Indianapolis Museum of Art Blog

6 years ago, I stood in a classroom on the campus of Indiana University and gave a presentation on the marketing department of the Indianapolis Museum of Art. A first year graduate student pursuing my master’s degree in Arts Administration, I was enrolled in a course called Arts Marketing and Audience Development. As part of that course we were required to analyze the marketing program of an arts organization that we admired. Significantly, I chose to do my class project on the IMA.

I’m not going to bore you with the over-confident analysis outlined in my paper. (I’m embarrassed at how much I thought I knew.) Nor will I link to my power point presentation. (I was a bit obsessed with animation and clip art). However, I will provide you with the final lines of my paper: Read the rest of this entry »

I’m a number geek. Give me a calculator and a list of digits, and I’ll be happy for hours. If using the calculator was an Olympic sport, I might be a contender for the gold. I’ve got lightening fast fingers and my addition button is wearing out from all the use it gets. From attendance to web stats, revenue to ROI, I’ve been crunching numbers like Michael Phelps breaks world records.

As numbers twirl around my head like 10-year old Chinese gymnasts (they are definitely NOT 16 that’s for sure), I thought I’d share with you some of my favorites. You can find a lot of these stats on the IMA’s dashboard, but some of the numbers are not accessible to the public…until now. In the Museum’s ongoing dedication to full transparency, here’s IMA by the numbers: Read the rest of this entry »