Artist Talk
Understanding the Value of Museums
Lecture with John H. Falk The value of something is determined by users, not creators. Accordingly, the public value of a museum is disproportionately determined by how a museum’s users perceive they benefit from interacting with the museum. From this perspective, museums create value by supporting meaningful museum experiences; experiences that result in enhanced feelings of personal, intellectual, social, and physical well-being. Understanding these ideas, once a nicety, is now a necessity if museum professionals want to be able to create effective experiences for a continuously evolving and increasingly diverse public, if museum leaders want to be able to persuasively communicate their value within an increasingly challenging public policy and funding landscape, if museums as organizations want to be able to flourish, let alone survive, the rapidly changing world we now live in. John H. Falk is the Founder and CEO of the Institute for Learning Innovation and Emeritus Sea Grant Professor of Free-Choice Learning at Oregon State University.