MCN 2026

Digital strategy is an evolving process shaped by institutional culture, leadership, resources, risk tolerance, and changing technologies. The processes by which digital strategies are created, communicated, and sustained are highly consequential to the goals they articulate if those goals are to reach fruition. 

This session longitudinally examines digital strategy development, drawing on experiences from three museums at different stages of their digital strategic journeys. Presenters will trace the lifecycle of their digital strategy work from initial efforts to identify and formalize digital priorities, through implementation and evaluation following a strategy’s launch.

Princeton University Art Museum is crafting its first full digital strategy while awaiting a new museum strategic framework to be developed (starting Summer 2026). Frances Lloyd-Baynes and Jill Oster, authors of the draft strategy, will explore the challenges of developing a digital strategy in a vacuum with no active organizational goals on which to anchor, and in support of a brand new museum undergoing a major digital transformation.

Staff at the NC Museum of Art are working to create a digital resource roadmap in response to an overarching strategic plan for 2026 - 2030. Currently in writing by a digital governance committee, the digital plan aspires to codify museum technologies (software, platforms), operating procedures (asset creation, management), quality standards (WCAG), and an evaluation framework for digital products to support efficient and reliable access to high quality digital experiences by audiences. 

Spencer Museum is an example of an organization with a digital operational strategy in place reporting on how the deliverables have matched their goals for it and supported their work in practice. The Spencer Museum of Art Digital Plan plan was created in 2022 as a result of three years of planning, research, and auditing all digital platforms with Design for Context and One Further with support from the Mellon Foundation. Since launching they have updated the entire plan once (2024), and do 6-month reviews and progress reports for the entire staff.

Our three organizational case studies aim to articulate (1) circumstances that prompt organizations to pursue digital strategy planning, (2) how digital strategies intersect with (existing) institutional strategy documents, governance structures, and day-to-day operations, (3) the roles and personalities most critical to digital strategic decision-making, as well as those most affected by its implementation, and (4) core components of a written digital strategy, and how these have evolved over time.