Publisher: Gordon Goff New York, New York www.oroeditions.com All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or any other information storage and retrieval system) without prior written permission from the publisher.
You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover, and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer.
Editors: W illiam Richards C hrista Montgomery
Design: P ascale Vonier
First Edition
ISBN: 978-1-966515-56-2
Distributed by ORO Editions
Printed in China
INTRODUCTION
Charging Into New Territory
CHAPTER ONE
How Do I Build the Right Project Team?
CHAPTER TWO
What Does It Mean to Engage?
CHAPTER THREE
What Does It Mean to Plan a Museum?
CHAPTER FOUR
What Does It Mean to Design a Museum?
CHAPTER FIVE
How Do I Align Budget with Purpose?
CHAPTER SIX
How Do We Build the Story of Our Museum?
Don’t Call the Architect First
You may be tempted and a little excited to get to that great imagery—to show your donors what your vision is, and to drum up excitement about the project. Perhaps your development team is already asking when the renderings will be ready. We cannot believe we are saying this, but don’t pick up the phone. Do not call your designer, your exhibit designer, or your architect to launch a design process that you may not be ready for. Many of these consultants will be wonderful partners when you are ready. But typically, they lead with design—and you are not there yet.
Instead, hire specialized museum experts that can support your process and your goals. In unique instances this may be an architect, but only a firm that can truly inform early strategic and pre-design efforts, and not one that will only seek to design a new or expanded building as a normal course of action. You need someone who can harness the tool that architects and designers are sometimes well known for—their process (like the one we’re outlining in this book) and their ability to understand what impacts early decisions will have on outcomes.
Be sure to keep the tendency to rush to solutions, placate stakeholders, or press for resolution at bay. You are at the beginning of your project journey and as we will repeat throughout this book, this is a once-in-ageneration-type activity. So there is no need to rush. And don’t call your contractor friend either—not yet. Stay the course, keep things methodical, transparent, and tied to your vision. In fact, your donors, members, staff, colleagues, and external consultants will appreciate a methodical approach that is based on sound planning, metrics, consensus, and of course creative thinking.
You will get to the great imagery—so enjoy the process.
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Quick Huddle: Typical Contract Hierarchy
This diagram illustrates a typical project organizational chart in all three major phases: Planning, Design, and Construction. The connections between consultants, and the important line to you will define your contracting responsibilities and inform the management of the project. Understanding the way you prefer for your consultants to relate to one another will inform your next step: making the hire.
Owner’s Rep
Quick Huddle: Engagement Touchpoints Across the Project Lifecycle
Invite stakeholder input through surveys, town halls, or pop-ups
Project-Specific Strategic Planning
Visioning
Develop guiding principles with diverse stakeholders
Internal Team Leads (Museum Director, Project Managers, Architects)
Community Representatives (Local Residents, Cultural Groups)
Museum Staff (Curators, Educators)
Community listening sessions, online surveys and polls, town halls, social media engagement campaigns
Stakeholder Advisory Group (Board Members, Donors)
Design Team (Architects, Planners)
Community Advocates
Museum Staff
Co-creation workshops with stakeholders, vision boards and idea-sharing sessions, consensus-building exercises (dot voting, prioritization), drafting Statement of Purpose
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Sample Engagement Activities
Design Visualize
Use renderings, models, and storyboards to gather reactions
Concept Design, Schematic Design, Design Development
Construction Celebrate
Celebrate progress with site visits and community updates
Building Construction and Exhibit Installation
Opening & Post-Opening Maintain
Maintain engagement through events, feedback loops, and partnerships
Opening Day and Beyond
Architectural/Design Team
Museum Leadership
Museum Staff
Community Focus Groups
Design charrettes with community input, interactive feedback on renderings and models, virtual walk-throughs or VR experiences, comment boards and suggestion walls
Project Team
Donors and Sponsors
Community Members
Museum Staff
Community Members
Media Representatives
Hard-hat tours for donors, community, and sta ; monthly progress updates (email, social media); on-site Q&A sessions with project team; community liaison briefings; groundbreaking ceremonies; topping-out celebrations; donor recognition events; media photo opportunities
Museum Staff
Community Partners
Visitors
Media
Opening day celebrations, community programming (lectures, workshops), feedback loops (visitor surveys, focus groups), partnership-building events
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Whether you’re starting from scratch or building on an existing foundation, an interpretive plan can shape visitor flow, graphic and physical identity, exhibit design and interpretation, space usage, and programming. And if you’ve followed the steps described in this book— defining your project’s purpose, vision, strategic priorities; assessing your facility, site, and collection; and setting your campaign target—you’re ready to design a visitor-centered experience that aligns seamlessly with your building.
Importantly, planning for the visitor experience goes beyond the building itself. It opens doors to educational programs, community-focused activities, and partnerships with like-minded organizations, forging connections and building bridges between you and your public.
Putting It All Together:
The Comprehensive Plan
We’ve spent several pages outlining the components that define a physical project, and you might be wondering what it looks like when everything comes together. That’s where the Comprehensive Plan comes in. We’ve placed it here at the end for a reason: it’s important to understand each individual piece before building a unified vision with a clear overarching purpose.
Now is the time to think holistically about the final product of your planning process. Many of the reports, activities, and documents discussed in this chapter— such as interpretive plans, master plans, and business plans—can be integrated into a single, comprehensive plan. This plan becomes a vital tool for your internal teams, external stakeholders, potential donors, and the architecture and design firms you may engage.
Creating a comprehensive plan takes coordination and dedicated management (remember the Owner’s Representative from Chapter One?). But if your budget allows, pulling everything together into one cohesive document will make it much easier to guide future efforts—especially as you move into the next chapter: Design
Plan and plan well. But don’t stay there forever. Go— work your plan—and see your goals become reality.
Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
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Rules of Thumb
Sometimes, early in planning, you just need to employ some (educated) guesswork. Every museum is different, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some reasonably predictable metrics that can serve as placeholders while you refine the details.
Gallery-to-Building Ratio
One of the most common rules of thumb in museum planning (and one could argue foundational to right-sizing) is to allocate roughly 30 percent of your total building area to gallery space.
If you are developing a new institution, you can’t be blamed for thinking this seems low. After all, aren’t galleries the entire point? In truth, it just shows how much space is required to support that primary function. This rule is borne out in benchmarking data; in a sampling of large, and medium-sized institutions, the average area allocated to galleries is 29 percent.
Other Museum Building Ratios
A lot will depend on your institution’s priorities. Are you a collecting institution that needs robust storage and conservation functionality? Did your strategic and feasibility plan identify the need for a large event space or a café as a new source of revenue? The process outlined in this book will guide your programming by asking and answering questions like these.
While every program is unique, a well-balanced museum program often falls into these approximate ratios:
• Public Spaces = 15–20%
• Galleries = 30–40%
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• Gallery Support and Collections = 20–25%
• Back of House = 20–25%
On the following page, we’ve included a few more of these helpful early planning placeholders all informed by real project data. While these aren’t hard limits, a well-balanced museum program will often follow the approximate ratios described here.
A More Granular Look
We can take this a step further. Here are more specific metrics to help you reality-check your early program:
Public Spaces
(Public Non-Collections Space)
A museum’s lobby is more than a threshold—it’s a first impression, a gathering point, and sometimes a social hub. To avoid overcrowding, lobbies are typically sized at twenty square feet per visitor expected in the building at one time. This calculation ties directly to anticipated peak visitor flow, not just daily averages.
Visitor Services complement and support your lobby with program like information desks, bag check, gift shops, cafés, classrooms, and event spaces. Their scale depends on the museum’s business model and priorities. They typically range from 2 to 10 percent of the total square footage
Exhibition Spaces
(Public Collections Space)
Exhibitions are the heart of most museums. On a granular level, galleries are often sized at about thirty square feet per visitor for comfortable circulation. On a broader level, they make up that thirty percent of total gross square footage, as previously mentioned.
Virg inia Museum of Fine Arts
Gilcrease Museum
Exhibit and Collections Support
(Non-Public Collections Space)
Behind every great exhibition is an army of support spaces—prep rooms, staging areas, AV control, and storage for traveling shows. These spaces typically account for 15 to 20 percent of the gallery area. Your program may also include collections storage, processing, and conservation spaces. These can vary widely, but all together this category of space might occupy 20 percent of your total building area. Underestimating this program can cripple operations, so planners should ensure support spaces are proportional to what’s on display
Operations and Administration
(Non-Public Non-Collections Space)
These spaces are the heart of any museum and their importance should never be overlooked. They support the dedicated staff and workflows that are the lifeblood of your institution. Administrative offices, loading docks, and maybe even an exhibit production shop might be included. You should plan for 20 to 25 percent of the total building area for these critical functions.
Taken together, these rules of thumb can help test whether an early program feels balanced. If your galleries make up 50 percent of the building and circulation only 5 percent, something’s off. If mechanical rooms are an afterthought, the design team will pay for it later. The numbers aren’t hard limits—but they offer a reality check before aspirations collide with construction
Gross Area/The Grossing Factor
Finally, there’s the catch-all category, the Gross Area. These miscellaneous spaces aren’t directly affiliated with any singular program, but are essential for the building to function. Mechanical rooms, circulation, structure, and restrooms are examples of these spaces that knit the net program areas together. For museums, the grossing factor (the ratio of total gross square footage to usable/net square footage) typically adds 40 to 60 percent to the net area.
Below, the program buckets begin to define the size of your building. The gross area is the total of these categories times a factor, in this case between 1.4 and 1.6, to outline what your total building area may be. You will begin to form and shape this program, as described in the adjacency diagram.
This middle phase of your capital project, "Building Design and Documentation" and "Exhibit Design and Documentation," is where all the hard work of planning pays off. It's also where the transition from design to construction happens, which is the big "groundbreaking day."
Potential Impact on Cost
Ease of Change
Cost of Change
Programming
Design
Documentation
Procurement
Construction/Fabrication/Installation
Move-in
Occupancy
The timing of decisions affects both cost and flexibility in a project lifecycle. The expense of making changes increases significantly as the project advances, while the ease of making changes diminishes over time. We often say that 80 percent of project costs are determined in the first 20 percent of planning and design, stressing the importance of early decisionmaking and proactive planning that can minimize costs and maximize adaptability.
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Stairs/Elevators
Ratio of Exhibit Costs to Building Construction
While exhibit costs can vary widely, it is a good idea to plan for about a third of your overall construction cost going to exhibit fit out. And don’t forget to anticipate the cost of building infrastructure necessary to the support of your exhibits: things like power, data, gallery lighting, and enhanced mechanical systems can add a premium of +$100 to 150 per square foot to your gallery area construction cost—above and beyond the exhibits themselves.
Ratio of Construction Costs by Building
System
Most of your construction dollars will inevitably go toward elements that visitors will never see. So, the decisions you make about right-sizing your project will have the greatest impact on construction cost because the investments in systems and structure have more to do with scale than design variables. It also means that you can’t expect to save a project budget later in design by cutting finishes.
Ratio of First Costs to Lifetime Operational Costs
It’s only natural to focus on what it will cost to build your project. Funding construction is an immediate concern and the planning and design decisions you make will directly impact your construction costs (first costs). But as the owner and operator of your new building, it bears reinforcing that operational costs will far outstrip construction costs over the life of your building. So, make sure your architects and engineers provide you with options for systems, envelope enhancements, or renewable energy generation strategies that will pay off in the long term even if they cost a bit more up front.
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Quick Huddle: What Does It All Cost?
Project Costs
Understanding project costs is vital for a successful capital campaign because it links fundraising goals to real financial needs. Accurate cost projections help set realistic donor targets, maintain credibility, and prevent funding gaps that can stall construction or force design compromises. Many people overlook hidden relationships within a project budget for example, how design complexity drives engineering costs, how exhibit technology influences infrastructure expenses, or how schedule delays escalate both soft costs and inflation impacts.
Operational Costs
CONSTRUCTION COSTS
Operational costs after opening are also often underestimated, affecting long-term sustainability. A skilled financial analyst brings essential expertise in forecasting, cost modeling, and risk analysis, translating design and construction data into actionable financial strategies. They help the museum anticipate contingencies, phase expenditures intelligently, and align donor gifts with project milestones. Ultimately, smart cost understanding protects both the vision and the institution’s fiscal health throughout the entire capital campaign and beyond.
Every action, milestone, and decision contributes to the unfolding story of the project. Project milestones are opportunities to communicate progress and reinforce the project’s significance. Each milestone—initial concepts, final design, groundbreaking, topping out, first installation, opening day—serves as a narrative beat to be celebrated and shared with stakeholders.
Visual tools play a crucial role: renderings, site signage, and social media updates create a vivid and engaging narrative that keeps the community and stakeholders informed and excited. Sharing behind-the-scenes photos, staff reflections, and time-lapse videos make the process feel inclusive and participatory.
Empower staff and stakeholders to become storytellers. Invite board members or donors to write blog posts about your project’s mission. Ask educators to reflect on what the new classrooms or exhibitions will mean. Have researchers or conservators explain the studies the new space will enable. Get collections managers and curators to share details of moving and protecting objects during construction. Let the facilities administrators or chief operating officers explain how sustainability is being built into the walls. When stakeholders tell the story, it becomes more authentic and relatable, fostering a deeper connection with the project
Engagement with the community and stakeholders is crucial throughout the life of the project. Hard-hat tours, site visits, and regular updates keep everyone informed and involved. These interactions reignite excitement, answer questions, and build trust. By making the process transparent and inclusive, you turn skeptics into supporters and create a sense of ownership among all stakeholders. Documenting key moments and milestones provides valuable content for future campaigns and helps create a narrative that resonates with the community. Each milestone is a chance to remind people why your museum and your building matter.
Ask your design and construction team to help identify moments that coincide with project milestones as ways of amplifying your mission. Some standard milestones may include:
• Capital Campaign: Launch fundraising efforts, share your vision, and rally supporters to invest in the project’s future.
• Concept Design: Present initial creative ideas and vision, inviting feedback from stakeholders and building enthusiasm for the journey ahead.
• Final Design: Reveal the completed plans to the public, showcasing how input and collaboration shaped the end result.
• Make Ready: Sitework or demolition starts. Use this early action as a springboard to build excitement for the future.
• Groundbreaking: The building begins—a first step toward making plans a reality.
• Topping Out: When the final beam is placed, celebrate with donors, staff, and media.
• First Installations: The first piece of HVAC or, later, artwork mounted marks progress—visual, tangible, and symbolic.
• Opening Day: The culmination of construction and a celebrated ribbon cutting, but the beginning of a new, more urgent chapter for communications.
Additionally, your project will present unique milestone opportunities directly tied to your facility’s design. Seek out these moments as powerful opportunities for connection
At Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC, for instance, the first significant construction milestone story opportunity was moving their 175-year-old historic synagogue three city blocks. The move began with a blessing and quickly became a block party as the public was able to see a tangible piece of Jewish Washington trundle down 3rd Street, NW, into place at its new location
When the lacy, bronzed corona of the National Museum of African American History and Culture was installed and construction work turned inward, the Smithsonian Institution created excitement about the future museum and its construction progress with a special nighttime video projection on the building’s new façade.
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The Quick Huddle at the end of this chapter provides a deeper dive into the timing and optics of communication for any museum project.
Creating Storytelling Assets and Vehicles
• Renderings and Animations: These are not just design tools—they’re emotional tools. Be sure to budget for a robust set of these types of graphics at the time design is finalized, because you will find a plethora of uses. Use final renderings on your website, in newsletters, social posts, and donor decks. Share a mission-driven video that includes animations of your project to ignite excitement.
• Site Signage: Don’t let your construction fence be a blank wall. Use it to tell your story. Include quotes, renderings, timelines, donor recognition, social media handles, and URL addresses to connect the public to your project.
• Social Media: Done well, social media can be an incredibly powerful tool for building trust and transparency. Share behind-the-scenes photos and videos, staff reflections, and time-lapse videos. Make your followers feel like insiders.
• Photography: Hire a photographer to document key moments and the people behind them.
• Video: Create short clips for social media and longer, documentary-style vignettes for fundraising.
• Testimonials: Interview staff, contractors, and community members so they can share more about what the projects means to them.
• Donor Updates: Send regular updates with photos and stories. Make donors feel like they’re building the museum with you.
(Top) Wisconsin History Center
(Middle) National Museum of African American History & Culture
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(Bottom) Capital Jewish Museum
Quick Huddle: Timing and Optics of Your Museum Project
Prior to the Capital Campaign Capital Campaign Design
At Every Stage ...
Recognize that your audiences might not follow your storytelling narratives from start to finish. They might see a social media post one day about how your project rethinks the visitor experience and later a local news interview about your project’s economic benefit for your local community. You might need to connect the dots for your audiences—don’t feel you’re being repetitive when you do. The key to effective messaging is consistency
Control your narrative. If you don’t tell your stories, someone else will create stories in your absence. Use all phases of your capital project as chances to change perception, build trust, and reinforce your values.
Cultivate your local press. Local media is not just a megaphone—they are a partner. Engage them early. Offer them stories proactively. Make them allies in your mission from the beginning.
Prepare for crisis communications. Even the best projects will hit bumps. Be ready with a plan for when it happens. Know who speaks, what they say, and how you’ll respond. Transparency builds trust.
Speaking directly to your key stakeholders
During Vision, Statement of Purpose, Strategic Plan, Feasibility Studies, Master Plan, Interpretive Plan, Programming:
Meet your key stakeholders where they are to request their input and feedback to define your future capital project. Host events where your key stakeholders already spend time.
Focus on sharing how stakeholder feedback shapes decisions in early planning—rather than design results.
Behind the scenes, identify your key audiences for your capital project, develop messages for your project, and evaluate your media landscape to clarify where you need to cultivate proactive partnerships with press.
Speaking to your
donors
Every donor wants to be part of something meaningful. Use storytelling to show them that their gift is not just funding a building project—its building a legacy.
The capital campaign often beg ins before design, so help donors understand why their donation is crucial to enabling the experiences your museum creates for visitors before you have a design vision.
Think about community impact stories, sharing how your future capital project will benefit not just your visitors and institution, but your local community.
your future
Invite donors to experience the design through early access to renderings or exclusive mixed reality tours, showing them how their contributions would be physically and symbolically embedded in the building.
As design culminates, work proactively with media outlets to position your project as a landmark or legacy in the making. Early and frequent press engagement will benefit your institution.
Ask your communications team to collaborate with your design team (and their communications sta ) to identify key design messages together, and plan for the visual assets that will amplify your storytelling. Renderings and animation videos will help your publics visualize your institution’s journey
Make-Ready Construction
This phase of construction isn’t consistent from one project to the next, but the public will notice when equipment appears, and dirt begins to move. Be prepared for inquiries!
Stand up a dedicated webpage (or website) about your project—a hub where the public, donors, and press can stay in the know about progress.
Consider a sta -focused public campaign to build excitement toward the groundbreaking, sharing what the people who will work in the future facility are most looking forward to
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Visualizing
When dirt starts moving
Groundbreaking
Early Construction
Ongoing Construction
Final Construction
Opening Day and Beyond!
Celebrating the beginning
Celebrate your first o cial construction milestone by hosting an event, in coordination with your design and construction team. Include land recognition ceremonies, as appropriate for your site and publics.
Issue a press release and launch a social media campaign. This is a great opportunity to give the public a window into the project and share what will be happening next.
Before there is a “there” there
It takes a while for a building to begin taking shape—use the earliest parts of construction to tell stories about what the future facility will enable. Consider blog posts, videos, and social media updates as great mediums for these stories.
Share a regular cadence of updates about what is happening on site and what is anticipated next.
This phase of construction can be an ideal time to share donor stories about why they chose to contribute to your museum’s project.
Taking shape
As your building project rises and becomes more recognizable, seek to celebrate both the typical construction milestones (for example, a topping out) and those that are unique to your museum (for example, installation of key architectural features).
Use available opportunities to make the more obscure moments of the construction process visible for your audiences.
Timelapse video will become increasingly engaging as construction continues.
Organize exclusive tours for sta , donors, your key audiences, and press throughout construction. Everyone loves the chance to be in the know.
Counting down Your new future
Develop a schedule for the final 12+ months of construction, planning PR and marketing, in coordination with your design and construction team.
Anticipate the finish-line crunch—press previews, sta previews, donor previews, move-in, punch list, and professional architectural photography and videography always overlap. Various groups will be vying to be the first to host events in your space—and your organization will likely be sta ng up—all at the same time. Stay nimble and do your best to coordinate with your internal and external project partners.
While your organization's media pitches will begin to shift from previews and opening day coverage to your next story angles, your design and construction team will continue to be promoting your project through design and construction press and awards programs.
Prepare to host numerous group tours and community events as the newest local venue—a great way to demonstrate your valuable role in the greater community.
