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.

We have launched the second cycle of this study in Fall 2024. The data collection period runs from November 19, 2024 - January 28, 2025.

This study gathers quantitative data on workplace equity and organizational culture in US art museums and builds upon our inaugural 2022-23 Data Study & Report. The goal of this study is to create a field-wide view of trends and patterns in art museum workplaces, to offer recommendations, to measure changes in the data over time, and to provide benchmarks for Partner Museums.

If you are a Survey Administrator for one of our Partner Museums, please follow the link below to access the Survey Portal using your email and the login credentials you have created. If you have any issues accessing the portal, please contact us at [email protected].

If you are a staff member at a Partner Museum, please follow the instructions you received via email for how to access the Staff Survey.

DATA STUDY PORTAL

Survey instruments HR Survey spreadsheet

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 provide answers to MMF’s survey(s) and all survey responses are kept confidential. Surveys are securely encoded before they leave the participant’s internet browser, and they’re never connected with any personally identifiable information (name, email, etc.).

Aggregate reports are created for Partner Museums if they receive 10 or more staff responses, which is our threshold for ensuring anonymity. 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?
MMF and SMU DataArts store and maintain 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 MMF portal to provide aggregate response insight to participating organizations.

Data and metadata are preserved indefinitely on 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 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 staff and leadership and has a uniquely informed understanding of the context in our sector. 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 gets at least 10 responses to the Staff Survey, they will receive an organizational report with the aggregate responses from that museum's staff and field benchmarks of staff across other participating museums. If a museum does not meet the required threshold of 10 responses, they 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. This is the only public report.

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 surveys, 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 on November 19, 2024 and closes on January 28, 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

frequently asked questions