From Outputs to Outcomes: The New Museum Professional [MUSEUMS AND CHANGE]

The session recording is now available.A MUSEUMS AND CHANGE session in collaboration with Museums as Progress. Museum professionals are hired for their expertise — curatorial knowledge, interpretive design, visitor research. But that expertise isn’t an outcome. The visitor taking pictures of their kid having fun isn’t there to learn about your discipline. The couple on a date isn’t asking for engagement programming. People come to museums to relax, connect with others, discover something about themselves — and, yes, sometimes learn something new along the way or “engage” with the museum — but for most people, most of the time, the goals are manifold and your expertise matters only to the extent that it helps them achieve what they’re actually trying to accomplish. This creates an uncomfortable question: Can you use your expertise to serve what people are actually trying to achieve? The paradox is that the more we invest in our expertise, the easier it is for our expertise to become the main character — the star of the show — ultimately undermining the value and potential of our work and the institution as a whole. Many museum professionals resist this shift. It’s understandable — we naturally become defensive when our expertise — the thing we’ve invested so much time and money into, the thing that practically defines who we are — seems to be challenged. Confronted with the reminder that our work and talent are only a step toward much bigger challenges, you may be tempted to object: “But people do care about biodiversity,” or “But visitors are interested in colonial history”. But that resistance reveals something deeper — expertise becomes a shield against harder questions about relevance and impact. If we admitted that people’s goals differ from ours, we’d have to become students again, learning what actually matters to the communities we claim to support. The challenge isn’t whether your museum has valuable expertise — it does. The question is whether that expertise can serve community progress in ways that generate institutional returns. Traditional discipline-specific expertise alone isn’t enough — those skills need to be coordinated in service of outcomes that matter to people who control resources, whether funders, government stakeholders, or individuals deciding whether to visit. This session explores what shifts when museum teams make this transition. You’ll hear from MaP community members at two institutions testing it in real time — one repositioning a regional history museum’s value to provincial government stakeholders, the other integrating audience-focused practices across departments at a university art museum. How the Conversation Works@Kyle Bowen will frame the outputs-to-outcomes shift and why it matters for museum strategy. @Amanda Boehm-Garcia and @Joan Kanigan will each share how this shift is shaping their work — the specific decisions it’s changing, the challenges it surfaces, and what’s becoming possible at their institutions. @Avi Decter  will facilitate open discussion and peer exchange, drawing out questions from participants and connecting threads across different institutional contexts. This event will be hosted on the MUSEUMS AND CHANGE Zoom account, so live participation is limited to 100 attendees on a first-come, first-served basis. The session will be recorded and made available following the live discussion. Who This Is ForThis session is for museum professionals wrestling with the tension between expertise and impact: • You're passionate about your discipline but wondering if that passion is actually serving your community • You're being asked to justify institutional value in ways that your traditional expertise doesn't answer • You recognize that people use your museum for reasons you don't fully understand — and you're not sure how to learn what those reasons are • You're curious whether the outcomes you've been trained to care about actually matter to the people whose support your institution needs ParticipantsKyle Bowen is the founder of Museums as Progress (MaP). He works with museum leaders to build decision-making capabilities that strengthen institutional performance. Many museums collect visitor data but struggle to turn that understanding into choices that affect revenue, positioning, or long-term sustainability. Kyle helps institutions close that gap by aligning cross-functional teams around audience outcomes rather than siloed departmental expertise. The work focuses on understanding what progress people are trying to achieve and how museums can support community goals in ways that generate institutional returns — which decisions will drive revenue, which partnerships strengthen competitive position, and how to demonstrate impact that moves boards and funders. Amanda Boehm-Garcia is the Head of Museum Experiences at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art at the University of Oklahoma, overseeing curatorial, learning and engagement, and visitor services. Amanda is navigating how to integrate audience-focused practices across departments with different rhythms and mandates — curatorial timelines that span years, visitor services responding in real-time, learning programs testing new approaches mid-cycle. She's working with a team of both emerging and experienced professionals to build shared frameworks for decision-making when expertise alone doesn't answer the question "Should we do this?" Joan Kanigan brings more than 20 years of senior management experience leading regional museums and historical organizations. At the Western Development Museum, Joan is repositioning the museum's value to provincial government stakeholders — shifting the conversation from "Here's what we preserve and display" to "Here's what changes because we exist." That means translating well-being research and audience outcomes into briefing formats that work for ministry decision-makers asking budget allocation questions. Joan also teaches museum management for the Museums Association of Saskatchewan, working with practitioners across the province navigating similar questions about institutional relevance and sustainability.