Sarah Lee leads Slover Linett’s work with arts organizations, museums and informal learning environments, and other cultural nonprofits. She guides the firm’s evolving exploration of audience issues in these sectors and designs research and evaluation studies that create new knowledge about engagement for individual cultural organizations and the field at large. Sarah oversees a wide range of studies involving current and potential cultural audiences, from branding, marketing, and donor research to programming, technology, and education evaluation.
Sarah has directed Slover Linett’s work with the American Museum of Natural History, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Chicago History Museum, Harris Theater for Music and Dance, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, and the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution, among other arts and culture clients.
Sarah has been associated with the firm since 2004, first as an academic research associate and since 2009 as senior associate for museums. She speaks frequently at conferences and is an active member of the American Association of Museums and the Visitor Studies Association.
Among other published and proprietary research reports, Sarah is the author of a Mellon Foundation-funded analysis of data from WolfBrown’s survey of arts audiences for the Major University Presenters consortium and co-author of the University of Chicago Cultural Policy Center study, “Chicago Music City: A Report on the Music Industry in Chicago.” She has also written on the arts and culture workforce and the economics of historic preservation.
Sarah earned her BA in government cum laude from Harvard University, where she received the Elizabeth Cary Agassiz Award for academic achievement. She completed doctoral coursework in program evaluation and econometric analysis at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy, where she also earned her master’s degree.
Sarah was selected in 2003 as a research associate at the University of Chicago’s Cultural Policy Center, where she helped organize the first Emerging Scholars in Cultural Policy Conference.
