Visitors' Experiences in Three Commissioned Exhibitions of Chinese Art at the Guggenheim
Client: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum | Location: New York, NY | Funding: Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation
We used impact-driven strategy and evaluation to help the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum communicate the significance of its Chinese Art Initiative to visitors.
OVERVIEW
From 2015-2018, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum contracted us as an evaluator and then as impact-driven strategists for their Chinese Art Initiative. Through the Initiative, the museum commissioned works of art from contemporary Chinese artists that became part of the museum’s collections. The Initiative supported three commissioned exhibitions that included art from more than a dozen artists.
APPROACH
The museum initially contracted us for summative exhibition evaluation. The exhibition evaluations included interviews with walk-in visitors at the museum as well as stakeholders and influencers in the world of Chinese art.
However, after the first evaluation, the museum recognized the need for additional support given the complexity of developing, marketing, and communicating about commissioned artworks that result in exhibitions. We began working with the museum strategically across departments to improve communication and alignment of the museum’s work around shared intentions for the initiative.
CLIENT TAKEAWAYS
The museum evolved greatly over the course of the project. The first evaluation prompted reflection that the staff did not have a shared idea of the intended impact of the exhibition on visitors or more broadly the Chinese Art Initiative as a whole. In a post-evaluation reflection, the Guggenheim staff discussed some of the challenges of this first commission from their perspective, such as working with commissioned art, collaborating across the institution, balancing the artist’s and the funder’s goals with the Guggenheim, and marketing.
As we worked with the museum on impact-driven strategy across the remaining two commissioned exhibitions, staff coalesced around the overarching goal for visitors to encounter and participate in art arising from other cultural contexts and engage in wider conversations about contemporary China and global art. They also hoped visitors would recognize the artworks as commissioned because it signifies the museum’s commitment to global art.
Evaluation of the second and third exhibitions showed that visitors found the commissioned works of art compelling and loosely related under a unifying theme. Yet, visitors’ awareness that these works of art were commissioned was low. Ultimately, visitors were exposed to broader and more global perspectives on the art and culture of our time—a main goal of the initiative.
