The Wallace Foundation has released Converting Family into Fans: How the Contemporary Jewish Museum Expanded its Reach, a case study analyzing the strategies used by San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum to broaden its audience and engage families of diverse backgrounds. These strategies resulted in a nearly nine-fold increase in family visits over a seven-year period. The report describes how the museum convened focus groups to better understand the needs of families with children, designed programs and exhibitions to meet those needs, and entered into community partnerships to build awareness. Although the museum sought to attract families, it did not want to become a children’s museum, and worked to balance the needs of children and adults. The report is the final installment in the Wallace Studies in Building Arts Audiences, a series that explores the audience-building efforts of ten arts organizations, offering lessons adaptable to any arts group. The lead author of the Converting Family into Fans report is Bob Harlow, who presented the Taking Out the Guesswork: Using Research to Build Arts Audiences session at the League’s 2016 Conference.
Download Converting Family into Fans: How the Contemporary Jewish Museum Expanded its Reach for free here. Check out more Wallace case studies in audience-building for arts groups, available free of charge, here.
Posted July 6, 2016
