It can be argued that museums as cultural institutions are most relevant today due to the necessity of social change along with the hunger for facts and true information. However, museums are experiencing incredible difficulty as they attempt to shift from exclusive institutions that upheld colonialist ideals to cultural institutions that reflect the communities they exist in. As I spoke about in a previous blog post, museums do not feel welcoming to a lot of people, especially people of color, and that is due to their unfortunate history of collection, display, and segregation. Many people do not feel their histories and cultures are accurately represented at museums.
Many others feel museums are a place where ancient items collect dust and once you have visited a museum once, there is nothing new to see. In fact, this is actually the third highest barrier to entry for millennials and non-millennials alike (“There’s Nothing New To See”: How Major Exhibits Really Impact Long-Term Attendance). So how do museums stay relevant if, unlike at sports games or concerts, people consider one visit enough? Without repeat customers, you eventually exhaust your customer base which results in museums grasping at straws to stay relevant. When people think there’s nothing new to see at your museum, you must create a new exhibition in order to drive repeat customers. But this is a huge investment on the part of the museum. “Blockbusters can cost upwards of five or more times what an organization regularly spends on exhibits annually. The increased marketing effort is a way to maximize this investment,” (“There’s Nothing New To See”: How Major Exhibits Really Impact Long-Term Attendance). But there is a problem with only attracting visitors during new exhibitions. As colleendilen.com points out, “To make matters worse, heavily marketed special exhibits often need to be more expensive over time in order to reach the same level of attendance, making this a particularly unsustainable cycle. Not only that, major exhibits skew the visitation cycle.” So maybe the answer to staying relevant is in the museum's permanent collections and the way they display and market that collection.
Due to the hype surrounding special exhibitions, the visitor expectations are a lot higher. However, due to these expectations, “people who visit only special exhibitions tend to be less satisfied with their experience than people who visit an organization’s permanent collections”...”Interestingly, people who visit both an organization’s permanent collections and the special exhibit have the highest satisfaction rates of all,” (“There’s Nothing New To See”: How Major Exhibits Really Impact Long-Term Attendance). Clearly, museums need to focus on their permanent collections along with their special exhibitions if they want to stay relevant. What makes an organization relevant is embedded in its mission and values. “It’s the things that don’t leave,” (colleendilen.com). Museums need to be reliably, not randomly, relevant.
There are ways to drive relevance to your permanent collections along with ways to bring more relevant special exhibitions to your museum. One obvious integration is technology. “Modern tech is transforming museums from spaces of looking and learning to spaces of interaction, participation and engagement,” (Museums Evolve To Remain Relevant). Major museums all over the world are incorporating technology into their permanent collections. Augmented reality tours of exhibits with interactive and educational components can be a great way to drive visitors and have visitors staying in museums for longer. Embracing social media can also raise relevancy for museum’s collections. I have seen many TikToks recently from museums using the app as a medium for education and entertainment. When jumping on popular format and music trends, museums can be looked at in a new light by millennials and gen-z who may not regularly frequent museums. Welcoming social media marketing strategies and integrating technology into the visitor experience can transform museums from tired cultural institutions into a brand new experience.
Another great way for museums to redeem their relevance is through embracing the local community they are part of. This is one of the things the Balzekas Lithuanian History Museum does a great job of, as they are constantly accepting artifact donations from the local Chicago Lithuanian community. Being able to see your ancestors represented at a museum is a powerful thing. In 2020, the Museum of Oxford launched its Queering Spires exhibition “to celebrate the ‘hidden history’ of Oxford’s LGBTQIA+ community.” The co-founder of the project Richard Howlett spoke about Oxford having a “queer history to be proud of,” and went on to say that it’s a “history hidden in people’s attics, filing cabinets and memories. We look forward to helping bring it to life through this exhibition,” (Why We Need Museums Now More Than Ever). By embracing the local community and telling stories that museums have often swept under the rug in the past, museums are able to shift the cultural viewpoint from one of exclusion to inclusion, which is what relevant audiences are begging for right now. We are currently existing in a culture of division, which means museums might need to take sides, or at least own up to their past. As Rebecca Carlsson writes in ‘Why We Need Museums Now More Than Ever,’ “To help the public re-establish this common ground and learn to build bridges rather than breed division, many believe that museums have a role to play in giving us perspective – be it through intellectual exercises or merely holding up mistakes of the past as evidence of where such behavior will lead us once more.” As systems of knowledge and understanding, museums have the power to combat ignorance and hatred.
In order for museums to create both sustainable and relevant special exhibitions and permanent collections, they must be as economical as possible. Last year, the Whitney Museum of American Art spent $51.2 million on purchasing art, (Financial Statements and Report of
Independent Certified Public Accountants, Whitney Museum of American Art). I will insert a graphic created by the Guerrilla Girls for your reference below, but the point I am about to illustrate is why it makes most financial and ethical sense for museums to invest in art created by women and people of color.
A recent study of artist diversity in museums in the US concludes that out of over 10,000 artists, 87% are men, and of that total 85% are white (Topaz, et al. 2019). Not only is this completely disproportionate to any community museums exist in, it further creates a culture of exclusion at museums. If museums are wondering how to be more relevant, maybe they should take a look at the numbers. There are more women than men entering arts education and working as visual artists, yet they are still vastly underrepresented in museums. Arts educators and visual artists are museum visitors, and most likely repeat customers. Embracing an already existing audience by adding more women into your collection seems to kill two birds with one stone.
If decreasing the gender gap isn’t enough for museums, they simply have to look at the economic side to realize it would be most relevant to invest in female artists. “The Sotheby's study found that the All Art-Female (AAF) index, which comprises 2,472 repeat sales by 499 female artists, rose by 72.9% between 2012 and 2018. That compares with just 8.3% for the All Art-Male (AAM) index, which is made up of 55,706 repeat sales by 8,477 male artists.” Michael Klein, head of Sotheby’s Mei Moses, points out that “This is in contrast to the previous 50 years in which the resale markets for both male and female artists performed roughly in parallel (albeit at different volumes)," (Why You Should Invest In Female Artists). Despite the amount of female artists being significantly less than male artists, the trend is clearly pointing to newfound interest in women artists. “Adams et al. wrote a joint paper in 2017 analyzing 1.5 million auction transactions in 45 countries, and documented a 47.6% discount for female artists in auction prices for paintings. Even when they adjusted the data set for outliers by removing the ‘superstar artists’ — works that sell above 1 million dollars — a discount factor of 28.8% remains (Adams, Kräussl, Navone, & Verwijmeren, 2017).” So if the Whitney has $51.2 million to spend on art in a single year, how many paintings by women artists could they purchase? And what would those paintings be worth in the future? Well, “To the conclusion that investing in female artists is a smart thing to do also comes Sotheby’s Mei Moses Art Index. They state that works by female artists bought in 2012 and then sold in 2018 would, on average, have increased in value by 72.9%, clearly outperforming male artists,” (Female artists are the biggest bargain on the market! What will your art collection be worth?). In economic terms, “buy low, sell high.”
This same context applies when it comes to art made by people of color. By creating exhibitions that showcase black and brown artists, museums are able to reach a broader community and embrace calls for social change. I read an article interviewing Freda Isingoma who is the founder is KIISA, “an investment and advisory firm focused on developing investment solutions for the Contemporary African and Diaspora Art market and ecosystem” (Why Black Art Should Be Part of Your Investment Portfolio). In the interview she reveals the appropriation of African and Diaspora art, “The interest in African & Diaspora art has always been there and that’s evident by the fact Classic African art influenced Early European and American Art movements including Cubism, Fauvism, German Expressionism, and American Modernism. We see this in the works of Picasso, Matisse, and Gaugin to name a few.” If museums added works by African and Diaspora artists to their permanent collections, they could create really interesting exhibitions that reveal the African inspiration behind these modern art movements. I would pay to see that exhibition.
Despite some museums recognizing their need for diversity in their collections, Isingoma isn’t fully convinced. “Saying that, there has been a rising focus on Black artists by Western art museums and institutions post the protests in the US and globally last Summer. This is due to the fact that many of them were forced to finally face the racial disparities in their collections and programming and at the same time address this bias within the Western art cannon overall. If you ask me how much impact this will make, the jury is still out. There has been more virtue signaling to date, than measurable action.” With more and more museums across the country creating strategic plans for becoming more inclusive, equitable, and anti-racist, part of their mission should include supporting their local community through the purchasing of thier work. I remember seeing a Kehinde Wiley painting in person for the first time at the Phoenix Art Museum and I was mesmerized by the larger than life icons rendered so intricately on the canvas. Picture one of Wiley’s paintings displayed next to the Renaissance painting he is reimagining.
If museums truly want to be relevant, they have to let go of the fact that they once were. They need to denounce their colonial history and prove to be better. They need to interweave equity and inclusion into their mission and strategic plans in order for that to drive the decisions they make and goals they set. The numbers don’t lie, and it would be most economical to diversify their collection by adding artwork by women and people of color in order to get the most return on their investment and reach existing and future audiences.
SOURCES
https://www.commarch.com/news/2018/jun/08/museums-evolve-to-remain-relevant/
https://www.museumnext.com/article/why-we-need-museums-now-more-than-ever/
https://medium.com/art-direct/why-you-should-invest-in-female-artists-now-8bfd7a031e27
https://moneyweek.com/512573/invest-in-female-artists
https://shoppeblack.us/2021/02/black-art-investment-portfolio-kiisa/