Art Museum Director Survey 2025: Museum Strategy and Operations
February 23, 2026
"In March 2025, Ithaka S+R launched the third iteration of the Art Museum Director Survey, in collaboration with the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) and the association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD), with funding from the Mellon Foundation and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. The survey seeks to understand the opportunities, challenges, and strategic issues art museum directors face in their work, particularly in relation to budgeting, public trust and engagement, collections care, and talent management. Ithaka S+R first conducted this attitudinal survey in early 2020, followed by a second cycle in 2022.
For the third iteration of this project, [they continued] to explore how museums are governed, how they serve the public, and what kinds of strategies they develop to respond to complex challenges and added new question items exploring emerging issues around staffing, governance and board relations, climate preparedness, and business models." (Ithaka S+R, Art Museum Director Survey 2025, Executive Summary)