Case Study: Museum Co-Location Business Planning
University of Virginia – Center for the Arts (C4A) Museums
Location: Charlottesville, VA
As part of a larger multi-year engagement that began in 2018, UVA tasked AMS to build an opening-year business plan that could translate the vision for the co-located museums into a realistic operating model, one that preserved each institution’s distinct identity while identifying where shared space could create efficiencies and room to grow.
The Challenge
Two established but resource-constrained university art museums, the Fralin Museum of Art and the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, were being asked for the first time to share a single new facility as part of the University of Virginia’s developing Center for the Arts. Each museum carried a distinct identity, scale, and mission, and both faced real understaffing in key departments that limited their current impact.
Photos: Diamond Schmitt
Our Approach
AMS combined a current-operations assessment, peer benchmarking of comparable university museums, and built a detailed operating pro forma to give UVA a grounded, opening-year view of what success would require.
Current Operations Assessment
Reviewed each museum’s management, finances, programming, attendance, and academic and community engagement to establish a shared starting point and identified gaps limiting both museums’ capacity today.
Peer Benchmarking
Benchmarked five comparable university art museums and arts complexes, selected for recent expansions, co-located facilities, or similar mission and scale and identified recurring patterns across peers.
Opening-Year Business Plan & Pro Forma
- Modeled an opening-year activity plan across both museums’ distinct exhibition and community-programming portfolios.
- Built a detailed operating pro forma, covering program, personnel, and occupancy costs, to identify the gap between current combined revenue and opening-year operating needs.
Lawrence Daufenbach
Executive Director/Founder, Athenaeum Center for Thought and Culture
Key Findings
Shared space doesn’t mean shared identity. The plan preserves each museum’s distinct curatorial voice while identifying real efficiencies in shared services such as marketing, communications, and object handling.
Peer institutions all point in the same direction. Across five benchmarked university museums, deliberate investment in student-centered programming and staffing consistently drove stronger attendance and deeper academic integration after expansion.
Opening strong requires closing a significant gap. The opening-year model surfaced a meaningful funding shortfall between current operations and a fully staffed, activated facility, a critical, and often underestimated, planning input for any co-location project.
Shared space doesn’t have to mean shared identity. The question is what it takes to grow alongside a partner without losing what makes your organization distinct.
Contact AMS to learn how our knowledge base and our team can help you get on the right path to answer these critical questions.
Arts, culture and entertainment is our business.
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