We are an organization that supports museums. We don't actually operate a museum.
We see the greatest strengths in museums in those that are very actively engaged with their community and have strong community partnerships. Those partnerships that build on their programming offerings typically speak to their relevance within community.
Tourists who are coming from out of the province or out of their community are the icing on the cake. The Aga Khan Museum is probably an exception to this, but most museums will tell you that their bread-and-butter visitations are the people within their geographic area. They're close partners. If every person who is walking through the door of your museum is asking themselves what this mean to them, then those museums engaged with their communities build strong partnerships and their programming from that relevance and are the ones that have the strongest future. There is no coincidence that those museums are typically the ones that are more stable financially.