What was White Oak?

White Oak Associates, Inc. was an internationally prominent planner and producer of museums, science centers, children’s museums and special format theaters. Our mission was to work collaboratively with others to create sustainable institutions and compelling learning experiences that address significant visitor and community needs.

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White Oak worked with specialized teams on projects including:

• Museum Institutional Strategic Planning: Opportunity Assessments, Community Needs Assessment, Concept Development Plans, Strategic Master Plans, Institutional Logic Models, Implementation Plans, Museum System Specifications, Marketing Plans, and Follow-up Evaluation Audits for museums, science centers, children’s museums, history museums, aquariums, other family learning centers and cultural attractions.
• Museum Performance Analysis and Benchmarking: Museum Operating Economic Assessments, Strategic Business Plans, Feasibility Studies, Attendance Potential Estimates, Staffing Plans, Pricing and Ticketing Policies.
• Museum Facility, Space and Pre-Architectural Planning: As institutional planners, White Oak supported museums by identifying and developing their facility objectives and functional requirements. White Oak started with a Space Use Analysis and Recommendations, and then co-designed the preliminary architectural programs, assisted with the architectural search and later, wrote the Architectural Room Book and its adjacencies.
• Executive Production services for large scale projects that needed strategic and creative direction integrated with economic, schedule and contractual controls. By using our international lists of museum-qualified architects, exhibit designers/fabricators and theater system suppliers, we ran selection processes that translated a museum’s objectives into Requests for Proposals (RFP’s) and selection criteria.
• Museum Master Plans: Our Strategic Master Plans provided detailed, hard planning data for a new facility including a description of the programmatic themes and venues, a market analysis of the region, projected attendance potential, capital budgets, implementation plans, and operating budgets. The Strategic Master Plans were both reassuring documents for donors and comprehensive planning tools for staff and contractors.