Slover Linett partner Peter Linett and senior associate Sarah Lee will be in Phoenix next week for the 23rd annual conference of the Visitor Studies Association (VSA). They look forward to meeting new colleagues in the museum field and picking up the conversation with old friends.

The conference brings together museum staff and independent evaluators and researchers who share an interest in understanding museum visitors and the ways they use museum exhibitions. This year’s conference theme is ‘Building Shared Agendas: Conversations on the Public Value of Visitor Studies.’

“The program looks great,” says Linett, “because we’re really starting to challenge our own thinking as a field. At a conference like this, I feel luckier to come away with new questions than new answers or best practices. Plus, it’s always helpful to swap notes with people who do what we do but come at it from a slightly different angle.”

This will be Lee’s second visit to VSA since she became the firm’s senior associate for the museum sector in 2009. (She had been working with Slover Linett in a freelance capacity for five years at that point.) “I’m looking forward to spending a concentrated period of time talking about the point of audience research and what we‘re trying to accomplish in the museum field,” Lee says. “Day to day, there’s rarely time for that conversation.”

For the first time, Slover Linett will have a table along with other consultants, the result of a donation made to VSA. But more often than not, Linett and Lee will be attending sessions,  meeting colleagues, and attending the events that the host committee has planned. If you’ll be at the conference and want to be sure to say hello, please let them know.
 

Category: Museums