2024-25 Report on Workplace Equity and Organizational Culture in US Art Museums

Welcome to MMF's 2024-25 Data Study on Workplace Equity and Organizational Culture in US Art Museums.

MMF is launching the second cycle of data collection for this study in Fall 2024. We will be collecting quantitative data about workplace equity and organizational culture in US art museums as a follow up to our 2022-23 Study & Report.

The goal of this study is to create a field-wide view of trends and patterns in art museum workplaces, to measure changes over time, and to provide benchmarks for Partner Museums.

If you're a staff member interested in taking a survey, please sign up here.

If you're a museum leader and would like to join as a Partner Museum, please sign up here.

Survey instruments

frequently asked questions

Why are you doing this study?
MMF's research shows there is a lack of data about workplace culture and human resources within art museums, despite urgent calls for better practices over the past several years. This study is designed to bridge the information gap and create a productive path forward for the field. This project launched with a pilot study in 2022, and the 2024 data study will build on, extend, and update learnings.

Who are your data partners?
MMF is pleased to be partnering with SMU DataArts, the national center for arts research whose mission is to provide and engage organizations and individuals with the evidence-based insights needed to collectively build strong, vibrant, and equitable arts communities.

What does being a Partner Museum entail?
Partner Museums agree to support data collection across three types of surveys: a full staff survey, an HR survey, and a director survey.

What kinds of questions are you asking?
The main topics of the staff survey are employment information (length of service, department, position level, salary, union status, promotions, etc.); organizational culture (strengths and challenges, experiences of discrimination, salary transparency, etc.); and participant demographics (gender, race, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, disability status, etc.)

The main topics of the director and HR surveys include board engagement and demographics; count of staff members by type and within salary ranges and categories; employee benefits (health insurance, PTO/sick leave, retirement plans, etc.); and dispute procedures/metrics.

How long do the surveys take?
The staff survey takes approximately 10-12 minutes to complete.

The HR survey takes approximately 1-2 hours to complete. We will be providing an Excel template of the survey for HR officers to answer at their own pace. Once complete, the template can be used to complete the survey in one sitting.

The director survey takes approximately 6-8 minutes.

How are you protecting the confidentiality of responses?
Participants anonymously provide answers to MMF’s survey(s). These answers are securely encoded before they leave the participant’s internet browser, and they’re never connected with any personally identifiable information (like your name, email, etc.).

Aggregate reports are created for participating museums if they receive 10 or more staff responses, our threshold for ensuring anonymity can be protected. Reports at the organization-level are shared by SMU DataArts and MMF with the organizations alone and will not be shared with any other party.

How will this data be managed?
SMU DataArts stores and maintains data records in the cloud at Amazon Web Services (AWS). All data hosted at AWS is secured and backed up at regular intervals. Survey data is collected via the survey management platform Alchemer and is protected by AWS global infrastructure as well as the Open Web Application Security Project (WOWASP) standards during software development process (see here for more). Data from Alchemer is then fed back into the SMU DataArts platform to provide aggregate response insight to participating organizations.

Data and metadata are preserved indefinitely on SMU DataArts secure servers as well as via Alchemer. This preservation allows for future research that might include comparative analysis of multiple studies or probing the data if new research questions arise. A museum can request that their data be deleted after the 2024 data study report is developed, but doing so means that the institution will not have the ability to compare their 2024 data to future waves of data collection.

How is MMF’s study different than other studies out there?
In addition to centering privacy in our approach, our study is designed by and with art museum workers and has a uniquely informed understanding of the context. We are also asking different questions than other recent complementary research efforts. MMF’s study specifically explores salary and promotion rate equity and workplace experiences and takes a more in-depth look at organizational culture.

We’re collecting and triangulating data from multiple levels and viewpoints within each organization to get a picture of workplace equity and organizational culture informed by HR officers, directors, and other staff members, and to explore how these perspectives relate to each other across the field.

We’re also collaborating closely with other equity-focused research initiatives in the field, including the Black Trustee Alliance and the Burns Halperin Report.

Why should I participate?
Partner Museums will receive access to MMF's initial findings and have an opportunity to offer nuance and additional context that helps inform our analysis. Partner Museums will also receive early access to MMF’s field-wide report with deeper analyses of responses across all museums.

Partner Museums will receive a contributor badge (digital file) from MMF as an acknowledgment of your organization’s commitment to moving museums forward.

If a Partner Museum opts for an organizational report, then each survey participant at that museum will get to see an organizational report with the aggregate responses from that museum's staff and field benchmarks of staff across other participating museums. If a museum opts out of the organizational report, participants will get to see aggregate responses from staff across participating museums only but no organization-specific data.

What is the deliverable or result of the study?
MMF will publish a field-wide report including data from all three surveys, available for free on our website in Fall 2025.

What will be shared publicly about data across all participating museums and employees?
For the staff survey, MMF will share aggregate measures from all respondents across all museums on each question and we plan to calculate some new variables across questions. In addition, breakouts by race, ethnicity, gender, etc. will be shared for certain questions.

For the director and HR survey, MMF will share aggregate measures from all participating museums on each question. The research team will also test for connections between the data collected across the surveys.

What is the timeline?
Data collection for the study begins in November 2024 and closes in January 2025. All surveys must be completed during this time.

The data analysis period begins in January 2025 and we plan to have organizational reports by Spring 2025. MMF will host a series of convenings with Partner Museums to share and discuss findings, and to collectively interpret the data. Finally, MMF will produce a field-wide report in Fall 2025, which will be available to Partner Museums first before being publicly released.

How much does it cost to participate?
Participation in the study is free.

What is the deadline for signing up?
November 1, 2024.

What do I do if I have another question not listed here?
Please email us at: [email protected].

2024-25 Report on Workplace Equity and Organizational Culture in US Art Museums

PARTNER MUSEUMS (in progress)

frequently asked questions