Although it seems to be that the art museums are growing world-widely, generally speaking the condition of managing art museums are deteriorating, in the midst of rapid change of the cultural, social and economical environment. Public art museums whos...
Although it seems to be that the art museums are growing world-widely, generally speaking the condition of managing art museums are deteriorating, in the midst of rapid change of the cultural, social and economical environment. Public art museums whose budgets supplied by local governments, together with medium sized private art museums depending on the funds and subsidies, are likely to suffer by those problems.
Since 20th Century, the cultural, social and economical environment for art museums has been very unstable, volatile and competitive. Art museums have tried to change their managing paradigm to the visitor-centered and the society-centered from the collection centered. This means a conversion of the attention from the supply side to the demand side. Accordingly, art museums have strengthened their educational programs. Futhermore they have introduced marketing concept into the field of museum management.
In reality, true and meaningful conversion of the managerial paradigm has been generally insufficient, and in Korea, it has been too week or too slow or too ineffective, due to the chronical insufficiency of budgets, manpower, and understanding, inside and out of the institution, and the prospects are still discouraging. The competition for the decreasing leisure time between different cultural entities, organizations and business have been sharply increasing, and the exhibition programs of art museums have become highly costly and have suffered from lack of contents, which have made it difficult to make the visitor satisfied through effective communications.
Although there have been many constructing and founding projects of art museums in Korea recently, as the problems from which existing museums have suffered are still there unsolved, the new museums are likely to suffer from the same ones in the future. Managing conditions of Korean art museums are not likely to get better and we witness the rich-get-richer and the poor-get-poorer phenomena in Korea.
In this thesis, some criteria for conversion of managing paradigm for art museums are suggested. The new paradigm is a necessary condition for the improvement of communication effectiveness and maximization of visitor satisfaction. In this thesis, I propose a model which can be applied for the domestic situations towards the communication effectiveness by changing the basic concept, generating new ideas, establishing new identity, setting up goals, objectives, managing policies and etc.
An art museum's significance for existence is meaningful communi- cation with visitors through good exhibitions. For such meaningful communications, many problems identified in this thesis should be clarified and solved. The marketing goal for art museums is indeed the effective communications, as the visitor's demand is fulfilled by effective communication not by exhibition viewing itself.
Letting the visitor have moving and touching experiences by appreciating the art works in the museum exhibition can be the ultimate goal of museum planning and management, and challenging project for the whole museum staffs. In order for the museums to obtain and maintain the public trust, the museum should have some warm and deep trust in the public, respecting their viewpoints and their sensibilities.
By this thesis I am suggesting a direction for building a model for communication effectiveness, which will lead to the cultural democratization and embodiment of public-centered paradigm eventually. Staffs and managements of art museums in Korea should devote whole their available resources toward communication effectiveness, by setting up infrastructures, by assessing the whole programs running and by making some feed back of them ceaselessly. Art museum professionals, by being in their shoes, should be determined to feel what the public feel, to accept what they accept, in order to give visitors a wonderful experiences, soul enhancing ultimate experiences in their museums.