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Abstract This paper presents some personal perceptions about “drivers of change,” which have impacted the role and nature of museums since the 1980s, leading to the rise of the visitor-centered museum. Such changes mirror developments occurring in society. In the case of museums, a decline in public funding has occurred at a time when increased resources are required to enable museums to successfully compete for the visitor dollar in the expanding “experience economy.” The authors suggest that the role and nature of museums in the future will be shaped by their responses to many challenges, the most important being: how to increase visitor numbers without negatively impacting on visitor satisfaction; how to adjust policy and practice as museums approach the limits of visitor growth; how to start to reverse the trend of declining public funding by demonstrating museums’ value to society through the adoption of community-centered policies and practice; and perhaps the most unpredictable, how museums will adjust their policies and practices in the face of possible climate change.
Ballantyne et al. (Sat,) studied this question.