Ignite the Power of Art

Understanding different visitor requirements is something I have recently blogged about, particularly the work of Gail Davitt at the Dallas Museum of Art. Gail has been in Australia for the last few days and gave a great talk at the Australia Council in Sydney.

What was really interesting was to understand the context in which DMA’s research was undertaken and how they reached the conclusions they did. As a reminder they concluded that there are four types of visitors namely:

• Observers – those that stand back, having limited knowledge of art, preferring a guided experience
• Participants – those that enjoy learning and the social experience of being in museums and galleries
• Independents – those that are more confident with their knowledge and prefer independent viewing
• Enthusiasts – those who are confident, enthusiastic, knowledgeable and comfortable looking at art

Gail first talked to the context, namely a Museum-wide view that it should seek to understand the triggers that get visitors to engage with art, hence the project title ‘Ignite the Power of art’.

The process involved 1) undertaking the research, 2) applying what was learnt, and 3) measuring the impact both on visitors and Museum staff.

1. Research produced the above visitor category breakdown, with some interesting side issues, e.g. that 30% of the Observers (least engaged) category were members – why?
2. Application involved everything from changing exhibition labels to provide for different levels of engagement to encouraging responses to exhibitions and using smartphones to deliver varying levels of interpretation
3. Impact involved both a much greater level of collaboration between staff and visitors and more listening to the visitors’ voice, changing in branding and mission of the Museum, better collaboration between staff departments and a much greater appetite at the Museum for experimentation.

So the take-aways from the exercise Gail identified as:

• Visitors now being perceived as individuals
• A much deeper sense of understanding of the quality of the visitor experience by Museum staff
• The research that DAM undertook, whilst applicable to other museums was also very institutional specific

Julian Bickersteth
Managing Director
internationalconservationservices

Visitor trends that disagree

I have blogged before about the lipstick phenomena and its impact on museums, and also the effect that the GFC and the resulting increase in domestic holidays have had on visitors. Now comes conflicting information from a number of sources on the issue.

AFP reports on 15th December 09 that Madrid’s Prado Museum reported near record numbers for 2009, and the Art Newspaper on 9th December 2009 also reports in its annual survey of major collecting institutions from around the world that two thirds saw an increase in visitors.

However The US Chronicle of Higher Education reports on a downturn in visitor numbers (11th December 09) based on a recent National Endowment for the Arts survey on American art habits. The survey reveals that more and more Americans have stopped going to museums, though before we slit our wrists, let it be clear that we are in the same company as music concerts, opera, ballet and even movies.

To be fair the information is not in conflict. We know there is a short term rise in museum going, but the overall trend is unfortunately negative. And why? The article is well worth reading not just for itself, but also for the ensuing blog commentary. In summary the reasons given are:
· The economy
· Lack of relevant teaching and arts education at primary and secondary level
· Losing our sense of the public sphere – we would rather look at things in the privacy of our own home
· ‘Disneyfication’ of museums (this was in a blog comment) , i.e. too many bells and whistles and not enough real things
· Disallowance of photography in museums (also in a blog comment) thus stopping any ‘fun’. Interestingly the blogger gets the need to limit photography for conservation reasons, but believes ( probably with some justification) that the ban is more about a matter of control over images for reproduction purposes
· And finally Adoration of the internet , i.e. we can get it all on-line, including close ups of all those great paintings – “Who needs to go to the Frick to see Rembrandt’s self portrait when the picture can be had for two easy clicks on the keyboard?”

The last point is interesting. We have consistently said , based on evidence out of French research (though I could not put my hands on it) that the more people look at art museum images on the net the more they want to see the real, but this is now suggesting that is not the case.

Sobering stuff, but at least we now have the ‘metrics’ identifying the problem, so we can plan what to do about it.

Tracking visitor numbers – metrics rule

‘Metrics’ seems to be the new buzz word around town. Metrics are everywhere. It is increasingly with them that we decide what to read, what stocks to buy, which poor people to feed, which athletes to recruit, which films and restaurants to try. The once-mysterious formation of tastes is becoming a quantitative science. Check out a rather cynical article about their pervasiveness in the New York Times November 20th 2009 edition.

Like almost everything, such matters seep through eventually to the museum and galleries sector. By the way, I used to refer to this as the ALM sector - for Libraries, Archives and Museums with museums of course covering art museums otherwise known as galleries. But the acronym increasingly in vogue seems to be GLAM - for Galleries, Museums, Archives and Museums. I like it and will run with that form from now on.

So where is the GLAM sector on metrics? The answer is two part, as the level of metrics varies enormously between the real and the virtual. Let me tackle each in turn.

On the real, namely how many visitors come through the physical doors, where they go and what they do once inside the institution, there is an embarrassing lack of knowledge. Almost all museums have some form of counting system, either through ticketing, or in the case of free entry museums, through counting systems. However even these are invariably inaccurate. There are many stories of attendants with hand clickers clicking away at random to ensure the visitor quota is achieved. Automatic counting systems give better accuracy, but still have difficulty distinguishing between visitors and staff ( and indeed inanimate objects like strollers or boxes). And once inside the institution there is no tracking of visitor paths, establishment of time spent within the institution or dwell times in front of exhibits quantified. One friend of mine admits that the closest he gets to this is sending staff out with a felt pen and a floor lay-out of the galleries, and tracking the route visitors take by hand. When they dwell in front of a particular exhibit, the felt pen is left on the paper in that spot, leading to a bigger splodge of ink. See my blog from June 2009 on the issue.

On the virtual, things are a little more advanced. We all know the power of Google Analytics, which is giving considerable granularity to web site metrics. But the Powerhouse Museum is now doing great work and mining more deeply into what their visitors do on the Museum’s web site. Read Seb Chan’s most interesting latest thoughts on the matter. Seb reports particularly on the issue of repeat visitations to web sites and understanding who is coming back, how often and why.

All is not lost on the real side of things however. We are looking at a mobile phone technology which allows tracking of visitors (all within privacy requirements) , with the added benefit it can reveal how long each visitor stays in the museum, where they dwell, whether they have been before, and, in the case of international visitors, which country they come from. We need to catch up fast to the same level of understanding that Google Analytics can provide for those web site visitors, and in due course work out the crossover.

Why museum visits rise in recessions

I’ve blogged before about the mixed messages that we are getting from data about visitor traffic during the recession.

But there really does now seem to be evidence that visitor numbers are rising on both sides of the Atlantic, as reported by Brook S. Mason in The Art Newspaper published online 29 Jul 09. The English National Trust says numbers are up by 8% in May compared to last year and overall by 24% this year. As always the detail reveals a bit of an explanation in that visits to Beatrix Potter’s house in the Lake District have almost doubled since the film ‘Miss Potter’ was released. But in the US too the National Trust is seeing between a 20% and 50% increase. “Staycations” (only in America would you find such a word) in the US seem to be driving attendance at some National Trust properties. “We have anecdotal evidence confirming that people are spending less, staying closer to home and visiting more of our sites,” says James Vaughan, National Trust vice president for historic sites in Washington, DC.
“Compared to the cost of a theatre or movie ticket, seeing an artist’s home or historic site is a relative bargain,” says Helen Harrison, director of the Pollock-Krasner House in the US. “Plus, the buildings are air-conditioned and a ticket is only $5.” In the UK, Ms Reynolds says that the cost of a National Trust family membership is less than a single day at a theme park.
My question is do museum/historic house visitors really weigh up before a visit whether to head out to the movies or to a museum experience? Surely we are about giving them a very different experience, not one that can be compared to a movie.

My view is that we are managing to draw more visitors because we can offer them a spiritual experience, either through their being in an historic house, generally a place of beauty and one full of stories, or their being in a museum or gallery, which invariably will be a church-like space in terms of size and contain a broad array of artwork and artefacts all of which can tell stories.

In summary therefore I get the bit about Staycations, i.e that there are more people staying at home and undertaking local visits. But I don’t buy into the 'bargain' idea of a museum visit as against the theatre or the movies. We need to see them as completely different experiences and build on that. I believe the visitor does too and will continue to respond well when they see us emphasising that difference.

Are Museums becoming the new churches – the place to meet?

I have blogged recently about falling visitor numbers at museums as a worldwide trend, and the opportunity for approaching the use of museum buildings in a different way (Museum visitation is falling but what are we doing about it? ), so I was particularly interested to read an article in the Times last week by Hugo Rifkind on this issue (How we learnt to dumb up and chill out).

Rifkind looked at those UK museums where visitor numbers were NOT falling (Liverpool museums - up 400% during 2008 whilst it was EU’s Capital of Culture-, the British Museum and Museum of Childhood), and found a number of theories to explain it:

1) People are using museums as secular public spaces (the new churches), where they can meet to pursue like interests . They have become places that are as much about activities as collections. The importance of providing good cafes and restaurants has now become paramount to provide a reason to return, whether it is to view a special exhibition, attend an event, or be part of a club or group that meets regularly there. This all about affinity groups wanting to use the space because they feel attracted to it (in just the same way as historic house museums have the potential to be used).

2) People are wanting more challenging entertainment – the ‘dumbing up’ theory. Rifkind quotes Neil MacGregor, boss man at the British Museum, in saying that ‘there is a huge desire to understand and to address complexity, and to spend the time to do so”. It is not true, MacGregor says, that we live in an era of dropping attention spans. Not sure I agree with this one – if the current crop of TV programs is anything it go by, we are inexorably seeing dumbing down rather than up.

3) Free entry and recessionary times means more people are taking advantage of museums as places of entertainment. Free entry has a side benefit of providing people with a sense of ownership. I think this explains why even in recessionary times whenever there is an appeal for the purchase of some major artwork about to be lost overseas, invariably in the UK the monies are raised. The public feels that part of the public cultural collection is at risk, and is prepared to chip in.

I find this stuff fascinating, and more to the point critical in understanding how we can continue to increase visitation.

Tracking those visitors

Visitor evaluation is a significant part of the operations of any major museum or gallery these days. Understanding what attracts visitors, and most critically why they would want to come back or recommend others to make a visit has become a sophisticated process. Museum personnel now specialize in such activities, and the tools at their command have moved on from the simple exit poll and questionnaire, not that this is not a valuable part of such evaluation.

With the rise of Google analytics, we now know more and more about who visits museum web sites, which pages they go to and how long they stay on each page. But when it comes to physical museum visits, we generally know how many pass through the front door, but very little else about where they go or what they do, once they are inside.

I’ve long been interested in seeing how technologies developed in big sectors, such as retail, can be applied to our specialist sector, which will always have limited resources to develop its own technological solutions. To that end, I have become very interested in how the Shoppertrak retail traffic counting system can be utilized in our sector.

Shoppertrak is a Chicago-based traffic counting company, which has developed some very smart hardware and associated software primarily for the retail sector. They use stereophonic digital cameras to count traffic. This is not only the most accurate form of counting, but because it is stereophonic it can, through triangulation, work out the height of visitors, and thus differentiate adults from children. In addition the system can separate out staff from visitors, using RFID tags, and work out ‘dwell times’ in front of displays.

But it is the analytical tools that they have developed that really gives this data value. Shoppertrak suck all the data back to Chicago for analysis over night and then issue it verified and analyzed according to the client requirements. This could be as simple as the raw traffic data detailed hour by hour or as sophisticated as analysis of the data against trends over the past week, month or year, including ‘what if’ scenarios for working out anything from guide/attendant requirements to when and where the most dense visits are occurring, and what are the most popular exhibitions and indeed exhibits within them.

For an industry which still relies largely on manual clickers or simple IR beams to work out visitor traffic, we need to lift our game to get some more sophisticated metrics. After all government budgets can be determined by such. We at Smarttrack RFID are looking at what we can do to tailor this great technology to our sector.