Museums Refine the Art of Listening

When the Museum of Modern Art opened its expanded $450 million home on West 53rd Street three years ago, the ticket desk began compiling the ZIP code or country of origin of every visitor, putting the information in a database.

At the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which is gearing up for the opening of its $345 million expansion in 2010, researchers found that besides marquee names like Picasso, van Gogh and Monet, subjects like interior design, royal jewels and Egyptian mummies pull in the crowds. And at the Detroit Institute of Arts, officials recently discovered that the average visitor spends only four or five minutes in any gallery, rather than the 20 minutes the officials had expected. Only 7 percent bothered to read the wall plaques.

While museum market research has been around for two decades, gathering data about visitors has never been as important, or as sophisticated, as it is now. As museums expand, they need more paying customers to cover ever-increasing costs. And theyre competing for those customers with local shopping malls, movie theaters, even grocery stores...

More information: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/12/arts/artsspecial/12visitors.html?_r=1&ref=artsspecial&oref=slogin

New York Times