Supplies
Honoraria
Marketing & Outreach
Mobile Museum of Art
Mobile, AL
Featuring a variety of handmade goods, the museum's market provided local artists and businesses with a platform to reach both community members and tourists. Visitors were also invited to enjoy live music, food trucks, exhibition-inspired artmaking, and gallery tours. By supporting its own ecosystem of Black artists and businesses, the Mobile Museum of Art anchored shared themes of depicting Black perspectives that all three artists featured in the exhibition explored in their work. To support community access, admission fees to the museum were waived, and the event was scheduled to coincide with Juneteenth, reflecting the museum’s commitment to celebrating Black artists in its exhibitions and through local collaborations.
The Mobile Museum of Art hoped to appeal to locals and tourists alike with its community day event and desired to welcome 500 attendees. Additionally, the museum aimed to grow visitorship from its local Black and African American communities.
With this free event and its multitude of interdisciplinary offerings, the museum saw an increase in visitors aside from its regular patrons. It welcomed 797 people to this event and had a 20% increase in local African American attendees.
When aiming to increase visitorship from a specific, underrepresented demographic, look to local makers, performers, and organizations already engaging those audiences. The Mobile Museum of Art found that incorporating local artists and collaborators across each offering—from food vendors to musicians to teaching artists—built trust between the museum and its local community and led to a steady increase in its local African American visitorship.
While visiting Mennello Museum of American Art’s exhibition “In Conversation: Will Wilson,” local elementary, middle, and high school students learned about the artist's photographic methods through hands-on activities involving cyanotypes and film cameras.
Drawing inspiration from the “Walker Evans: American Photographs” exhibition, the Mattatuck Museum offered a cooking class series led by local chefs who taught participants a recipe that combined Great Depression methods and their own cooking styles.
While visiting Mennello Museum of American Art’s exhibition “In Conversation: Will Wilson,” local elementary, middle, and high school students learned about the artist's photographic methods through hands-on activities involving cyanotypes and film cameras.
Drawing inspiration from the “Walker Evans: American Photographs” exhibition, the Mattatuck Museum offered a cooking class series led by local chefs who taught participants a recipe that combined Great Depression methods and their own cooking styles.
