Nurturing Engagement

Robert J. Stein
Robert J. SteinMuseum Administrator / Technologist
Designing for Engagement:
Changing the Museum to Build
Participation
                            Robert Stein
                          Deputy Director
                    Dallas Museum of Art
                                @rjstein
WHY DO MUSEUMS
MATTER?




                 Flickr Credit ~adforce1
WHY DO MUSEUMS
MATTER?
 Why is your community better off because it has a
 museum? The answer must necessarily be something
 more than, because otherwise it wouldn’t. Museums
 matter only to the extent that they are perceived to
 provide the communities they serve something of value
 beyond their own mere existence.

                        Stephen Weil, Making Museums Matter



                                                     Flickr Credit ~adforce1
DALLAS MUSEUM OF ART
DALLAS MUSEUM OF ART



Founded in 1903, the DMA’s collection
spans 5,000 years of human history

Located in the largest arts district in
North America

Dallas is the 4th largest metro area in
the United States with over 6.5M
residents
DALLAS MUSEUM OF ART



While 2,500 new people move to
Dallas each and every day…

Attendance has hovered around
500,000 for most of the last decade.

With just over 500,000 visitors last
year, we are reaching no more than
7% of our community
ARE WE FAILING?
According to a study by Indiana
       University, museums are
     considered a more reliable
 source of historical information
  than books, teachers, or even
          personal accounts by
                   grandparents.


TRUSTED
BUT NOT VITAL
The 2010 U.S. census reports that only 14.5% of US Adults visited
museums in the prior 12 months (Census, 2012).
Studies at the Metropolitan Museum of Art found that most visitors spend
        much less than 30 seconds viewing works of art The study reports that
        rarly do visitors spend more than a minute with any individual artwork.




                                GRAZING

                                         Spending Time on Art” by Jeffrey K. Smith and Lisa F. Smith in Empirical Studies of the Arts, Vol 19, Number 2, 2001.
                                                             On the Brink of Irrelevance? Art Museums in Contemporary Society” by Douglas Worts, 2003.
Flickr Credit ~Petereck
TIME FOR A CHANGE

         FREE ADMISSION
                 FREE
           MEMBERSHIP
ARE YOU A MEMBER?
ARE YOU A MEMBER?

   PARTICIPATION IS
  THE NEW CURRENCY
    OF MEMBERSHIP
A CULTURE OF

PARTICIPATION
 A participatory culture is one
 in which members believe
 their contributions matter,
 and feel some degree of
 social connection with one
 another




                                  Jenkins, Henry. 2006. “Confronting the Challenges of
                                  Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century.”
Promoting participation and
engagement with art
Nurturing Engagement
Nurturing Engagement
Badges are bundles of
activities that are created by
DMA staff.


Badges are used to magnify
existing visitor behavior and
encourage new forms of
engagement
Nurturing Engagement
Nurturing Engagement
Points are awarded for
completing badge activities


DMA Friends can use their
points for a variety of rewards
For the first time, we can
have a stream of data about
what visitors do inside the
museum, not just when they
show up…
Social Media Listening
Listen to the social web
comprehensively


Credit Friends for online
engagement


Use high engagement as a
“mirror” to the community
WHY DO MUSEUMS
MATTER?
WHY DO MUSEUMS
MATTER?
 “When you can slip into a gallery for just 15 minutes to see a
 favorite painting, or when parents can take their children without
 having to budget for it, the museum takes on a societal function.
 It's no longer just a fortress or an amusement: it's a civic platform,
 where education and citizenship go hand in hand”.




                                 Jason Farago, The Gaurdian, London, 30 Nov, 2012
WHY DO MUSEUMS
MATTER?
 “For Dallas, a museum membership should be like a library card:
 everyone should have one, and it should foster an engagement
 with the museum that goes beyond the occasional visit to a kind
 of civic pride”.

 “I hope it works. Because in a perpetually privatizing world, the
 kind of civic culture that the Dallas Museum of Art is trying to
 foster has become rarer than any antiquity”.


                                Jason Farago, The Gaurdian, London, 30 Nov, 2012
THANK YOU!
1 of 27

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Nurturing Engagement

  • 1. Designing for Engagement: Changing the Museum to Build Participation Robert Stein Deputy Director Dallas Museum of Art @rjstein
  • 2. WHY DO MUSEUMS MATTER? Flickr Credit ~adforce1
  • 3. WHY DO MUSEUMS MATTER? Why is your community better off because it has a museum? The answer must necessarily be something more than, because otherwise it wouldn’t. Museums matter only to the extent that they are perceived to provide the communities they serve something of value beyond their own mere existence. Stephen Weil, Making Museums Matter Flickr Credit ~adforce1
  • 5. DALLAS MUSEUM OF ART Founded in 1903, the DMA’s collection spans 5,000 years of human history Located in the largest arts district in North America Dallas is the 4th largest metro area in the United States with over 6.5M residents
  • 6. DALLAS MUSEUM OF ART While 2,500 new people move to Dallas each and every day… Attendance has hovered around 500,000 for most of the last decade. With just over 500,000 visitors last year, we are reaching no more than 7% of our community
  • 8. According to a study by Indiana University, museums are considered a more reliable source of historical information than books, teachers, or even personal accounts by grandparents. TRUSTED
  • 9. BUT NOT VITAL The 2010 U.S. census reports that only 14.5% of US Adults visited museums in the prior 12 months (Census, 2012).
  • 10. Studies at the Metropolitan Museum of Art found that most visitors spend much less than 30 seconds viewing works of art The study reports that rarly do visitors spend more than a minute with any individual artwork. GRAZING Spending Time on Art” by Jeffrey K. Smith and Lisa F. Smith in Empirical Studies of the Arts, Vol 19, Number 2, 2001. On the Brink of Irrelevance? Art Museums in Contemporary Society” by Douglas Worts, 2003. Flickr Credit ~Petereck
  • 11. TIME FOR A CHANGE FREE ADMISSION FREE MEMBERSHIP
  • 12. ARE YOU A MEMBER?
  • 13. ARE YOU A MEMBER? PARTICIPATION IS THE NEW CURRENCY OF MEMBERSHIP
  • 14. A CULTURE OF PARTICIPATION A participatory culture is one in which members believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social connection with one another Jenkins, Henry. 2006. “Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century.”
  • 18. Badges are bundles of activities that are created by DMA staff. Badges are used to magnify existing visitor behavior and encourage new forms of engagement
  • 21. Points are awarded for completing badge activities DMA Friends can use their points for a variety of rewards
  • 22. For the first time, we can have a stream of data about what visitors do inside the museum, not just when they show up…
  • 23. Social Media Listening Listen to the social web comprehensively Credit Friends for online engagement Use high engagement as a “mirror” to the community
  • 25. WHY DO MUSEUMS MATTER? “When you can slip into a gallery for just 15 minutes to see a favorite painting, or when parents can take their children without having to budget for it, the museum takes on a societal function. It's no longer just a fortress or an amusement: it's a civic platform, where education and citizenship go hand in hand”. Jason Farago, The Gaurdian, London, 30 Nov, 2012
  • 26. WHY DO MUSEUMS MATTER? “For Dallas, a museum membership should be like a library card: everyone should have one, and it should foster an engagement with the museum that goes beyond the occasional visit to a kind of civic pride”. “I hope it works. Because in a perpetually privatizing world, the kind of civic culture that the Dallas Museum of Art is trying to foster has become rarer than any antiquity”. Jason Farago, The Gaurdian, London, 30 Nov, 2012

Editor's Notes

  1. Empirical data supports the view that visitors spend little time at individual exhibit components (often a matter of a few seconds and seldom as much as one minute); seldom read labels; usually stop at less than half the components at an exhibit; are more likely to use trial-and-error methods at interactive exhibits than to read instructions; that children are more likely to engage with interactive exhibits than adults, and that attention to exhibits declines sharply after about half an hour.
  2. Studies of 150 visitors at the Metropolitan Museum of Art found a mean time of less than 30 seconds viewing an object to be typical, with most spending significantly less time. Douglas Worts, former interpretive planner and audience researcher at the Art Gallery of Ontario and museologist, summarizes this behavior as “grazing” and theorizes that the pattern may arise from a mismatch in the goals of curators and visitors. It is relatively rare to watch a visitor spend more than a minute with any individual artwork.
  3. A participatory culture is a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices. A participatory culture is also one in which members believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social connection with one another…Participatory culture is emerging as the culture absorbs and responds to the explosion of new media technologies that make it possible for average consumers to archive, annotate, appropriate, and recirculate media content in powerful new ways.