Abstract

Museums are increasingly expected to be responsive to their audience in the21st century. Museums must establish a means of measuring the quality of visitor services systematically over time, which plays a vital role in encouraging the visitors to engage with and learn from collections. Exhibitions are the basic medium of the museum to communicate with its public. However, generally museum displays are not based on the needs and expectations of the public. It is essential for museums to find out as much information as possible about the audiences and communities that the museum wishes to serve through audience research at all stages of the exhibition development process. In Turkey, museums carry out their communication functions mostly through exhibitions. Adequate studies regarding exhibitions in museums have not been conducted. Audience research is a recently developing field for the museums in Turkey. There is a need for the evaluation of the particular effects of museum exhibitions on museum audiences throughout the exhibition development process. The aim of this study is to propose the significance of and contribute to the development of audience research and exhibition development studies in museums. The field research is based primarily on surveys conducted at the museums of Istanbul within the context of exhibition development. From this perspective, the audience research studies implemented by the museums of Istanbul have been identified and evaluated.