Three museum directors took the research in this post into real stakeholder conversations last year — with a provincial government ministry, foundation officers, and a capital campaign team. Below, John Falk lays out the communication strategies they deployed. A sector report where those directors describe what happened is available for download at the end.
They built their approaches through the Value Articulation Intensive. Cohort 2 starts on April 30.
Kyle Bowen
Principal, Museums as Progress
I’ve spent decades studying why people go to museums, what they do once there, and importantly, what meanings they take away from the experience — what they learn, yes, but also what changes in how they feel about themselves and others, and how museums help them achieve their purposes. Of late, I have been working to reframe the benefits of museum-going in ways that might help counter some of the headwinds most museums now face, including flattening visitation, an increasingly hostile policy environment, and an ever-more competitive fund-raising landscape. Key to this work is a reframing of how we might define and talk about the benefits of museum-going.
Multiple research studies involving thousands of visitors have now clearly demonstrated that museum experiences result in measurable, long-lasting enhancements to visitors’ personal, intellectual, social, and physical well-being. The research has also shown that visitors perceive that the well-being benefits they gained from visiting a museum have real economic value, on average equal to $540 per visit.
These numbers surprise people, including most of the directors we worked with this past year. It is not that they did not believe that the experiences they provide the public are valuable, it is just that these numbers seem to fly in the face of the economic value most people usually ascribe to a museum experience.
Museum leaders are used to talking about the value of their institutions, as they are all regularly called upon to make the case for their institutions. The museum leader’s toolbox already includes things like economic impact, educational outcomes, and cultural preservation. The data behind these types of arguments are real, and for many stakeholders — board members who already believe in the mission, the museum’s most frequent visitors, arts and humanities councils tracking educational metrics — they have proven to be effective at supporting appeals and value claims. I wouldn’t for a moment suggest museums stop using these data and making these arguments, at least for those for whom these arguments have resonance.
Unfortunately, though, this audience is narrowing. The pool of policymakers, funders, die-hard visitors, and community leaders who already accept that museums deserve public investment is getting smaller. Not because the traditional arguments have gotten worse, but because more of the people you need to persuade don’t share the underlying premise. When a funder (or the public) doesn’t already believe arts and culture merit public support, economic multipliers don’t open the conversation. They reinforce a case that was never in question for the people it reaches — and miss entirely the people it doesn’t.
What follows are new arguments for museum leaders to add to the ones they’re already making. Not replacement. Addition.
From Research to Practice: Four Communication Strategies
The research opens specific avenues for how museums can communicate their value to stakeholders who don’t start from traditional cultural appreciation.
Speak to Universal Human Needs. The results provide a way to talk about the benefits of museum-going in non-content terms — terms that speak directly to the public’s and funders’ most basic needs. Visiting an art, history, or science museum results in people enhancing their personal, intellectual, social, and physical well-being. More concretely, individuals who visit museums come away from the experience feeling calmer and more relaxed, having discovered new things about themselves and their place in the world, having fostered stronger family ties and relationships, and feeling they have done something worthwhile. These are outcomes all people aspire to achieve. Reframing the outcomes of museum experiences in this way changes the perception of why someone would want to visit the museum — it is not for some esoteric outcome but rather to achieve benefits that lie at the heart of the human experience.
Position Museums as Community Infrastructure. The case can be made that these well-being-related outcomes are as essential to a quality community as basic services like roads and hospitals. Creating more livable cities — cities that feed the personal, intellectual, social, and physical needs of people — are essential quality of life characteristics of healthy, vibrant communities. In this framing, museums are not mere niceties but civic necessities. Like green spaces and clean air, quality museums make cities places worth living in. This case can and should be made to both funders and individual donors, accompanied by a commitment to measure and validly and reliably track success.
Lead with Cost-Effective Impact. The financial case is direct. Findings demonstrate that the museum-going public perceives that the benefits they derive from visiting a museum have real economic value — a value that exceeds by more than an order of magnitude the market costs of visiting a museum. The data shows that these benefits are cost-effectively generated, allowing museum leaders to assure both public and private funders that the museum will use their resources both effectively and prudently.
Frame Non-Participation as a Missed Opportunity. The fact that not all members of a community currently benefit from utilizing a museum has historically been viewed as a problem, but it can also be viewed as an opportunity. Given the potential benefits that museum-going supports, the case can now be made for the potential benefits that could accrue to a community if more people understood how valuable a visit to a museum could be and took advantage of that opportunity. With greater support, museums could both broaden their audiences and deliver greater value to society. The findings from this research strongly suggest that doing so not only makes sense socially but also economically.
What Practice Has Confirmed
These four strategies are not theoretical. In 2025, the first cohort of the Value Articulation Intensive — a collaborative program between Museums as Progress and myself — put them to work. Participants who deployed the frameworks tested them in live conversations with a provincial government ministry, foundation officers, and institutional leadership teams.
The pattern that emerged confirmed what the research predicted, with important refinements. The well-being outcomes resonated most readily with stakeholders whose priorities already aligned with well-being language — the framing connected to concerns they held but lacked a research-grounded vocabulary to express. The economic value data required more careful calibration: stakeholders accustomed to precise fiscal projections needed the well-being case and the economic case presented as complementary components, not collapsed into a single dollar figure.
Directors who engaged in this process discovered that value articulation is not a messaging exercise. It requires understanding what specific stakeholders actually need to hear, building propositions grounded in the research, and testing them in real conversations — then refining based on what lands. The research provides the foundation. Sustained practice reveals how to make it heard.
Three directors from that first cohort — @Joan Kanigan at the Western Development Museum, @Richard Cooper at the Levine Museum of the New South, and @Norman Burns at Conner Prairie — have each shared detailed accounts of what they tried, what worked, and what they’d tell a peer walking into a similar conversation.
Dr. John H. Falk
Download the full report (PDF):
The directors in this report built their approaches over ten weeks in the first Value Articulation Intensive cohort, co-facilitated by John and me. If you’re heading into conversations where the traditional case isn’t enough, this is where you build the next one.
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