Understanding Program Evaluation Practice and Capacity in Canadian Art Museums: Findings from a National Landscape Study

Despite growing interest in program evaluation within art museums, existing studies have yet to examine evaluative practices and capacities in relation to the broader organizational and extramural conditions shaping their development and enactment across a national museum sector. This paper addresses this gap by presenting findings from a national landscape study of evaluation practices and capacities across Canada’s largest publicly funded art museums. Guided by a sector-specific conceptual framework, the study draws on interviews with practitioners responsible for, engaged in, or knowledgeable about evaluation within their institutions. Overall, the interview findings reveal uneven but developing capacity across the sector, with practitioners generally better equipped to use evaluation findings and engage in informal, output-oriented formative inquiry than to independently design and carry out systematic, outcome-oriented studies. The findings further demonstrate that evaluative practices and capacities were influenced not only by practitioner expertise, but also by broader organizational and extramural conditions, including leadership backing, institutional culture, accountability expectations, and the availability of resources and supports. Taken together, the study contributes new empirical insight into how program evaluation is enacted across a national art museum sector and offers transferable implications for strengthening evaluation capacity within museums and related informal learning settings.