AUDIENCE MATTERS
When The Frick Collection reopened its historic Fifth Avenue mansion in spring 2025 after a comprehensive, five-year renovation, the moment marked more than the unveiling of restored galleries, new education spaces, enhanced visitor amenities, and accessible spaces. It also signaled a cultural transformation in how the museum welcomes, serves, and connects with visitors.
What began as an initiative to transform the visitor experience in the new building evolved into something more transformative: a catalyst for cross-departmental collaboration, a tool for empowering staff across roles, and a unifying framework for organizational change. It became a way to define and operationalize what it truly means to be visitor-centered, not just in how we serve the public but in how we work together internally.
This is the story of how we( the Frick’ s Marketing and Visitor Experience team and two external museum consultants) partnered to design a visitor experience framework rooted in the museum’ s brand and mission. The end result was not a one-off training but a scalable, sustainable approach to culture change that other museums, regardless of size or resources, can adapt.
Visitor Experience team staff manage the Frick’ s busy Reception Hall.
How We Began
The impetus to reimagine the visitor experience at the Frick first took root in early 2024 when the Frick reorganized and integrated Visitor Services into the External Affairs department under Marketing. This reorganization enabled staff to approach the overall visitor journey in a more holistic way— from start to finish— for the first time.
Leaders from the Frick’ s Marketing and Visitor Experience team knew that other institutions had applied the learnings from hospitality trainings to their frontline programs. They spent several months visiting these cultural organizations and conducting informational interviews with colleagues across the country. Following this work, two senior members of the Frick’ s Marketing and Visitor Experience team attended a well-known corporate hospitality and entertainment company’ s quality service training program, which would become the basis for everything that followed.
The takeaway from the course was that by understanding visitors’ needs and putting the right guidelines and service standards in place, organizations can create a visitor-centered approach that empowers staff, unifies processes, and delivers consistently outstanding experiences that encourage guests to return and share their experiences with others. The team began adapting these customer experience strategies for a museum setting, but in a way that felt authentic and true to the Frick.
With the renovation underway and reopening on the horizon, the timing was right to put the program into motion. As a first step, the Frick team introduced the course material to leadership and key internal stakeholders, facilitating several workshops focused on foundational elements, such as developing service values and behaviors and operationalizing service recovery processes. The Frick adapted these foundational elements to align with the institution’ s mission, brand work, and cross-departmental goals.
Opening spread: photo by George Koelle, all images courtesy of The Frick Collection, New York; this page: photo by Joseph Coscia Jr.
24 MUSEUM / November−December 2025 / aam-us. org 40 MATAHEF ISSUE 03