“…A NICE RENOVATED STORAGE SPACE...” - A study on Performance Objectives of Private Contemporary Art Museums

In recent years, a boom in the amount of private contemporary art museums has occurred globally. These museums are often founded by High Net Worth Individuals and are, as opposed to traditional museums, not accountable to any external stakeholders. Therefore, their performance objectives make for an interesting research topic. This study aimed to map out what performance objectives private contemporary art museums have by, first, developing a Performance Objectives Framework of Museums, consisting of 5 dimensions, namely Managerial, Commercial, Artistic, Societal and Reputational Performance. Second, developing a Table of Characteristics of Private Contemporary Art Museums, consisting of 7 characteristics, namely Content, Size, Age, Institutional Form, Founder(s), Motivation and Location. After, both were used to create an interview guide to conduct semi-structured interviews with 7 museum directors and employees of private contemporary art museums. To create a more representative sample, secondary data was added, namely 9 extra interviews from an academic and semi-academic source. The transcripts were subsequently coded with an operationalization derived from the previously developed Performance Objectives Framework of Museums and Table of Characteristics of Private Contemporary Art Museums. After data analysis the results were used to create a new framework, namely the Performance Objectives Framework of Private Museums, still consisting of 5 dimensions, namely Managerial, Commercial, Artistic, Societal and Reputational Performance.