Today, we’re excited to announce the launch of the 2025 Art Museum Director Survey. Fielded originally in 2020 and again in 2022, with funding from the Mellon Foundation and the Kress Foundation, the survey gathers the perspectives of museum directors on topics including leadership and strategy, budget and staffing, visitors and the public, and collections. As the first survey was distributed shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic led museums across the country to close their doors, the findings served as a snapshot of the priorities in the field immediately before the pandemic shut down physical access to cultural spaces. The 2022 survey results provided insight into how museums emerged from the pandemic.

For the third iteration of this project, we are continuing to explore how museums are governed, how they serve the public, and what kinds of strategies they develop to respond to complex challenges. The survey instrument, adapted from the earlier iterations, has been greatly helped by our advisory committee:

  • Vedet Coleman Robinson, President and CEO of the Association of African American Museums
  • Pamela Franks, Director of Williams College Museum of Art
  • Miki Garcia, Director of the Arizona State University Art Museum
  • Edward Hayes Jr, Director of the El Paso Museum of Art
  • Carys Kunze, Research and Data Specialist at the American Alliance of Museums
  • Lavita McMath Turner, Chief Diversity Officer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
  • Brooke Minto, Executive Director and CEO of the Columbus Museum of Art
  • Asma Naeem, Director of the Baltimore Museum of Art
  • Raphaela Platow, Executive Director of the Speed Art Museum
  • Franklin Sirmans, Director of the Pérez Art Museum Miami
  • Jay Xu, Director and CEO of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco

Cycle 3, launched today, will remain open for at least four weeks to collect responses. The anticipated closing date is May 5th, 2025. We look forward to publishing our findings later this year.

If you have questions about the survey, please contact us at research-surveys@ithaka.org.