“Lies,damn lies and statistics”: a history of museum visits in Australasia

ABSTRACT

While a great deal of attention has been paid to museum visit data in the last few decades, very little is known about long-term trends. This article examines the distinctive history of museum visits in Australasia through a comparative study of eight key institutions from across the region. Archival research was undertaken at each institution to compile as complete as possible a data set of annual visitation from opening until present day. Any stated changes in funding, admission charges, buildings etc. were also recorded, along with comments indicating contemporary explanations for fluctuations in visitation. Sources included official documents such as annual reports and trustee minutes, as well as visitor books and attendance records. We provide an initial overview of the quantitative and contextual data we collected from the case study museums focusing on a number of key questions: How have museums in Australasia been counting and reporting visit data over the past 150 years? What does this reveal about changes over time in the perceived value of visit data and museum attitudes towards their visitors? What are the key trends in museum attendance at the local, national and regional level in Australia and New Zealand? What contemporary explanations were given for fluctuations in museum attendance and are they supported by a long-term, cross-institutional comparison of the data? The study provides insights into historical shifts in thinking about the importance of visitors, appropriate methods for recording visitation, and the value of this data. The findings are also relevant to how museums today interpret attendance figures. The ways in which visit data were included or excluded from historical narratives about the value of museums highlights the constructed nature of visitor data and raises questions about the role of visitor research in contemporary museums.     

Analysing visits to English museums 1850–2015: a research note

ABSTRACT

Understanding why people visit museums is of interest to both cultural economics and museum studies. Most existing research relies on survey data concerned with visitors, their immediate background, and their experience of a particular museum. Very few studies have taken a more general perspective and analysed macro-level societal factors, such as inflation, educational attainment and unemployment, and their influence on the number of visits to museums. The conventional approach relies on visitor surveys to understand what drives visits and people’s general views on museums.

In a departure from these conventional approaches, this article presents a macro-level approach, using a unique dataset of visit counts for 40 English museums and visitor attractions spanning the period 1850–2015. It examines the effect of socio-economic factors on visits using panel data analysis and macro-level variables. The results suggest that inflation rates, average earnings, and educational level (using the indicator of secondary school attendance) all significantly influence the number of visits made. However, the most important variable is the number of visits recorded for the previous year. These findings are discussed in relation to existing studies, and some suggestions for future research are proposed.     

Chinese Art in the Cernuschi Museum

After the three and half years of facelift, the Cemuschi Museum ,was finally reopened one year ago.Guided by Mr. Gilles Beguin, director of the museum, we visited the museum which has the second largest collection of Asian art in France, only next to Museum Guimet.[第一段]     

Forty years on

The election of the New Labour Government in 1997 led to the end of a strand of museum policy that had begun with the publication of the Survey of Provincial Museums and Galleries (the Rosse Report) in 1963. Comparison of the substantial data relating to the usage, governance, management and resources of museums in Rosse with the position at the end of the twentieth century shows how the museums landscape has (or has not) changed during the intervening period. Both National and non-National museums have seen their financial resources grow in a way that has outpaced Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This is both a reflection of, and stimulus for, increasing public interest in the heritage. However, the museum sector has not been the stable entity of popular perception, and museums have closed or amalgamated as well as opened and developed new projects. For most of the 40 years government policy for museums has been ad hoc, and it is only since 1997 that museums have been the subject of strategic direction, exemplified for non-National museums by the Renaissance in the Regions initiative. The £147 million to be spent on this scheme by 2007/08 represents an unmatched level of investment. However, it has focused resources on the large regional museums rather than the previous more equal distribution, increasing the risk that the museum sector will atomize rather than continue the process of coming together that had been taking place previously. Rosse's main recommendation, the creation of area museum councils, endured for 40 years. Renaissance's larger budget makes current levels of support vulnerable without some formal (perhaps legislative) framework to anchor it within government. While this approach is increasingly popular in other European nations, it still represents a challenge for cultural policy in the nations of the UK.     

Social inclusivity,cultural diversity and online film consumption

It has been argued that the circulation of film online is a “democratising process”, evident in the breadth and depth of international film now available online, and in the greater ease of access to this content for audiences across the world. This is seen by some to present greater commercial opportunities for film-making from countries marginalised by previous distribution networks, and to foster a more globally diverse and inclusive film-viewing culture, with particular benefits for diasporic populations. Others, however, have pointed to the way in which audiences’ engagement with film online may be constrained by the economics and technology of online distribution and cultural competencies rooted in social stratification. These factors may limit how and what audiences watch, extending beyond issues of physical access to those of cultural access. As such, they raise questions regarding the demographic composition of the audience for online methods of film distribution and different types of international film. We lack sufficient understanding of these issues, however, due to the limited emphasis upon socio-demographic variables in existing academic research into online film consumption, and the limited consideration of particular film content in relevant market research. This article uses original audience research to interrogate the extent to which online distribution is able to connect audiences to a diversity of international film in comparison to other methods of distribution. It also considers some of the socio-demographic characteristics of the audiences for different methods of distribution and types of international film. In doing so, the article grants us a clearer understanding of the degree to which online film distribution fosters diversity and inclusivity through the connections it facilitates between audiences and content.     

The power of circulation: digital technologies and the online Chinese fans of Japanese TV drama

Focusing on the online Chinese fans of Japanese TV drama, this paper explores the way in which the fan subculture, in connection with digital technologies, has carved out alternative practices in the circulation, production and consumption of Japanese TV drama. As ‘minority audiences’ who are not targeted as the objects of capitalist interests, online Chinese fans invent spaces for Chinese transnational networking with self‐help and sharing, as a way of resisting the aloofness from marketing strategies of Japanese TV distributors in Asia. This case study reveals that the online Chinese fan clubs, the websites for downloads, pirated VCD markets, digital file conversion, and private VCD burning – all of these have linked endless networks for the digitalized circulation and consumption of Japanese TV drama. The online Chinese fans are guerrilla fighters in the politics of autonomy, network and low‐cost digital technology; they are attempting to break down time–space constraints and the official distribution hierarchy. Such fan practices shed light on the new trends of audio‐visual consumption via digitalization.     

Self-reported impacts of volunteering in UK zoos and aquariums

ABSTRACT

Zoos and aquariums are popular visitor destinations, with around 30 million visits made to them annually throughout the UK and Ireland. The role and mission of modern zoos have evolved, with the conservation of world’s remaining biodiversity now being their major purpose. They seek to aid biodiversity through a combination of public education, in situ and ex situ conservation programmes, and applied scientific research. Directly relevant to this paper, they are also institutions that actively recruit, attract and utilise volunteers. However, the impacts of volunteering in zoos and aquariums, on the volunteers themselves, are under-researched. Here we show that, in a survey of more than 500 volunteers at 19 different zoological collections in the UK, zoo volunteers report positive impacts, specifically in relation to increases in their human and social capital. We also found that these benefits were more pronounced in younger volunteers, and with those volunteers who received more initial training. We conclude that while volunteering in UK zoos correlates with significant personal benefits to individuals, zoos could aim higher and should seek to do more to maximise the positive effects of connecting volunteers with the wildlife and nature found in zoo settings, as well as tailoring their volunteer training programmes for different age groups.     

Impact of place on museum participation

This paper examines the impact of place on museum participation in England. For the first time in the cultural field, we use a multilevel logistic model to examine whether place matters after accounting for individual characteristics and area level compositional factors. Our findings show that the traditional social order remains intact, although other social cleavages have become important, and that significant variation exists in museum participation simultaneously at both the neighbourhood and local authority district spatial scales. We conclude by arguing that future research into cultural consumption patterns must take account of the fact that individuals reside in different places. That individuals cluster in space, interact in these places and spaces, and that environmental forces impact on museum participation. Put simply, both theoretically and empirically, studies of cultural behaviour should take account of place, because place matters.     

Museum visiting in Edinburgh and Glasgow – 150 years of change and continuity

ABSTRACT

Despite, or perhaps because of, being only 45 miles apart and of a similar size, Glasgow and Edinburgh are famous for their historical and cultural differences and notorious for their rivalry. This article will explore the history of museum visiting by comparing the current visitor demographics of Glasgow Museums, with those of the National Galleries and the National Museums in Edinburgh, and exploring the extent to which these differences can be traced back to the founding cultures of these institutions. Drawing on historical visitor data and discourse analysis of official museum commentary on visitor behaviour, this article will assess Davies, Paton and Sullivan’s museum version of the Competing Values Framework and Wouter’s theory of informalisation as approaches to interpret how institutional traditions have interacted with wider social developments. It will conclude with reflections on the implications for museum history, and for current policy and practice.     

Expatriate adjustment in the digital age: The co-creation of online social support resources through blogging

Support provided through social contacts in the host environment has long been recognized as critical for expatriate adjustment. Internet technologies are changing the way individuals form and interact with social contacts and access social support. These technologies have the potential to offer expatriates new sources and means for accessing social support. We investigated the role of blogging technology in expatriates’ adjustment to foreign environments through a qualitative analysis of a set of blogs written by foreign individuals living in Canada between 2005 and 2012. We found that the blogging system, which is comprised of the blogging technology, bloggers, discussants, and co-created digital discourse, generated online adjustment support resources which were accessed by expatriates. Online adjustment support resources are social support resources, created and residing online, which may help expatriates deal with their experiences of uncertainty, ambiguity and anxiety and include information, interpretation schemas, and comfort.     

Still popular: Museums and their visitors 1994–2004

The starting point for this article is the author's 1994 study of the museums and galleries' market, By Popular Demand. The article sets out to look at some of the key findings and track any developments in the 10 years since its publication. The article examines both quantitative and qualitative evidence from national (rather than local or regional) data. The subject matter covered includes the old questions of how many visits are made to UK museums and galleries each year, who visits and why do they visit. This is a period only partly impacted upon by the policy initiatives of New Labour, notably free admission to the national museums and galleries and the Renaissance in the Regions programme. The author demonstrates that, at best, the total number of visits grew only a little and those who visit became more middle class and more middle aged rather more than the population did itself in these years. Museums and galleries might maintain their audiences but they were not expanding them or broadening their social appeal. This alone was sufficient justification for New Labour's policies, the early stages of which seem to have been successful.     

Known unknowns: research on Irish museums since 2008

ABSTRACT

In 2015–2016 the first comprehensive survey of museums in Ireland in a decade – the Irish Museums Survey 2016 – was undertaken as a collaborative project between the School of Art History and Cultural Policy, University College Dublin, and the Irish Museums Association. Since the Republic’s economic collapse in 2008 and the recession, museums have weathered significant shifts in governance and board structures, and drastic cutbacks that have affected programmes, staffing, and provision across the island. Yet, until recently we have not had an accurate picture of the “state of play” for Irish museums, hampering efforts to prioritise actions for museum support organisations, and preventing individual institutions to develop their own plans of advancement benchmarked against national data. Consequently, there has been a significant knowledge gap concerning the current state of Irish museums, stretching beyond the anecdotal, and bridging the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. This essay addresses the major findings of the Irish Museums Survey 2016, contextualised within the landscape of recent research on museums in the Republic and the North, and existing research infrastructures. In reviewing forms of museum provision and policy in both jurisdictions, it argues that the haphazard nature of data collection and the worrying findings of some aspects of the 2016 Survey require the enhancement of an all-island research culture, audit of national collections and institutions, and development of improved strategic planning for museums.     

A Cluster of Museums Boosts Nantong＇s Reputation

This year marks the 100^th anniversary of Nantong Museum, known as the earliest modern museum in China. In the new era, it now enjoys its heyday, with a vast collection of artifacts and newly-renovated facilities.     

Teachers Moving Forward on a Cultural Self-Awareness Spectrum: Diverse Children,Museums, and Young Adult Literature

This case study research investigated preservice and in-service teachers’ (N = 23) experiences and understandings as they participated in a multicultural children and young adults’ literature course that incorporates visits to a Holocaust museum. A graduate level course was redesigned within a framework of social justice pedagogy by focusing on critical analysis of multicultural literature, teacher inquiry, as well as a civic engagement project. Findings from this study illuminated how this course design encouraged teachers to move beyond a focus on tolerance and acceptance, and toward a social justice orientation through critical exploration of issues such as racism, oppression, and the ways bias and privilege operate within their own lives, schools, and society.     

New art museums in Central and Eastern Europe and the ideologies of urban space production

This article focuses on the processes of new museum constructions in Central and Eastern European capitals. We examine the processes related to three new building constructions for national, public museums in Estonia, Hungary and Croatia through Henry Lefebvre's theory of the production of space. The architecture of new museum buildings is seen as an outcome of historical, economic and social processes that have grown out of the recent past of the three countries. We examine these museums in the context of their multi-faceted locations, ranging from the suburbs to the new city centres, and the plans for their establishment in the context of privatization, urbanization and rapid internationalization of markets. The social space of the museum depends on the combination of the different actors involved in its production – public authorities, market actors and civil society and their relationship to one another. New museums in Central and Eastern Europe are, thus, regarded as monuments that also, inevitably, relate to the construction of new narratives of identities and statehood.     

UK museums: Safe and sound?

The new millennium finds UK museums confronting change in their markets and a new political environment.

Recent research has shown that the museum market is static. Sustainability may be difficult for many, with only those that are small and run by volunteers escaping financial difficulties. Alongside these market factors, and following the election of the Labour government, museums are being expected to confront new challenges. While much government policy continues the thrust of the previous administration ‐ especially the focus on the national museums and galleries ‐ there have been some distinctive shifts, especially in respect of admission charges. Besides devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, an increasingly important English regional agenda has developed, in which museums are expected to play a significant role.

Other influences have also had a considerable impact, such as the advent of Best Value, which requires museums funded by local councils to demonstrate their efficiency and effectiveness, and the National Lottery's significant investment in museum capital projects. While this has created some exciting new projects, it has also added to museums’ running costs at a time when market conditions are difficult. Additionally, limited opportunities for employees to progress and develop, and uncompetitive pay, make museums an unattractive career choice, thereby depriving them of the talent that will be needed to meet the public's changing needs.

All these issues provide a reason for central government to understand better the issues faced by the museum sector as a whole, and regional museums and galleries in particular. Without such national guidance, and opportunities for strategic change and rationalisation, museums may close in a disordered way, and their collections lost. In this way, the legacy of this generation to the next may be in danger.     

Who’s counting whom? Non-National museum attendances in the UK: part 1

ABSTRACT

This paper is the first part of a study on visit numbers to UK regional and local museums. It reviews the limited past research on the topic, examines the motivations for counting such visits and the means required to do so, and explores the methods used from the early nineteenth century to now. A concluding section discusses the theme within the context of modern public policy on museums.

In relating historic context to current practice, it shows that, irrespective of the general use of visit numbers as a proxy for public interest and institutional importance, the practice of collecting museum visit numbers continues to be inconsistent and their publication erratic. It suggests that the lack of accepted good practice makes this an area for improvement.     

Museums,schools and geographies of cultural value

This article explores a paradox and a possibility that have emerged from two pieces of policy-related research concerning educational use of museums within England. The paradox relates to the use of museums which, whilst widely perceived as rather elitist institutions, appear from a postcode analysis of school visits to museums to be visited by large numbers of schools located in areas of social deprivation. The present analysis further explores this paradox, drawing on revised postcode analysis and governmental indices of multiple deprivation and income deprivation affecting children. The analysis supports the contention that museums attracted visits from schools located in areas with some of the highest levels of deprivation, although it suggests that this result needs to be considered in relation to regional differences in areas of social deprivation, the location of museums and the differences between individual and area-based measures of deprivation. Attention is then drawn to the potential of considering museums through a geographical perspective, and specifically through Foucault's notions of primary, secondary and tertiary spatializations. It is argued that primary spatializations encompasses how museums are conceptualized and classified; secondary spatializations concern how various elements of museums are articulated together; and tertiary spatializations relate to the placement of museums in wider societal contexts and processes. It is suggested that the postcode analysis of school visits points both to the significance of considering tertiary spatializations relating to the social circumstances of museum visitors but also raised questions concerning primary spatializations of museums. Attention is drawn to changes in the classification and grouping of museums, and how these often encompass geographically based criteria related to the social reach of museums. The article ends by considering the degree to which museums might seek to further change their primary spatialization to reflect tertiary spatializations relating to cultural value.     

Spatial equity and cultural participation: how access influences attendance at museums and galleries in London

ABSTRACT

This paper addresses how neighbourhoods operate as opportunity structures for cultural participation, and therefore how unequal access to cultural facilities might influence levels of participation and profiles of participants. The neighbourhood effects literature identifies how where people live shapes their lives, including their participation in various activities, but this has not been applied to cultural participation. Sociological theory explores the importance of social stratification of cultural consumption, but has largely ignored the role of place. In this paper sociological explanations of cultural participation are extended to incorporate the influence of access to cultural infrastructure. An innovative accessibility index for museums and galleries in London, using online searches to weight their attraction, is linked to the Taking Part Survey, and used to predict attendance. Alongside social stratification, significant neighbourhood characteristics are identified, including, importantly, access to museums and galleries. Improved access has a strong positive relationship with attendance, which varies according to qualifications and ethnic group: those with degrees are most likely to attend, but the relationship with access also operates for those with fewer qualifications, who according to traditional explanations have little disposition to attend. The implications of the substantial spatial inequity in investment in museums and galleries are discussed.