MCN2015

Along with the music industry, newspapers, and Hollywood, museums have seen their business and revenue models irrevocably impacted by the Internet and new digital economies. Yet here as in so many areas, the cultural industry has been slow to change; even the adoption of digital technologies by museums has outstripped their adaptation to 21st century financial realities.

Aiming to provoke a lively debate and brainstorm new approaches to institutional sustainability, this panel opens with the premise that the dominant museum business models are broken: overly dependent on the largess of a dying breed of individual philanthropists and unable to demonstrate their impact and social value to younger, civic-minded audiences, museums risk sinking into public oblivion as well as bankruptcy. Are the commercial, visitor attraction models so often promoted by corporate-minded trustees the only way forward? Or are there other approaches being pioneered in the non-profit sector that can be applied to museums and cultural sites? From paying with data to community sourcing and marketing partnerships, we’ll unpack new ideas in the field in an attempt to stop doing the same fundraising thing over and over again while expecting different results.