Vitality Arts Project: How Lifetime Arts Powered a National Creative Aging Movement in Museums

About the Project

As part of the Vitality Arts Project for Art Museums, E.A. Michelson Philanthropy brought in Lifetime Arts to lead training and coaching for a groundbreaking initiative: supporting 25 leading museums across the country in building innovative creative aging programs. Beyond simply funding new projects, the goal was to foster lasting institutional change—positioning museums as inclusive, age-friendly spaces where older adults could create, connect, and thrive.

Since 2013, E.A. Michelson Philanthropy has invested more than $21 million to advocate for creative aging initiatives across the arts landscape. Recognizing the need for expert leadership to scale this vision effectively, they engaged Lifetime Arts to ensure that museum staff and leadership were deeply grounded in the best practices of creative aging, equipped to design successful programs, and prepared to challenge ageism within their institutions.

The Challenge

Across the U.S., museums have traditionally centered their education programs on youth—directing over 75% of program budgets to audiences under 18. Older adults, meanwhile, have often been overlooked in community engagement efforts, despite growing evidence that creative expression meaningfully supports their social, emotional, and physical well-being.

To change this, E.A. Michelson Philanthropy collaborated with Lifetime Arts as part of their strategy to help museums reimagine how they engage older adults. Through tailored training, strategic support, and accessible resources for staff at every level—from leadership to visitor services—this initiative is equipping institutions to shift perspectives, recognize the creative potential of older adults, and design inclusive, age-integrated programs that serve all generations.

Together, we’re helping museums become true community hubs—for everyone, at every age.

Lifetime Arts’ Approach

Three women who are teaching artists work on an art project together at a crafting table. — *Teaching artists during Lifetime Arts’ Creative Aging Foundations Training at Honolulu Museum of Art*.

Lifetime Arts provided a robust, multi-tiered strategy to support the Vitality Arts Project’s success:

Custom Training Development: Lifetime Arts designed and delivered a bespoke Creative Aging Foundations training specifically for museum environments. This training provided a unified understanding of creative aging best practices, ensuring that staff across 25 institutions shared a common language and set of goals.
Institution-Wide Capacity Building: Beyond training program teams, Lifetime Arts worked directly with many museums to educate leadership, visitor services, and front-of-house staff. A signature offering was the seminar “Creative Aging: A Tool for Undoing Ageism in Your Organization,” which addressed institutional biases and empowered staff to foster welcoming, inclusive environments.
Tailored Consulting and Support: Museums received one-on-one consulting, helping them design programs that were both artistically rigorous and deeply accessible to older adults. Lifetime Arts’ role was critical in coaching museum teams through curriculum development, artist engagement, community partnership strategies, and evaluation planning.
Ongoing Engagement: Lifetime Arts remained a steady, responsive resource throughout the initiative, ensuring that every museum—regardless of prior experience with older adult programming—had the support needed to succeed. Now, we’re supporting the cohort in staying connected after the formal end of the initiative.

Importantly, while Lifetime Arts did not deliver programs directly to older adults, our work behind the scenes was essential to building museum staff’s confidence, skill, and capacity to do so—embedding creative aging principles at the heart of every program.

“Lifetime Arts’ training inspired me to find new ways to
engage older patrons and to support our surrounding
community. The relationship building was inspirational!”

– Staff Member, Toledo Museum of Art

The Impact

A Black older adult woman smiles and holds a piece of paper in front of a wall of books. She is in a wheelchair. — *Drawing program held at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (MIA). Credit: Julie Bourman, Vitality Arts Coordinator, MIA*

A Black older adult man, white older adult man, and Asian middle-aged woman work on an art project at a circular table together. The Asian woman and Black older adult man are smiling. — *Visual arts program held at the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco (FAMSF) in partnership with San Francisco Recreation & Parks.* *Credit: Andria Lo*

With support from Lifetime Arts, over two years all 25 museums successfully launched approximately 160 creative aging programs, reaching thousands of older adults. Programs were diverse, locally grounded, and often deeply collaborative, demonstrating how creative aging could enrich museums and communities alike:

Boise Art Museum
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco (FAMSF)
Heard Museum
1. Programmatic coaching
Honolulu Museum of Art
1. Foundations training
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art
1. Presentations for board and staff

Minneapolis Institute of Art
1. Programmatic coaching
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
Pérez Art Museum
1. Foundations training
2. Programmatic coaching
Toledo Museum of Art

E.A. Michelson Philanthropy was able to rely on Lifetime Arts not just to train museum teams, but to help transform the participating institutions’ understanding of community engagement, expand audience diversity, and demonstrate the profound impact of creative aging programs.

Voices From the Field

Hear from practitioners and museum staff on how art museums across the United States are creating new opportunities for older adults to create, find purpose, and build community.

“These grants are important both because they will help art museums like Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) serve this population in more meaningful ways, with programs taught by working artists, and because they are inspiring our teams to see and engage with older adults as part of our mission and vision of the museum as a place that celebrates humanity in all forms.”

— Franklin Sirmans, Director of the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM)

“This grant dovetails with our own recent community research, which found that eighty percent of the museum’s current visitors who are over 55 are there because they enjoy expanding their world view and growing as a person. With this funding, we can create new programs that will continue to spark their curiosity and engage them in learning and creating something new—while also expanding our own thinking about audience diversity in important ways.”

— Anne Manning, Deputy Director for Learning and Engagement at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Why Funders and Associations Choose Lifetime Arts

Lifetime Arts is the leading national organization with a fully developed, field-tested model for scaling creative aging programming across multiple sites and organizations. Our partnerships allow funders to:

Maximize ROI: We ensure every grantee or participating organization receives the same high level of expert support, dramatically increasing project success rates.
Build Sustainable Change: Our focus is on capacity-building—not one-off programs—leading to longer-term institutional shifts that align with funder missions.
Expand Reach Quickly: With a national network of trainers and consultants, we can scale initiatives across states, regions, or entire sectors.
Demonstrate Impact: Our methodology emphasizes measurable outcomes that funders can showcase to boards, stakeholders, and the public.

Funders can trust Lifetime Arts to turn a bold vision for creative aging into a transformative, field-changing reality—and so can you! If you work at a museum and want to introduce or expand age-friendly arts programs for your older adult patrons, connect with us below!

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