your institutional information and I appreciate the care and attention and nuance that you gave to all of this work. So thank you. I think one of the amazing benefits of this data is that you can use it to create new data sets. So to that end, I noticed that in the cost benefit analysis, you looked at the institution dollars spent, and I’m curious if any of your institutions have measurements tied to the amount that visitors are spending per visit, tied to gate cost, transportation, food, and if you’ve either calculated or thought about calculating a cost benefit analysis from the visitor perspective. And then on the flip side of that, we had a chuckle about staff wellbeing, but I am curious if there is a correlation between staff wellbeing and visitor wellbeing. So thank you.

Lori Fogarty:

Thank you. Great questions. I can say in our case, we have not done the economic analysis that you described. I think that would be really interesting. And yes, we have thought a lot about, and we have a panel tomorrow, not to shamelessly plug, but that is about the social impact internally and externally. So great question.

Tracy Kennan:

I would just say that we do not have that information, but that building new data sets, we are trying to track that more with how visitors are spending money within the institution, and so that might be something for the future. And then staff wellbeing, when we did this new strategic plan, our whole staff was involved. It was a very new way of developing the plan. And so staff wellbeing is one of our pillars as well. So it’s brand new being implemented, I don’t have data to how they’ll correlate, but I think that will be very interesting to follow.

Liza Herzog:

And I’m going to add something new on our horizon. We have established a new group, a visitor experience group across departments which are retail marketing and brand engagement, guest protection services and evaluation and impact, from which I can see these measures being quite value … Exactly what you described could be something that we take on, so thank you for that thoughtful question.

John Falk:

And I’ll just say that since these dimensions of wellbeing are not specific, the broad dimensions of personal, intellectual, social and physical are basic human nature. It is the same thing for staff. Staff need to have their intellectual, they need to feel intellectually engaged. They need to feel a sense of identity with it. They need to feel like they’re empowered, they need to feel like they’re part of a community and have friends. And they also need to feel safe and secure in these settings and remunerated in a way that is commensurate with their basic needs. Same dimensions, different questions.

Julian Zugazagoitia:

On a very pragmatic level, the number of staff people doing yoga, because we offer just yoga, in our temple room or Noguchi Court, the most relaxing places, and now we are introducing now even Pilates. So a lot of people are doing that. So I guess internally there’s both the need and the enjoyment and so there’s a lot of initiatives that our HR department is implementing across. But yeah, and actually some of this went away again during COVID. Then we did some remote wellbeing for the staff during COVID. But yeah, everyone likes the yoga, Pilates.

Lori Fogarty:

Thank you. I think we had a question in the row ahead.

Speaker 2:

Sorry.

Speaker 3:

I don’t know if your survey was designed to capture this, but is there a correlation between the four areas of wellbeing and how they monetized it? In other words, was one of those areas perceived as being more valuable to the user, to the visitor?

John Falk:

The short answer is yes, not enormous differences, but in general that ordering that you saw between personal, intellectual, social, physical, at least within the art museum audience, those were also how they stacked up in terms of their dollar value.

Lori Fogarty:

But not weighted. Was that your question? Was any one category weighted more or was one more high?

John Falk:

No, but-

Speaker 3:

Essentially you’re asking them to give a certain dollar figure.

John Falk:

Right.

Lori Fogarty:

Right.

Speaker 3:

Which of those four wellbeing is perceived as being more valuable? [inaudible 00:53:30]-

John Falk:

Essentially personal wellbeing was the top of that pile.

Lori Fogarty:

Okay, great. I think we have a couple over here, Judy, I think right here. And then just a couple down.

Speaker 4:

Again, I don’t know if your survey captured this, but I’m wondering about frequency, if increased or decreased frequency changes those numbers. And additionally, I’m interested because our institution deals a lot with wellbeing of children, the life cycle of when somebody accesses a museum, you can’t poll children with the same sort of questions, but does that impact as well?

John Falk:

Great question. So the independent variables, in psychobabble here, the questions that would be cross correlated with the data, that was left up to this group. This group did not opt to ask that question. And what I was opting was we can’t ask every question, but the group in Finland did ask that question and there was no correlation between frequency of visiting and the value that emerged. So basically people who went once got as much value as people who came 15 times per visit.

Lori Fogarty:

That’s interesting.

Liza Herzog:

I’m going to add, one of our custom questions was that question, and it ran together so that the more frequently, and this was within one year, if you visited once, twice or three or more times, and those who were the most frequent visitors did derive the most value. But that was only the Barnes, our sample.

John Falk:

Yeah.

Lori Fogarty:

Great question. Yeah.

John Falk:

And just for what it’s worth, there’s other data sets that have suggested that frequency is not as important as we in the museum community think it is. But there you go.

Speaker 5:

I just want to say thank you for this work. I’m doing the Snoopy dance in my head right now because it gives me-

Lori Fogarty:

You are obviously feeling wellbeing.

Speaker 5:

Absolutely. It’s worth a lot more than I paid. And because it breaks us out of the cycle of what the tourism operators want to say. How does a museum visit translate to heads and beds and meals on plates and all that economic spinoff. But being able to put a dollar value on these other elements, I think is pure gold for our sector. And what I’m wondering is given that this was done with mostly art museums and Oakland, which is multidisciplinary, is there an opportunity to broaden this study to other types of museums? Because I think being able to develop our own local data would allow us to evaluate our performance against the broader body of data, it would allow us to say something to our local stakeholders and would allow us to just add more data to your study and bulk it up in terms of just the statistical significance.

John Falk:

Well thank you, we’ll pay you later. No.

Speaker 5:

[inaudible 00:56:30].

John Falk:

That’s fabulous. Actually, come talk to me. Yes, we would love to do this.

Lori Fogarty:

And I will say the reason that it was art museums, full disclosure, Julian was president of the Association of Art Museum Directors. I was the former president, and we heard about this work because we both know John and Judy and we took it to AAMD and said, “We would love to see the art museum sector do this, who’s in?” And we had nine colleagues and it was quite affordable. And so if there’s a region or a sector or a group of museums, yeah, talk to John and Judy because it, that’s exactly how it happened. It was fairly organic but intentional. Great. Well I think it is two o’clock. Thank you all for staying and hanging in there and may you be well.

John Falk:

Thank you.