Strategic Management for Contemporary Art

The museum field has experienced a significant expansion over the past two decades increasing the need for additional revenues beyond traditional public support. The current recession has already led to significant cuts in state and local support for cultural institutions and many museums have so far floated the possibility of not only reducing, but completely eliminating state arts council budgets. With the recession and stock market downturn also affecting individual and corporate support and foundation grants, museums and other cultural institutions will feel considerable financial stress over the coming years and will likely pursue commercial and earned income even more vigorously. This increasing complexity requires a new managerial approach enabling museums to cope with the new competitive threats. So what model of management do contemporary art museums need for survival and growth in the new century? This research is intended to be the first European contribution to assess the role of museums of contemporary art in the 21st century and to understand the current situation in contemporary art museums management. The objective is to deal with all the management issues and business processes that are most significant for these institutions and to determine the amount of interest among the stakeholders in the creation of an International Network of Contemporary Art Institutions. The specific hypothesis behind the proposed research is that the contemporary art sector needs to be strengthened through cooperation and sharing of knowledge and best practices between the Institutions. Based on this hypothesis, the experimental focus of this research is to test the amount of interest among the stakeholders and its feasibility in the creation of an International Network of Contemporary Art Institutions with a program of Exhibition Loan Network and a Research Centre, based in Wien, in the MuseumsQuartier, devoted to sectorial studies on museum issues. The strategic aims are designed to provide a comprehensive assessment of the pilot project and should provide reliable data for defining priorities of future actions developed at EU level in order to implement the network. The results of this study would have an European impact and would represent the first systematic attempt to explore the challenges and opportunities for taking forward possible models of collaboration in the Contemporary Art Museum sector.

This research was intended to assess the role of museums of contemporary art and to understand the current situation in art museums management. In order to understand the current situation in art museums management we focused on the factors that were relevant for the success of art museums. Secondly, a major goal was to understand the motivations that frame the visitor experience in relation to contemporary art and determine the factors that impact on attendance. Using data collected through in-depth interviews with museum executives in London, New York and Washington DC, the specific hypothesis behind the proposed research was that the art sector needs to be strengthened through cooperation and sharing of knowledge between Institutions. Executives interviewed were able to identify different critical success factors and cited external factors such as reputation and audience satisfaction, and internal factors such as artistic quality, employee satisfaction, museum governance and organizational climate as important in servicing their organizational goals. Furthermore, innovation, risk-taking and internationalism were perceived as elements that best support the success of museums. In terms of their information needs it was clear that competitor intelligence, visitor`s needs and cultural policy trends were perceived as important in servicing their organizational goals and that museum executives were all largely dependent upon their informal network of contacts for information. As far as concerned the main factors that frame the visitor experience, we found that the key drivers for visiting art galleries are social, intellectual, emotional and spiritual needs. Finally, we also found that with the exception of the simplest quantitative measures, such as the number of visitors, there is not a shared framework among museums or any coordinated attempt to collect museum statistics most efficiently. Throughout the interviews museum executives, expressed a desire for better defined, comparable measures of success. In particular some expressed a desire for initiatives that enable institutions to benchmark their practices. This research suggests that organizations such as museum associations working in partnership with consultants should develop a framework for collecting quantitative and qualitative data and should disseminate regularly information about best practice and innovative approaches to audience development. To summarize, the research provides evidence that there is value in contributing to the development of a common performance framework that will enable museums to share and learn from each other`s experiences.