The Elephants in the Galleries

By John W. Jacobsen
This article first appeared in The Informal Learning Review (Jan-Feb. 212), No. 112.
R. Bryce Seidl’s account of downward trends in ASTC operating data since 2006 (ILR # 111) raises the
major concern for the economic sustainability of our field, yet few are doing anything about this elephant
in the gallery. Or rather, on closer inspection, these elephants in the science center galleries.
First, the numbers. Seidl, who is Board Chair of ASTC and CEO of the Pacific Science Center and is
summarizing ASTC statistics from 2006 to 2011, reports that the global average of monthly median
attendance decreased from about 42,000 visitors per month in January 2006 to 32,000 in July 2011 – a
24% decrease over 5.5 years. Larger science centers lost more than smaller ones. He further observes,
“Over the last decade, 10 Chicago museums invested close to one billion dollars in infrastructure,
collections storage and content. Over that same period they have seen no significant upward movement in
attendance.” The Museum of Science (Boston) has never achieved the annual attendances it earned in the
late 80’s, despite two and a half decades of professional development and growth in population. I am
really puzzled by the paradox of our field’s increased professionalism and accumulation of research
evidence vs. our declining operating data – as we “get better,” we are losing attendance. What does this
mean for the attendance aspirations of the upcoming major science museum capital projects in Miami,
Dallas and San Francisco? What does it mean for all informal science education (ISE) museums?
Second, the caveats. No one is comfortable with the accuracy and comparability of sector- and field-wide
museum statistics. Dr. Philip Katz, head of research for AAM, feels that Seidl’s report is overly
pessimistic, citing more modest declines from the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts and the
National Arts Index and modest increases from AAM’s own research data, which include art and history
museums as well. Declining attendance may be more of an issue for ASTC museums than for other
sectors.
sectors. Janet Rice Elman, CEO of the ACM, says that while their statistics are from 2010, her sense is
that children’s museums have not declined, and AZA’s Sr. VP for Conservation & Education Dr. Paul
Boyle reports that zoos and aquariums have recently increased cumulative attendance from 175 million to
180 million. “Attendance” is a fuzzy and ill-suited statistic. Some museums count a combo ticket sale as
two; others as one. Some include function rentals and on-site events, and others do not, while outreach
programs are not counted within on-site attendance. A more accurate, meaningful and consistent
definition that totals all of a museum’s annual “engagements,” such as recommended by the recently
completed Museum Operating Data Standards (MODS) developed by the White Oak Institute and AAM
for the IMLS, might address this problem, but broad adoption needs to get past entrenched and conflicting
definitions and museum sector needs.
Nevertheless, the issue of declining attendance, particularly among large ISE museums with giant screen
theaters, is a sufficiently serious issue that the ASTC board is wrestling with it. So let me describe some
of the difficult and seldom-asked questions – the “elephants” – that I see in the ISE museum sector that
merit closer attention and research:
• Is the fault in us or in society?: There are bound to be adverse external factors, such as the declining
pizzazz of science, the aging and diversifying market, the difficult economy, the end of the novelty
effect of science centers, the increased competition from theme parks, experiential retail and other
physical destinations, and the huge growth of other museums over the last decades. However there are
also positive external factors such as population growth and urbanization, the increased attention to
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STEM education, the realization of the importance of non-school, family-based learning experiences,
and the expansion of access to public spaces, including cultural districts. Cocooning and enhanced
viewing options at home, and the wealth of information and entertainment over the Internet may
explain why movie house attendance has recently hit a 16-year low, and this effect might also explain
some of the decline for giant screen theaters and other on-site museum attendance. Yet, theme park
attendance has been growing, and, as noted earlier, ASTC museums are suffering while children’s
museums, zoos and aquariums appear not to be. In any case, it is hard to do anything about such
external effects, except use them as excuses. We can, however, look at the factors that are within our
power to change.
• Why can’t ISE museums create their own popular attractions?: Most ISE museum directors I
have spoken with talk about blockbuster exhibitions and Hollywood DMR ® films as the sources of
their occasional attendance peaks. Whether it is Body Worlds or Harry Potter in the traveling
exhibition galleries, or Avatar or Mission Impossible in their giant screen theater, these attendance
boosters tend to be produced and distributed by commercial for-profit ventures. Their business deals
are cloaked in secrecy in part because they funnel a considerable share of the visitors’ money back to
the commercial sector. Not incidentally, these commercial attractions typically require higher ticket
prices, and often are just front-loading future attendance, resulting in subsequent attendance valleys
and a public that expects to wait to re-visit until the next popular hit. Why can’t museums produce
these attendance-generating traveling exhibitions and films, and keep the revenues within our sector?
Sure, there are a few exceptions, such as some of the in-house exhibitions mounted by the Franklin
Institute and Discovery Place, but these are seldom scalable to multi-venue installations, and many
museum-produced traveling exhibitions, planetarium programs, and giant screen films have modest
box office impact. Museum staff members often complain that traveling exhibitions steal attention
and resources from “mission-based” permanent exhibits, but while new permanent exhibits can result
in a short-term bump in attendance, they usually settle back, as did Liberty Science Center. When will
we understand that our visitors want constant change, rather than the oxymoron of new permanent
exhibits? More importantly, when will we understand what motivates our visitors to re-visit? And
when will we learn how to provide them with a consistent stream of attractive and compelling
learning experiences that are relevant to their interests? Only then can we wean ourselves from
commercial vendors who are all too happy to exploit our visibility, excellent facilities and deep
community trust to their financial advantage, but to our long-term economic detriment.
• Are ISE museums overpriced or worth less?: Gate-sharing arrangements with commercial
distributors often result in increased admission prices. Wit Ostrenko, CEO of Tampa’s MOSI, also
notes that as declining attendance reduces earned revenue, there is pressure to jack up pricing to
compensate in the short term, which results in further stratifying our audiences to the wealthy and
puts downward pressure on attendance. The AZA’s Boyle, on the other hand, notes that zoos and
aquariums offer families good value, particularly evident during the recent ‘staycation’ phenomenon,
and free admission has doubled attendance for many UK museums. Ultimately, however, we need to
provide visitors with greater value than their outlay of time, money and stress. Sea World ($81.99 for
an adult day pass at the gate) can do it and still attract its very diverse audiences; so why can’t ISE
museums?
• Are do-good messages hurting? and, For whom should we be “relevant?”: The recent emphasis
on science in society, and on the public understanding of research may be leading ISE museums
toward public offerings that fewer people want. The billion dollars spent in Chicago may have
successfully achieved their donors’ learning objectives, but perhaps at the expense of the host
institutions’ operating aspirations. Several ISE institutions shared millions of funding for
nanotechnology education, but did those nanotechnology programs boost attendance? For that
matter, do exhibits on infectious diseases, climate change, population explosion and other science and
society topics attract people, or turn them away from subsequent visits? When ISE institutions are
dependent on visitor revenues, how much didactic lecturing can we get away with? What’s the right
ratio of the sugar-coating to the pill? And are we really about dispensing “pills?” Most of us would
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agree that “relevance” is an essential component of a museum’s public value, but who determines
what is relevant?’ Perhaps we have paid too much attention to the messages that foundations and the
scientific community wish to impart to the general public, and not enough to the kinds of quality-time
learning experiences that families want to have together in our institutions.
• Why are economic indicators (outputs) segregated from learning impacts (outcomes)? VSA and
informalscience.org do a good job of archiving education studies, but no one gathers marketing
studies, and the two kinds of evaluation have very different methods and purposes. Yet both are
important and should be integrated: Effective free-choice learning experiences should also be popular
visitor experiences. Some disagree with aspects of this integration. Dr. John Fraser, CEO of the New
Knowledge Organization, a non-profit research institute, says “We shouldn’t measure social services
by the revenues they generate – that is playing into the corporatization of third sector institutions and
misleads everyone into believing that a better or worse society is a commodity no different than two
pairs of shoes.” Dr. Alan Friedman, editor of the NSF’s “Framework for Evaluating Impacts of
Informal Science Education Projects,” notes that a museum can boost its operating numbers by
screening Batman, but that says nothing about its learning impact. Fraser believes that any paid
museum can only be judged as free-choice for a narrow band of the upper-middle class who have
enough discretionary spending to enjoy museum visits at will. These are valid considerations, but not
enough in my opinion to merit tossing out all operating data as inadmissible evidence. In a free choice
marketplace, I hypothesize that operating data are more than just outputs – they have the potential to
be indicators of impact at a community level. To deny free-choice learning institutions the use of their
marketplace numbers as evidence of their impact is to insult the capacity of families and teachers to
make responsible and meaningful learning decisions by voting with their time and money. We can’t
call something a good learning experience if no one shows up, or if it kills the host financially.
Marketplace appeal is the fundamental difference between formal and informal learning (i.e., between
no-choice and free-choice), and we should not expect to use the same evaluation tests for both. In
recognition of this difference, I believe that NSF ISE and other granting solicitations should include
evaluation of both learning outcomes and operating objectives to encourage proposers to think about
and be judged by their deliverables’ learning effectiveness, by their ability to attract “free-choice”
audiences and to clearly admit who and what are being supported by the public purse in the true fiscal
reality of museum operations today. We are producing learning experiences that we hope our
audiences with ‘buy’ with their money, time and/or effort, and what I call product development
research truly pays off in visitor learning and attendance – Val Crane’s 1987 studies resulted in a
very different version of Ramesses the Great (1988) at the Museum of Science that had both the
learning that visitors thought was relevant to them in a science museum context, and resulted in
700,000 visitors in four months. The damage with the segregated approach is that exhibit and
education staff focus on whether their messages get across, leaving the marketing folks with the
challenge of selling these message-laden things through packaging. My call is for the VSA evaluation
community to use their skills to integrate education and marketing studies and to help us create
effective learning experiences that the public wants to buy.
• Are science centers as we know them a dying breed of museum?: This is the most troubling
elephant. Fraser asks “Are the funders of STEM learning museums just keeping these daytime-only
exhibit warehouses going when maybe some should be allowed to die as no longer relevant in a
media-rich 24-7 learning world?” Is our focus on science learning primarily at the museum building
as our “core purpose” too limiting and not sufficiently compelling to motivate growing visitation? Do
we need to expand beyond STEM learning to take on active roles as community gathering places,
economic development agencies and institutions serving a much wider range of social purposes in
order to survive? or, Do we need new creativity and innovative ways of engaging a larger public
audience in science learning well beyond any building? As Fraser says, “Evolution is not always slow
and predictably based on past success. Sometimes a cataclysmic change in an ecology results in
radical die-off of species that seemed to be stable for the long term. Sudden change can result in the
emergence of completely new types of life that are more suited to the changed world.” Friedman says
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