Queensland Art Gallery (QAG) and Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) are Queensland’s premier visual art institutions. MHM has worked with QAGOMA since 2011, helping them to better understand their audience through Visitor 360° research, as well as a series of bespoke projects such as exhibition evaluations, formative studies and an in-depth study exploring QAGOMA’s market using Culture Segments.
The Visitor 360° draws its insight from a large volume of visitor exit surveys collected across the year at both sites. These surveys look at who is visiting, what drives them to visit, what they do when onsite, and the outcomes they experience. This data provides a comprehensive and consistent picture for QAGOMA, enabling them to understand the profile of their visitors – including by Culture Segment, their successes over the year, compare their performance to previous years, and provide evidence of impact to stakeholders. Results are also benchmarked against other art galleries, museums and libraries across Australia and New Zealand for QAGOMA to gain a broader view of the sector, as well as understanding where they sit compared to peers. QAGOMA use this insight to underpin ongoing strategy development to meet their audience-centred objectives.
As well as the Visitor 360° research program, we have delivered bespoke summative evaluations of specific temporary exhibitions, including QAGOMA’s flagship Asia Pacific Triennial events, European Masterpieces from the Metropolitan Museum of Art New York and Marvel: Creating the Cinematic Universe. These have enabled the Gallery to understand how their visitors find out about the exhibitions, what motivates them to visit and how they found their experience.
In addition to exhibition research, MHM also conducted evaluations of GOMA’s Australian Cinémathèque and QAGOMA’s three-year tenure of the Brisbane International Film festival (BIFF). The BIFF project tracked Festival audiences across three years, investigated how festival-goers related to the Gallery’s existing audience and helped refine approaches ensuring the Festival’s success under QAGOMA’s stewardship.
The summative exhibition evaluations are often reconciled with formative research conducted prior to the exhibitions, which help gauge interest in exhibitions, pricing sensitivity, and attraction to specific titles, images and propositions. Formative research has also supported the development of the Gallery’s late-night events program and has informed the market for GOMA’s Australian Cinémathèque.
In-depth Culture Segment research produced for the Gallery allowed QAGOMA to gain a deeper understanding of how Culture Segments could be used to inform their decision-making. QAGOMA has continued to embrace Culture Segments as a critical lens for understanding and worked to embed this as a ‘whole-of-organisation’ audience development approach. This contributes to and supports their continued vitality and growth.
