Understanding Museum Visitors Today: Reflecting on 1990s Era Visitor Research Using New Data from a Collaborative Visitor Experience Study

Abstract

In the early 1990s, the field of visitor studies was in a period of self-reflection, with repeated calls for standardized data collection practices that could be used to transcend individual institutions and help understand museum visitors. A quarter century later, the Collaboration for Ongoing Visitor Experience Studies (COVES) was established, with more than 50 museums systematically collecting visitor experience data. This article shares COVES findings from 2023 on who visits, why they visit, and how they feel about their experiences, and compares this to older data from the field while positioning itself against commentary and available data from 30 years prior. Certain visitor demographics (including race/ethnicity and LGBT+ identity) appear to be shifting amidst a diversifying American public, while others (including educational attainment and household income) are disappointingly similar to trends seen decades ago. Prioritizing visitors and their experiences with benchmarked data (against peer institutions and census information) is essential for establishing actionable next steps for the field.

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