Only 9% of Survey Respondents Accept AI in Museum Exhibitions
Only 9 percent of respondents to a 2026 survey accept the use of artificial intelligence (AI, software that generates text and images) in museum exhibitions. The figure comes from the American Alliance of Museums, a US membership body for museums, and was reported by ArtNews on 4 November 2026.
Comfort rises the further AI moves from the galleries. The survey found that 19 percent of respondents accepted AI for brainstorming but not for exhibition texts. Some 29 percent had no reservations about AI writing emails sent by museum officials. At the other end, 43 percent expected humans to develop all museum content, including exhibitions and emails.
Museums are already testing the technology. The Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art will use AI in a virtual reality (VR, a computer-generated environment you move through with a headset) recreation of James McNeill Whistler's Peacock Room. That recreation will be part of its version of a retrospective, a show looking back over an artist's career, organised by Tate in London, according to ArtNews.
The American Alliance of Museums also looked at who walks through the door. In its 2026 survey of museum-goers, only 47 percent of visitors hold a college degree. Only 35 percent are white and not Hispanic or Latine, and only 26 percent are aged 60 or older.
Habits differ across groups. White respondents were the most likely to say they had never visited a museum. Asian and Asian American respondents were the most likely to say they visited. Adults over 60 were the least likely to have visited in the past year, while parents and guardians of minor children were the most likely.
The group also says visiting has settled into a new pattern. Repeat visits have levelled off at a lower "new normal", a phrase the survey uses for lasting changes since the pandemic began. Attendance gaps, it says, come mainly from how often people visit, not from whether they visit at all.
These findings follow earlier survey work. In its 2025 annual snapshot, the group reported that 29 percent of museums saw attendance fall in 2025, which it linked to weaker travel and tourism and economic uncertainty. Its 2025 survey of museum-goers also found that many people worried about the accuracy of information presented with AI, and about AI replacing museum staff.
The American Alliance of Museums published its 2026 findings on 2 November 2026. The demographic figures come from its 2026 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers, which had 75,742 respondents.
