#museums #treat #visitors #unfairly
Every week, Bor Beekman, Robert van Gijssel, Joris Henquet, Merlijn Kerkhof, Anna van Leeuwen or Herien Wensink take a stand in the world of film, music, theater or visual arts.
Anna van LeeuwenFebruary 22, 2024, 4:51 PM
A concerned reader emailed us. She felt unfairly treated by a questionnaire she had received after a museum visit. She had sent screenshots. One of the statements to which she could respond anonymously was: ‘Sometimes I think that my future does not offer any prospects.’ Below that, she could check four options: from ‘completely disagree’ to ‘completely agree’. Another statement: ‘I believe that gay and lesbian couples should have the same rights as heterosexual couples.’
This reader had not gone to a museum for self-insight, but ‘just’ to the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. I also go there regularly, so I immediately received such a questionnaire from my email. It started off fairly normally, with assessment questions about the exhibitions and the museum collection, but seemed to go off the rails for those who diligently clicked through (after ‘the museum wants to gain a better insight into your wishes and needs’). As if a mental health questionnaire has been mixed with a voting guide.
Another example: ‘Deep in my heart I believe that the man is best suited as a breadwinner and the woman is best suited to do the housework.’
I thought of conceptual artist Hans Haacke, who has been organizing provocative and subversive polls and audience surveys in museums since 1970. For example, he had museum visitors criticize a politician who was on the MoMA board through a poll in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. Haacke stimulated the political consciousness of art viewers with these types of works of art. These are early examples of what we have now come to call ‘institutional criticism’.
The Stedelijk’s questionnaire is not an art project, but simply a real audience survey. The museum uses the results ‘to get to know visitors and to respond to their needs’. Funders and sponsors of museums also find this type of research important: ‘They want to know whether you are in tune with your audience.’
A little later I spoke to research agency Motivaction on the phone. They conduct research for various Dutch museums, said director Pieter Paul Verheggen. In a number of cases, such as the Stedelijk, they do this on the basis of statements. Museums are not concerned with the results of individual statements. So they really don’t want to know what I think ‘deep in my heart’ about male-female relations.
Motivaction analyzes the answers to these types of statements in order to classify museum visitors into ‘mentality profiles’. Then it becomes interesting for museums, for ‘targeted marketing’. For example, you should approach the ‘cosmopolitans’ (one of the eight profiles) differently than the ‘traditional bourgeoisie’. Motivaction has been doing research for the Stedelijk since 2012 – that doesn’t surprise me. That was the year of major cultural cuts, with ‘cultural entrepreneurship’ as a buzzword and target group thinking as a result. Verheggen puts this development more optimistically: ‘We see the cultural sector becoming more professional.’
I don’t think I’m completely reassured. I feel too much aversion to psychological and ideological confession as input for marketing strategies. That depends on my mentality profile. I suspect that the questionnaire is a nice icebreaker on a first date, or to force a heated discussion at Easter breakfast. And I hope that anyone who endorses the statement ‘Sometimes I think my future offers no prospects’ will receive a free Museum Card.
