Art Museum Staff Demographic Survey, United States, 2015, 2018, 2022

These data were gathered on behalf of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, in partnership with the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) and the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD). The goal of the survey was to study the representational diversity within art museums through quantitative means. The survey instrument, developed by Ithaka S+R, was administered to directors of AAMD and AAM member art museums. The first cycle of data were collected in 2015 (February-March 2015), the second cycle in 2018 (July-September 2018), and the third cycle in 2022 (February-April 2022). The collected data were sent to researchers at Ithaka S+R, who appended, cleaned and analyzed the data, and presented findings in a public research report.
The survey collected demographic and employment data for over 30,000 museum employees. About 27,000 of these are employed at AAMD museums, and approximately 3,000 are from (non-AAMD) AAM member museums. 332 art museums responded to the survey in 2018 and 136 of them also participated in the survey in 2015. The third cycle gathered data from 328 museums in North America between February and April 2022, encompassing records for over 30,000 individuals.
The 2018 instrument was slightly expanded to capture additional specifics of the composition of art museum employees. For the third cycle, significant enhancements were made to the survey instrument, particularly in expanding the position and race categories, separating categories such as "Finance" and "Human Resources," as well as "Information Technology" and "Web Development," which were combined in the previous survey. Additionally, new positions such as "Librarian," "Public Engagement," and "Diversity/Equity/Inclusion" were included to better track changes in these areas. The data gathered in the third wave of the study offer valuable insights into the evolving demographics of the museum sector and the pandemic's impact on staffing.