Museum-Ed: 2003 Art Museum Educational Programs Survey Findings Now Available

Between August 1 and August 21, 2003, 85 art museums across the U.S.
completed an online survey regarding the principal types of programs
currently undertaken by their education departments. The survey was
publicized through the Museum-Ed listserv and targeted email to
museum education departments. The survey was initiated when funders
requested information about the structure of art museum education
departments, and the authors of this survey realized that no current
profile of art museum education activities existed. Where the
Institute of Museum and Library Services report True Needs True
Partners examined services offered to schools by museum education
departments in 2002, this survey goes beyond school programs and
attempts to document all of the activities of art museum education
programs.

  A broad range of museums responded, from small museums with only one
full-time educator on staff to the Metropolitan Museum of Art with 50
full time educators on staff. Of those museums reporting, the lowest
was one full time employee, the highest was 70 full time staff and
the median was 5 full time staff. The size of the museums
participating in the survey ranged from 2,000 square feet to 4 city
blocks, and the size of the museums' collections ranged from 285
objects, to 2 million objects. The median museum collection size was
13,000 objects. The annual operating budgets of museums completing
the survey ranged from $575,000 per year to $49 million per year. The
median annual operating budget was $3,000,000.

The survey asked museum educators questions in seven areas of
programming: tour programs; informal gallery learning programs;
community, adult and family programs; classes and other public
programs; partnerships with other organizations; school programs; and
online educational programs. Each of the seven program areas
contained between two and eight checkbox responses, as well as a
fill-in box where participants could indicate other programs they
offer that did not appear on the survey.

The survey and the resulting report is by no means exhaustive. This
report presents a broad brushstroke of art museum education programs
and analysis of each survey program area. Relationships between
program areas and correlations that include museum demographic
information are not included in this report, but the authors invite
anyone to pursue these further investigations. Raw data from the
survey is available in spreadsheet form for further analysis, and any
additional findings will be published on the Museum-Ed Web site. In
the future, the museum education community may find it useful to
survey other types of museums such as history, science and children's
museums. The authors of this survey hope that profiling the field of
museum education can be an ongoing effort, and welcome input and
collaboration from all aspects of the museum education community.

A report of the survey results is now available on the Museum-Ed Web
site http://www.museum-ed.org/research/surveys/2003mused/index.shtml

Kris Wetterlund Scott Sayre
Editors, Museum-Ed


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