Focus on Humans

After 14 days, nearly 20 institutions, and almost two dozen interactions with various staff members, the discussion of museums in uncertain times has come to an end (at least for academic purposes). What struck me most about today’s activities was the variety of ways the four groups all addressed the same issue: how museums can engage specific audience demographics in more efficient ways.

• The AMNH quartet noticed that, although in the digital age, family groups wanted to engage with each other and the collection. They weren’t focused on using their phone (and by extension, the Explorer app) so they came up with an interactive that entire families can (and did!) enjoy.
• The Central Park Zoo group recognized major gaps in the Zoo’s offerings to non-native English speaking visitors and conducted surveys that would help to determine the best options to address that discrepancy.
• In what was perhaps the most shocking presentation of the day, the MCNY revealed the gap in personal connections between staff and visitors and proposed a questionnaire for both to determine what audiences want and what staff resources were available to address those wants.
• My own group looked to expand family programming at the N-YHS in order to facilitate institution-wide learning for families outside of the children’s museum environment.

I find the fact that all groups identified and tried to provide solutions for under-served but prominent audience demographics within their institutions to be revealing. It seems that no matter what conceptual or digital changes are present in current (and/or future) uncertain times, as long as museums place audience outreach and engagement as a priority, success is bound to follow.