Key Trends in Multicultural Audience Development at New York City Art Museums

As the racial and ethnic demography of the United States diversifies, understanding how to attract multicultural audiences will have significant financial, operational and civic implications for museums. To date, only a small percentage of audience development research in the United States has focused on strategies for building multicultural audiences. As a result, relatively little is known about the strategies or marketing initiatives that a museum can employ to attract more ethnically and culturally diverse visitors. This thesis aims to shed some light on this issue by examining the experiences of four art museums in New York City: The Bronx Museum of the Arts, The American Folk Art Museum, The Studio Museum in Harlem and The Rubin Museum of Art. My research suggests that while there are some commonalities in successful approaches used by these museums to attract multicultural audiences, there is no singular approach that has proven successful across these institutions. Each of these museums has developed or is developing varying tactics to handle multicultural audience development.