The value and importance of understanding the long-term impact of museums on visitors’ should not be underestimated. Such information enables museums to understand how to improve visitor experiences in museums, as well as the subsequent impact of those experiences, in a multiplicity of dimensions. These dimensions may include the enjoyment visitors’ feel, the kind of things they learn or the degree to which they develop understandings or appreciations of the messages museums communicate. Understanding how these dimensions of impact sustain, emerge, change and diminish over time provides value information about how to improve museums experiences for visitors. The nature and quality of learning and enjoyment derived from a museum visit may shift significantly over time and the true impact from the museum visit may not actually occur during the visit, but afterwards, through subsequent experiences. If these experiences were caused or motivated by a museum visit, the true learning outcomes would only be fairly assessed if that follow-up by the museum visitor is taken into account. The long-term impact of museums should not only be considered at the level of the visitor but also at the level of the communities museums serve. Thus, understanding the long-term impact of museum enables a better understanding of how to serve and enrich communities, of which museums are a part.

This chapter will explore what is already known about museums and their long-term impact on visitors, the complexities and challenges inherent in trying to study and understand long-term impacts, and future research and methodological approaches which we can use to effectively assess the long-term impacts of museum experiences.