The Exhibit Cost Record
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Published benchmarks

Aggregate industry figures from named public sources — context for the dataset's award-level rows, not part of the dataset itself.

Every figure below is drawn from a public source and carries a citation. For the two Praxis webinars, citations include a timestamp into the video’s captions — auto-generated captions occasionally mis-transcribe numbers, so verify any figure against the audio before quoting it precisely.

These benchmarks are context for the dataset’s award-level rows, not part of the dataset itself: they’re aggregate, sampled figures from named industry sources, not individual public-record transactions.

MGAC 2025 Museum Market Report

MGAC’s 2025 Museum Market Report is not available as a standalone free download (mgac.com’s cultural-practice pages appear to sit behind a login). Its figures were captured instead from a public webinar where MGAC’s own Kris Collins and Cathlin Bradley presented the report live.

Source: “Establishing Museum Target Budgets: Best Practices & Insights

from the 2025 Market Report” Praxis Exhibits, posted 2025-05-05. Presenters: Carolynne Harris with Kris Collins and Cathlin Bradley (MGAC). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ib8-cZIipvw

Methodology stated on camera: MGAC polled its professional network plus its own completed/in-development projects, deliberately excluding projects completed before 2022 and any bid pre-pandemic, to keep the escalation-distorted 2020–2022 window out of the averages. 00:04:33

A debunked figure, included here only as a caution against a commonly cited but wrong number: a widely circulated web claim puts new-museum construction at $150–$550/sq ft and new exhibits at $75–$550/sq ft. MGAC states on camera that this figure is out of date and wrong. 00:03:57

New building vs. renovation. On a like-for-like total project budget, the exhibit-budget share of hard costs in a new-building project runs about half what it would be in a renovation project — new construction consumes a much larger share of hard costs, while renovation reuses existing floor-to-floor heights and vertical circulation, leaving more budget for exhibits. Presented against a $20M total-project-budget example. 00:12:01

Escalation vs. general inflation, 2019–2025. Cumulative construction-cost escalation over this window: 44% (MGAC’s own tracking). 2025 forecasted inflation: ~5%, explicitly caveated as an early-2025 best guess given tariff conditions. 00:33:53 / 00:37:44 - Worked example: $100,000 of construction in 2019 costs $152,000 today under the 44% escalation figure. 00:34:04 - Deferred-maintenance conditions in an existing building being renovated: add at least 10–20% (or more) to the project budget. 00:14:19 - Commodity hardware specifically is still up over 100% vs. pre-Covid pricing. 00:36:18

Contingency structure (two separate reserves). Design contingency (covers early-stage estimate uncertainty) starts around 15% during concept/schematic design and steps down as documents are finalized. 00:31:33 Owner’s contingency (a separate standing reserve against unknowns, not a slush fund for enhancements) typically starts around 10% of hard costs in MGAC’s sampled average. 00:44:23 A looser rule of thumb quoted in discussion frames combined contingency/soft items at 15–25% of budget. 00:41:32

Soft costs averaged ~17% of total project cost across MGAC’s sampled projects. 00:44:12

Construction cost per square foot, new building. ~$1,100/sq ft for new construction at history/science-museum-type institutions, gross square footage, excluding site improvements, parking, utilities, service connections, and FF&E. 00:43:49

Exhibit fabrication cost per square foot (usable exhibit area only) — the single most directly comparable figure to this dataset’s award-level rows. ~$1,000/sq ft, MGAC’s sampled average for history museums and science museums specifically (media production included in that figure, not added on top). Explicitly excludes art museums and children’s museums, which run differently. 00:43:12 / 00:43:37 - Children’s museums run $250–$500/sq ft for fabrication — a meaningfully lower band, attributed to lower-tech exhibit design norms for that museum type. 00:49:35

Media production as a share of exhibit budget. Typically 15–20% of the exhibit budget, sometimes more depending on the designer — up to 30–40% on tech-heavy projects. 00:43:23

Worked example. A 30,000 sq ft museum with 8,000 sq ft of exhibit space: ~$54 million as a back-of-envelope starting point using MGAC’s own unit rates, explicitly excluding site improvements, parking, utilities, service connections, and FF&E. 00:45:17

Methodology caveats MGAC stated on camera: all figures above are sampled averages, not any specific project’s number — “your project is not average.” The $1,000/sq ft exhibit figure and the $1,100/sq ft building figure are both scoped to history/science museums; art museums and children’s museums were explicitly excluded and run differently. 00:43:01

Source: “What Do Exhibits Really Cost These Days?”

Praxis Exhibits, posted 2024-03-07. Panelists: Cathlin Bradley (kubik maltbie) and Matt Kirchman (ObjectIDEA), moderated by Paul Orselli. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkbfMkYgsvc

This webinar is process/approvals-and-stakeholders focused rather than figure-dense. One figure surfaced in audience Q&A: a “20 to 25 percent” design-fee share of overall project cost is raised as a commonly heard number, which the panelist pushes back on as often much lower in practice, and a follow-up question narrows it to the design team’s own fee share specifically rather than total design-phase cost. This is presented in the video as a myth being corrected, not as the panel’s own data point — cite it as a contested figure, not a clean benchmark. 00:29:35

Known gaps