As the country rebounds from the COVID-19 pandemic, how are museums doing? Who is coming to museums and why, how does attendance compare to pre-pandemic norms? What are the barriers to visitation? In this Future Chat, AAM’s Elizabeth Merritt chats with guest Susie Wilkening, principal of Wilkening Consulting, about the latest data from the Annual Survey of Museum Goers.

Transcript

Elizabeth Merritt:

Hello and welcome to Future chat. I’m Elizabeth Merritt, Vice President of Strategic Foresight and founding director of the Center for the Future of Museums at the American Alliance of Museums.

For those of you who may be unfamiliar with CFM, this is the Alliance’s think tank and research lab for the museum sector, and my job is to help you think about the future and learn some of the skills of applying strategic foresight to your work.

Future Chats are a chance for me to share a piece of recent news from my scanning and explore its implications with you.

Normally, when I do a Future Chat, I look at my scanning feed. I pick a story and I share it, and then I bring on stage an expert to discuss it. Its implications and our topic today is museum data. So I went online looking for a recent news story to anchor our discussion but I couldn’t ignore the fact that swamping everything else in my news feeds is the outcome of the US presidential election.

And the elections already influencing how I think about my work how to help museums and museum people over the next 4 years, what data, we’ll need to support that work. So I started thinking about the connection between data and how the election may affect our work.

And here’s one connection, one thing that stresses people out about the future is uncertainty and its partner, fear. And there are a lot of things up in the air right now and that uncertainty may make us anxious about outcomes, it can actually help to identify what we want to know in order to reduce uncertainty and where we can look for that information.

So, we’re going to ground our chat today in a review of some of the data that we collect and share about museums in their audiences. We’ll start by discussing shifts that have happened over the past several years, including emergence, from the pandemic and we’ll talk about how that data can inform our path forward and even in the uncertainties introduced by the election.

With that preamble, I’m so happy to bring on stage, my valued research colleague, Susie Wilkening. She is principal of Wilkening Consulting, trusted research partner of AAM. She helps us and the museum sector understand people’s attitudes and opinions and expectations about museums notably through the data she collects and interprets from the Annual Survey of Museum-Goers [(ASMG)]. Susie has been doing the ASMG for 9 years, 6 years of that, uh, together with me at AAM.

Susie Wilkening:

Thank you so much for having me. I’m thrilled to be here.

Elizabeth Merritt:

I think many of us feel a little bit uncertain now about what the next few years will bring, um,

Uh, can you share with me some of your thoughts as a researcher about how what you’re thinking, as you look at the news and how it might affect your work?

Susie Wilkening:

Sure. I mean we are all feeling that sense of uncertainty. I mean that’s not unusual but I think it’s just been exacerbated by the results of the federal elections last week. So I’m a researcher. And, you know what I want to do is I want to wrap my arms around these patterns that we’ve been seeing for some time and also bring in that new information that we got last week to help us understand the path ahead a little bit better.

And so, what I would love to start with is a poll that I created to gauge how all of you are feeling right now about things, So, I think that poll should be about starting.

Here it is. So, thinking about today’s discussion topic…How are you feeling?

And I think you can answer more than one choice here.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yes, multiple choice. Pick all that. Apply. And our choices are resolved. Worried, hopeful, was uncertain of the path forward, confused or bewildered, or isolated and alone.

For our results… looking at Susie.

Susie Wilkening:

I don’t I can’t see the results. Can you see the results?

Elizabeth Merritt:

Oh, I can let me tell you what they’re wanting.

Susie Wilkening:

Okay. Yes, please do.

Elizabeth Merritt:

So, so far, our front runner at 35 and a half percent is uncertain of the path, forward followed by worried at about 25%, and trailing behind that is hopeful at 14%. And then running a distant next to last and last are resolved at 9% and isolated and alone at 5%.

Susie Wilkening:

And was anybody saying they thought confused or bewildered?

Elizabeth Merritt:

That was 12%. Sorry, I missed that one.

Susie Wilkening:

Okay. I’m just jotting that down because you have a data geek.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yes.

Susie Wilkening:

So, yes, there’s a lot of uncertainty here. There’s some worries. The better, maybe some considerations, the pathways that make people feel hopeful too. And I think that kind of wraps up how I feel about things as well. Oh there we are. Okay.

So, what I really want to do to help us think about that, path ahead is to look at some of those significant shifts that have been happening with museum audiences over the past several years because that helps us inform the trajectories of what’s been happening.

So, we’re going to look at some very quick attendance trends, since before the pandemic to today. We’re going to look at some shifts in audiences by race and ethnicity and we’re going to look at political values and that how that affects visitation and how that affects the experience in a museum setting.

So, just for a moment before we start.

There’s a really important question which is how do we know any of this stuff? And it’s a methodology question. The really good news is that over the past several years, as Elizabeth mentioned, we’ve been running the Annual Survey of Museum-Goers and nearly 500 museums have participated in the annual survey during that time period. This provides us with both robust data sets of frequent museum-goers, and a frequent museum-goer is someone who’s on the communications list of a museum receives the invitation to take [the] survey and then takes time to do so. So, they’re having that interaction regularly with at least one museum. And those museum-goers, it’s about 100,000 respondents every year.

As well as, [we field at] that the same time, a demographically representative sample of the broader population. And that’s going to be, uh, casual sporadic and non-visitors to museums. So, we have those two data sets that we have every single year we can look at this stuff.

Because of that depth of data, we know a lot about the public and museums and then the museums that participate in the annual survey have even greater insights into their specific audiences.

So, the first thing I want to start off with was looking at some attendance trends, particularly through the lens of the COVID pandemic. So let me just open up some slides right here.

There we go.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Awesome.

Susie Wilkening:

But that’s okay. I’m going to talk you through it.

So, this is from broader population sampling. This is that demographically representative sample of us adults, it’s the very first question, we asked them in a survey, which is which of the following have you done in the past year?

This is how we assess what percentage of us adults have been to a museum in the past year. So, if we look, over on the far right of this screen or this other right-hand side, you see that museums and you see that result, going from 2021 and 2024, there’s a weird year in 2022, because we actually asked previous two years, I don’t think we would have done that in retrospect. We should have that… just, so kind of take that one with a grain of salt, but you can see for all of these activities there’s kind of a … for the most part. There’s an upward trajectory, right? And we see the same thing for museums. So even before the pandemic, we were typically seeing around 25 to 31% of US adults were saying pretty consistently, I’ve … set foot in a museum in the past year.

The good news is that in 2024 when we were in the field, it was 33%. So, we’re actually exceeding, our pre-pandemic norms. People are back at museums.

However, we also know that half of US museums have not recovered their attendance from the pandemic. So why is that happening, and so, that’s when we’re going to look at the frequent museum-goers. There’s people who are on those communications lists, who take our survey.

And when we look at the frequent-museum goers, we’re looking at this in two different ways.

So first, we’re looking at repeat visitation rates. This is you know they’re thinking of this museum that asked them to take the survey. I’m going to pick on a local Seattle museum, the Burke Museum of Natural History, you know, they are on their list.

They received an invitation to take a survey that I think you have [visited] the Burke. How often do I go to the Burke? Okay, so I live in Seattle. I have kids. I probably go there 2 or 3 times a year and so I would mark that off. Alright so what we’re doing here is we’re aggregating. All those individual museum results and looking at them over time. And what we see if you look at that 2 and 3 times a year, it’s a little bit higher but it’s a little bit lower for that 4 plus. And also, if you look at that less than once a year, it’s a little bit lower than that once a year, but all adds up and away that indicates that frequent visitation isn’t quite back where it was pre-pandemic.

And so, people are back at museums, but they’re not visiting as frequently to their museums. We look at one more way, which is similar. It’s a similar question, but it’s just, but it’s also a very different question. This is not about how frequently they’re visiting a very specific museum. This is asking how many different museums did you visit, in the past year?

And so, you know, personally me, I am on vacation and 3 days, I can knock out, 6 museums, but I know I’m an outlier and probably all of you are too.

Most people don’t visit that many museums.

So, you can see these are the results from these frequent-museum goers. And if you look at these results, especially if you’re looking at the 5 or more, the 3 or 4 categories, you can see it’s a little bit lower still than where we were in 2020, which that’s actually a pre-pandemic sample in 2020 because we were in the field January and February of 2020. And so, we’re just not back. People are back at museums but not as frequently. So, if you add up all those repeat visits and that breadth of museum going all those visits, it actually adds up to a lot of visits that we haven’t gotten back since the pandemic.

So that’s that big ship that we’re still continuing the track and we’ll continue to track in the 2025 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers, to see if we have any more gains that happened in the past year.

Okay, Elizabeth. You ready for me to switch to race and ethnicity or do you have any thoughts about that?

Elizabeth Merritt:

Go for it. Yes, please.

Susie Wilkening:

Okay.

But now, let’s think about by race and ethnicity. What’s really interesting is we’ve been tracking this for several years. And we have seen actually a really big shift happen over the past several years, which is really exciting.

So, first off, let’s think about those frequent museum-goers. Those people who are on this communications list, when we look just at that group of people, it’s a small slice of the broader population.

What we find is that the vast majority of them, 83%, identify as white. Now, that is a big skew, right?

But that said, since 2017, it’s a ball of drop of 10%, it was 92% in 2017. So, we’re seeing this slow progression downward and the percentage are identifying as white because we have more people of color responding as frequent museum-goers.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Just pausing … is there a last slide for that because I’m still seeing the historical data slide.

Susie Wilkening:

In a second. Yeah, we’re gonna move the slides in just a second.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Just checking.

Susie Wilkening:

So, we having a slow shift happening what by race and ethnicity among frequent museum-goers, and it’s slow, and it seems to be pretty steady the more things get a lot more complicated and where we’ve seen them, much more massive shift is with the broader population.

And that’s now I’m going to go ahead and change that slide. And let’s look at those casual and sporadic Museum goers.

The big shift that’s happened here is several years ago. Those two categories who have also skewed disproportionately white. But that’s no longer true.

Casual, and sporadic visitors are actually same as casual visitors. They almost exactly matches the US population by race and ethnicity. And sporadic visitors. It’s pretty close. It’s within just a few percentage points.

Elizabeth Merritt:

And there is a question in chat. Susie, how much do these numbers [correlate with education]? Ethnicity reflect education levels. Do we have any data on that?

Susie Wilkening:

So, it’s really kind of tricky to correlate with, with education. When we have our sample of 20,000, we would need a bigger sample to really be able to do that effectively.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Okay.

Susie Wilkening:

But 20,000 is a great sample for the US population sample, so we’re not quibbling with that, but yes, some of it is going to be due to increased levels of educational attainment, among people of color overall, because educational attainment is a strong predictor of museum visitation. So, that’s certainly going to be a contributing factor and it’s one of the most significant contributing factors.

But you know, several years ago, this was not true when we looked at casual and sporadic visitors in terms of race and ethnicity. It was still skewing more significantly white. So, we’ve had this massive shift now but someone… I was a casual and sporadic visitor so we’re not seeing this on our email list as much right now or among our frequent visitors but it’s getting there. Now, it may surprise a lot of people is when we look at this non- visitors, because they’re also skews to proportionately white. So, among the white population, we actually have the split where white people are more likely to be that super frequent museum-goer, but also white people are more likely to be that non-visitor.

And so that’s really interesting as well. So why doesn’t it feel this way when we’re standing in the museum, it’s all those frequent visitors who are making all those frequent visits that we can also skew your perceptions.

Okay. So, the last thing is around political values.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yes. Actually, before you dive into that data, I want to because there’s been a lot of anxiety about how political values are going to influence attitudes towards museums. I want to remind everybody that overall, we have great news about how the public perceives museums. So, this is all from AAM’s advocacy data. 96% of Americans would approve of lawmakers who acted to support museums, and this is consistently high among respondents who consider themselves liberal, moderate, or conservative.

96% of Americans think positively of their elected officials for taking legislative action to support museums. Three quarters of the public believe, museums are an important part of our civil society.

Republican-led states are among the strongest funders of their own cultural institutions, and museums, and the total economic contributions of museums in 2016 was over 50 billion dollars. Over 725,000 jobs and 12 billion in taxes, on local state and federal governments. And that’s the kind of economic impact that’s appreciated by all across the [political spectrum]. So yeah.

Susie Wilkening:

Yeah, I mean we have some fantastic news at museums are very much perceived as bipartisan organizations.

So overall people love museums, they love having museums in their communities and they think they contribute positively to our society. So, we don’t want to lose sight of that. Yet.

Individual political values do influence museum visitation as well as that visitor experience.

And so, when we look at who’s visiting museums through that lens of frequency, what we see are some really vast differences by political values.

Among frequent museum-goers, the majority of frequent museum-goers actually identify as liberal.

And not that many identify as conservative. But if you look at casual visitors, we’re at parody. Sporadic, visitors skew a little bit more conservative and non-visitors, skew, more conservative.

So, we do see how those political values seem to be affecting how frequently people are visiting museums or how if they’re visiting museums at all. So, we won’t be very mindful of that.

And there’s something else that we want to keep in mind. And I’ve been saying this for about 5 years and that is, the number one thing that happens. The number one thing that affects how people view the content in a museum, regardless of what you share and how apolitical it is or not.

That political lens is how they view their the content that you’re sharing in museums, [it’s] the number one predictor.

And it’s also the number one complaint. We typically have… about museum content, that content has become political even if the only people who think that content is political are the ones who happen to dislike the content itself, which often isn’t perceived as political by most people that seems like a, a little bit of a circular argument, but it’s actually true. So, you have to grapple with this, whether you like it or not, you’re going to have to deal with political values.

Fortunately, we’ve been asking political values and the annual survey since 2021. So we know a lot about how they influence museum visits and how, and museums that participate in the annual survey know their own audiences political values quite well.

Now, we’re not going to go into today. How it affects that visitor experience.

Except to note that about 20% of museum-goers and the broader population really strongly pushed back when confronted with specific kinds of content.

The things that tend to really create that pushback are things around … inclusive content and history, climate change, public health, civics and civil society, as well as outcomes such as empathy and connection.

And hope… So, those are all subjects and outcomes that museums focus on every day, which makes this particularly challenging. Because we have to really know our audiences including politically to effectively navigate that future.

Elizabeth Merritt:

And what I have heard you talk about, and we’ll be talking about this more in the future. Susie is… a lot of it’s about the language you use in talking about those things. So, it isn’t necessarily the underlying concepts are values. It’s the words you use.

Susie Wilkening:

So, we want…

Elizabeth Merritt:

So, what I’m hearing you say just to summarize, repeat visitation is not back to where it was and that reflects shifts in leisure time.

Susie Wilkening:

Yep.

Elizabeth Merritt:

On audiences are getting more diverse and casual and sporadic. Visitors are reflective of us … by race and ethnicity and we’re continuing to work on that.

Susie Wilkening:

Right.

Elizabeth Merritt:

And museums absolutely have bipartisan support. But political values are influencing how people experience with local content. And we need to be aware of how it does this and how it might affect overall perception of museums.

Susie Wilkening:

Yes, exactly.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Awesome.

Okay. Now, we are going to transition to the other regular feature of our future chats, by giving all of you a chance to talk to each other about this topic. So, what we’re going to do is break you out into discussion rooms and give you a couple of questions. They frame your conversations and then at 3:40, we’re going to bring you back in to compare notes and share some thoughts. Now, both of [the] things before we do this.

First of all, please remember the number one role of future chats is, what is said in chat remains in chat. So please, hold anything that is shared by your fellow attendees in confidence, and don’t [share their] remarks without attribution.

Before we go out into breakouts, a couple of notes. First of all, we’re going to send you out into rooms of 8 people.

But uh, if you find yourself in a room by yourself, or if only a couple of other people, their want to be a big bigger group, you can use the join another feature to move yourself into a room with more people.

Please enable… to allow other participants [in]. See, you can hear … in the rooms.

And warning. If you’re joining us via a mobile device, or you’re using Safari as your browser, it may not support participation in the breakout rooms and you’ll be going, I can’t get in.

If that’s the case, I encourage you to step away for a little while, come back at 3:40, when we reconvene to share thoughts, that’s when Susie, and I are going to discuss our concerns by advice for your museums in the next few years, as well as hearing from you so many things that happen in the chat rooms. Okay? With that online. Sure, there are the assignments. We’re giving you for a breakout rooms.

When you get there, go around the circle and make it a production. Say this is who I am, I’m with this organization and in your introduction to share, 1 thing, that feels uncertain about how the election may affect your museums and your communities.

Then second time, I’m going around the room.

[And] share one thing. You’d like to know something that would help you manage those uncertainties in the next 4 years. So, a piece of information or a piece of data that would help you feel less uncertain about what’s going to happen.

Okay.

We’re gonna break you into breakout rooms now and we will see at 3:40.

Hello, Susie. Welcome back. I you were in one of our many chat rooms with some of the participants.

Susie Wilkening:

I’m back.

I crashed a chat room. It was fun. I had three friends in there. It was awesome.

Elizabeth Merritt:

That’s great.

So, I noticed before we went into breakouts that we had some very vigorous participation going in in the chat, which is a sidebar on your screen. So, I’m hoping that you’ll use that to start sharing some of the ideas that surfaced in your discussion rooms. So please tell us some of the uncertainties you identified and tell us what data would help you manage these uncertainties.

Now, I know it usually takes a few minutes for people to begin to wait in the chat. So, while you’re doing that, we want to feel a second poll and what we want to do is gauge how talking over this with other people. May have changed how you feel. So, maybe if we could put that second poll up,

And it’s going to take a minute to go live. All right, and you’ll see it’s asking you now that we’ve talked about things, how are you feeling? And it’s the same voice choices. So, you’re going to say are you more resolved? Having talked about it, are you more worried, are you more hopeful? Are you more certain of the past forward? Are you more supported or feel more supported or part of a community? So, let’s get a little read on how to discussing it with people. Change may have changed how you feel and Susie, I don’t know if you can see these or should I read out the results to you.

Susie Wilkening:

You should read them out. I am ready with my pen and my paper.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Okay. So, the front runner at 45%, bopping up and down but it’s over. 40% is people saying they feel more supported and part of a community, and trailing behind that at about 25% are people who say they feel more worried. That’s sad. I feel bad about that.

Susie Wilkening:

Oh, okay.

Elizabeth Merritt:

About 11% though, feel more hopeful that’s great. Uh 10% feel more resolved. About 6% feel more, a more certain path forward, and about 7% are more confused or bewildered.

Susie Wilkening:

Okay. So, it sounds like feeling of support is growing that you’re not alone.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Now.

Susie Wilkening:

But those worries are still persisting. And the because that lack of certainty is still kind of persisting.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yes, and I’m going to close the poll, which I think we bring it up for you.

Susie Wilkening:

Yeah, I see it.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Okay. It’s very interesting. Well, so it seems like a lot of positive but some negative, uh …

Susie Wilkening:

Yeah. Influence from talking to other people around this.

Susie Wilkening:

Yes.

Elizabeth Merritt:

And looking on the right, I’m reading some of the certainties that people are reporting like the impact of tariffs and other economic policies on disposable income uh concerns about how to present inclusive history. That’s something you’re going to be able to speak to.

Susie Wilkening:

I can.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Well, these are jumping. There’s so much coming in, I’m having trouble focusing before it jumps around, ah, help …

Susie Wilkening:

Okay.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Uncertainties about how the impact will trickle down to education. Will federal funding to public schools be cut. I think federal funding to public schools is only about 10% of the total, is …

Susie Wilkening:

It’s not very much and I think some states are already thinking through like okay, what happens if we just eliminate federal funding, so.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yeah.

Susie Wilkening:

We could do it on our own. I know that’s the conversation that’s happening in Washington state right now.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Awesome. Um well, Susie with the new administration and the shifts in Congress. What are your concerns for museums? What are your anxieties?

Susie Wilkening:

So, I have 3. And Monique Davis at the Mississippi Museum of Art. She and I had a conversation that’s really helped me kind of solidify what my three big concerns were she was like you need to tell me what my you’re the top 3 are, the first 1 and this is by far the biggest 1.

It is what I call The False Consensus Effect and the empowered far, right? So this is not, specifically, what politicians might do? This is not the political stuff, it’s the empowerment of the far-right.

And what I fear, is going to happen is that they’re going is going to be a narrative that’s created. Where the far right? Says we have a mandate on these 10 issues.

Or 15 issues or whatever many, we have a mandate on anti-DEAI because that’s how the voting came out. We have a mandate against climate change, shifts or or adoptions, because we have a mandate because that’s how the voting turned out. Or, you know, we have a mandate that to ban inclusive history in schools because that’s the voting turned out, alright? And that’s not actually true.

And we know that’s not true. Most people actually want museums to do these things in schools to do these things. And for us to do take climate action because people were not voting in terms of all of those issues, they were voting on what their number 1 priority was, which was …

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yes. Which must have been some might have been something else entirely.

Susie Wilkening:

And for many years, probably their family and their family economic future.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yeah.

Susie Wilkening:

And what they perceive to be the better choice in that sense.

So that False Consensus Effect is basically when a small group of people projects, the image that most people agree with them on a topic when the opposite is actually true.

And so, we have to be then double down and really focus on what does the data tell us about what people think about these certain topics that are controversial.

Find you know, what we learned is that most people want to do this stuff and then we need to talk about that really visibly.

So that they can take that rug out from underneath them before they even start with that False Consensus Effect.

Because it’s going to be chilling if we let that happen. So that’s by far my number one.

My number 2 – and this one is a much smaller one, even though it’s actually really big – is the power of executive orders and legislation to restrict what schools people families museums educational institutions everything can do and so it’s not just, you know, within the museums it’s also you know, public health and vaccines, it’s also climate change action, things like that but you know, things like you can’t get this IMLS grant unless you agree to banish, you know, any inclusive Dei content or positions in your Museum. So, there might be some ties and executive orders things like that and they may or may not hold up in court, I don’t know.

But thinking through what are those possibilities that might tie our hands or tie the hands of others or affect us all. So that’s number 2.

And then number 3 is, of course, Very specifically, the future of IMLS, NEA, NEH and those kinds of things. And that’s where we have to really again come together.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yeah.

Susie Wilkening:

And advocate.

And join us in February and go storm Capitol Hill in a good way for museums.

Yes.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Well, these are all big things to be concerned about.

Susie Wilkening:

Yes, they are. All huge.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Definitely advocacy day. I will have more information about that, but do you have any other thoughts on things museums can be doing to prepare?

Susie Wilkening:

So, we can prepare we are. This conversation is like a great start for preparing. There are lots of things that we can do to think about these things and be proactive and be ahead of them. So, the first big one is to know your audience.

And to figure out, you know, what, where are their values, what are those shared values that you have as a community that you at the Museum can build on? , you know, most people did seem to vote on their economic issues and they don’t agree with the far right on everything. So we want to understand how that’s playing out in your community.

And look to that data and in terms of how people are responding in your community on this issue. So you know and are prepared on those issues before you even put that that information forward in the museum.

Think through in advance and be tactical about The False Consensus Effect and how it will be likely deployed by the far, right.  there’s not a mandate on these issues, remember that and be on the offensive about it. There is a process called disinformation inoculation which you can go through with your leadership with your colleagues. You can do it with your board. You can do it with your volunteers. You can even do it with donors. Even do it with the public where you’re getting ahead of misinformation. You’re getting a head of The False Consensus Effect in a way that you can, then support you doing the work that you want to do. That’s true to your mission and it’s true to history science and art.

Calibrate, calibration is incredibly important.

You want to be effective and think through what that most effective path forward is on lots of issues. And so, and that most effective path isn’t necessarily straight calibration does not mean backing down.

It means being caring. And means being thoughtful. And making this individual choices as museums of what’s going to be it that path for. But remember, the tortoise won the race.

So, we’re going to all, you know, kind of champion tortoises when we’re going to win the race on so many of these issues.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yeah.

Susie Wilkening:

And advocate for museums.

Elizabeth Merritt:

We have a couple of, uh, comments in chat. I wanted to pull forward, someone’s asking. Can you say that list of topics that we see more push back on, one more time.

Susie Wilkening:

Sure. So, there’s right now. We have a bucket I think of it is bucket of topics. Three are topics and two are outcomes. Basically, that seem to be really sensitive to that 20% on the far, right? Who just don’t like them climate change, for sure. Inclusive efforts inclusive, history, inclusion, and art museums.

Sequence. Now we’ve never tested on public health, but I would assume that that’s going to be another one.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Well, okay, but to this point I want to back up and remind people and push back if I’m getting this wrong. Susie, even on those topics, the vast majority of people may support music like climate change. The vast majority of people whether they’re a conservative or liberal support. Museum is teaching about climate change and taking action. So, when you say, it’s a trigger point, it’s a trigger for a very small percentage of highly vocal people. And one of your excellent data stories that I would recommend to people is about how not to give too much weight to a small. Number of people who are very loud. So maybe you could say a word about that.

Susie Wilkening:

Of course. Yes. Yes. About 20%.

Yes, so there’s a data story called, Amplification versus over-amplification. And it talks really specifically about how do you pay attention and make sure you’re amplifying. Push back, that’s valid. And not over amplifying. Push back this coming from a white supremacist position or, or, or anti-science position, things like that. So you can then assess it more fairly and also consider and think through your own emotions as you are dealing with push back, because emotions for yourself, come into big play. As you’re dealing with push back and criticism because we all kind of go when we get criticized about something. So that, that can be really helpful. There’s also another data story. It’s about The False Consensus Effect specifically. And if you go onto the data stories website and search for False Consensus you can…

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yeah. Yeah.

Susie Wilkening:

… find that one really easily as well and it also takes you through those steps of this information inoculation and how to do that, with your teammates or or your leadership or whomever,

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yeah. I also noticed my former CFM, colleague, Phil Katz is saying, there may also be a False Consensus on the left and middle assuming attitudes about political opponents.

Susie Wilkening:

So…

Elizabeth Merritt:

First of all, yes, I’ve been going through a lot of research that says 1 of the problems that’s causing what political polarization there is in the US is people tend to put a label on the other, whether that’s saying, ooh, your conservative or your label and then the your label fill in here liberal. So therefore, you believe all these things, and it’s way more complicated than that and until that you have a real and open listening conversation with somebody, you don’t know what they believe on, all these different points. And then…

Susie Wilkening:

Absolutely. Well, thank you to another valid point that we tend to make assumptions based on demographic characteristics.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yes, yes. Yes.

Susie Wilkening:

And that we shouldn’t do that, too. I mean, we can, we can understand that big picture. There are certain demographic characteristics, excuse certain way but we can never make that assumption about a person standing in front of us until we start understanding who this person is.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Absolutely. Absolutely. The other point that Phil made is you’re not going to change somebody’s mind by yelling at them.

Susie Wilkening:

Mm.

Elizabeth Merritt:

And one of, I think, one of the skills we have to learn in the in coming years is what is an effective way of reducing polarization and really communicating in a lot of that starts with listening. It’s not going to help to yell at people and say all the same things and think that if we say for the tenth time, they’re suddenly going to hear it, it’s going to be more listening, it’s going to be more understanding. It’s going to be being sensitive to our language. And knowing when certain words or trigger points for somebody else, and the fact that a word means one thing to, you doesn’t mean it doesn’t mean something, uh, else to somebody.

Susie Wilkening:

Yeah, and civics is a great example of that. We tend to use it as a, as a dictionary describes it. But, on the far right, they use the word very differently and …

Elizabeth Merritt:

So, this is an example of there’s good research out there. Again, we’ll be sharing this in blog posts and talks and coming months about what language is less triggering. So, for example, I was just reading that civics has a negative connotation as you say to some people, but the word community, for them means the same thing and has fewer negative connotations. So fine, I’ll say community, not a problem.

Susie Wilkening:

Right? And but saying, ahead of these language shifts, I’m going to be honest is is very exhausting.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yeah.

Susie Wilkening:

And the good news is that we tend to be ahead of it, through our coding of, open-ended responses in the annual survey to really help us. Get ahead of like, oh, we start noticing trends.

And we try to share those with you. And through those data stories that y’all are already aware of them. Before it starts percolating up more commonly…

Elizabeth Merritt:

And I will say, for those of you who will be joining us at the am annual meeting in Los Angeles and met Susan. And I do an annual data session where Susie previews, the as yet unpublished data from the current Annual Survey of Museum-Goers. So that’ll be a great place to preview some of the next results.

Susie Wilkening:

And we’ve got some really great themes in this year’s survey that fit in really well with this entire discussion, because one of the big things we’re looking at, is our responsibilities to community.

Curious about is a question about what you know as a responder you’re thinking, here’s this random person who’s taking your survey.

What does that person think that other people in their community?

Think are important. And looking at those Community shared values more perceived to be those shared values.

So, then we can route our work in that a little bit more effectively and then start rebuilding again.

Elizabeth Merritt:

One of the questions in chat. Uh was would we be offering some resources for advocacy am over the coming months and yes, we will. And let me tell you a little bit about that first of all.

Here’s what I hope. You all are taking away from the session. First of all, you are not alone. We’re all in this together when it comes to navigating disruptions I hope that 1 thing you learned from your discussion groups is a lot of other people share these concerns.

And I hope what you’re hearing from Susie from me from a am, is there are things that might help us collectively and maybe you individually feel more in control. One thing you can do is sign up for Advocacy Alerts from AAM. There’s one coming out tomorrow about what the election means. For museums, we’re going to drop in chat, I’ll link you can use to sign up for Advocacy Alert. But the other thing is if you sign up too late to get that one, they’re posted on the Advocacy Alerts page so you can read that, that’s a beginning … series of things that we will be pushing out and coming months about ways that you can engage, information you might need, and how you can help influence your legislators in appropriate ways and [move] things forward.

Susie. How about you any closing thoughts for our participants?

Susie Wilkening:

Well, they should absolutely go to [Museums] Advocacy Day. It’s fun. It’s actually a lot of fun. I actually …

Elizabeth Merritt:

Hey, so there are people who haven’t participated, just give them a little preview of what it would be like and people who have been to advocacy day, could you, could you drop and chat some comments?

Susie Wilkening:

Yeah. I mean it feels it can’t be like very intimidating like oh my gosh, I’m going to Capitol Hill but it’s but there’s a whole day of training.

We give you lots of information, we give you data, we give you lots of ways to make your case.

To your legislative offices and then you get to go wander around Capitol Hill. How cool? Is that? I mean, how amazing is it that we live in this country, we can go walk in the door of our legislator’s office and say what we think.

And so, it’s an amazing experience of democracy. And people are so nice up on the Hill, even when you go into office and they’re like, they’re not, maybe a little bit not as, you know, excited to see you as maybe what I get in Washington state. But, you know, it’s still great experience and you’re advocating for something you care about and lots of people care about, so it’s fun. You should totally go do it.

Elizabeth Merritt:

So, two days here in Washington, DC, Ariel could you find and drop a link into the chat about museums advocacy day, sorry we didn’t have that pre lined up, but when you come, as Susie said, you’ll get training, you’ll get support. You’ll get practice on how to do this and then AAM sets up all these appointments with you. So, we’ll group you… with other people who, also are in the same legislative district for Congresspeople. Or for Senators, you’ll have an appointment. You’ll go to the office building. You’ll be welcome in. You are sat down, and you often talk with aides. Sometimes you actually talk to the legislators and it’s like the best part of participatory democracy after voting.

Susie Wilkening:

Yes. It’s easy. And new friends.

I bring my kid because I want them to learn about it too. It’s awesome. Okay, the other thing you can do is you need data on your organization because how are you going to navigate all these different values that people have? If you’ve never asked them about their values,

And so, you know if you haven’t already participated in the annual survey Museum goers which we do in partnership with AAM, you know, this is a great year to go out and do that. The survey instrument has been vetted by people. It’s a bipartisan survey instrument, we vet across the political spectrum. Before it goes out into the field and, signups are happening right now. It’s the base fee is 1,250, so it’s not very expensive. You can probably do it on a budget. [W]e’re going to put the link in the chat, … and it goes out in the field in January and February my colleague, Jessica does an amazing job, helping every single museum to participate to get their survey out the door and get some good data reports into their hands. By the middle of … spring, so you can then have that information that you need to navigate this effectively and to calibrate for your audience and your community.

Elizabeth Merritt:

And we often write about it, we share it through AAM so that you can benefit from the overall data whether or not your participating.

Susie Wilkening:

Yeah, absolutely.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Okay, well that’s our chat for today, Susie, it was a pleasure working with you always I’m value. You so much as a research partner and thank you for all you do for the field.

Susie Wilkening:

Well, I love doing this for the field and I love working with everyone at AAM because I love museums. So, we’re going to get through all of this over the next few years together.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Okay, great take care. Be strong and look forward to working with you in the coming year.