Putting Art to Work: Revenue-Generating Museum Education Programs for the Twenty-First Century

Overview & Synopsis

A set of customized adult education programs for working professionals at the Art Institute of Chicago provides both the kinds of experiences people in the 21st century are looking for and illustrates a distinctive way of thinking about fee-based programming and how it supports the overall museum mission. This article brings together convergent ideas about the nature of experience in the 21st-century from two recent publications in the fields of museum studies and business-psychology to create a framework for thinking about how art museum programming can capitalize on contemporary expectations about personal and professional experience to provide valuable and valued programs to diverse sectors of society. It also considers the potential relationship of the cost of the programming to its perceived value. (Contains 25 notes.)