Museums and Social Impact Measures

Here's an interesting article that addresses the question of whether attendance, as a measure of success, is still a helpful metric to museums. 

The article details how the Oakland Museum of California is using data science in an attempt to measure its' social impact in the community. Noting that the traditional demographics of attendees are changing, the museum wanted to dig deeper than recording increasing diversity, but to measure "the difference [the museum is] trying to make in the world."

In the institutions first study of data collected over the 2019 fiscal year, they found that on the surface their results were very positive. The article details how the institution probed that data further and revealed important takeaways and the work they still need to do.

Read the article here.