Visitor numbers as a chart of success

“Attendance at LA Museums lags behind” states a headline last week in the Los Angeles Times. It’s the familiar issue that, like it or not, those visitors coming through the door are the fundamental measure of a museum’s success. In the article Ann Philbin, the director of the Hammer Museum in LA bravely states in response to a question about visitor numbers: "We care about it certainly, but it is not at the top of our list of measures of success. When attendance figures are overvalued in museums, it can lead to mediocrity in programming".

Nobody disputes the latter comment - it is just that those that pay the bills, whether they are governments or philanthropic foundations like to see visitor numbers on an upward curve.

Check out the article that prompted all this breast beating at the Art Newspaper
The top ten art museums world wide in 2010 are as follows and there are no surprises here:

8,500,000     Louvre Paris
5,842,138     British Museum London
5,216,988     Metropolitan Museum of Art New York
5,061,172     Tate Modern London
4,954,914     National Gallery London
4,775,114     National Gallery of Art Washington
3,131,238     Museum of Modern Art New York
3,130,000     Centre Pompidou Paris
3,067,909     National Museum of Korea Seoul
2,985,510     Musée d’Orsay Paris

And critical to drawing those crowds are the temporary exhibitions. The article details a most interesting range of statistics drawn from a comprehensive survey of exhibitions around the world listed in order of daily attendance including:

• The top 30 exhibitions (the top two are both in Tokyo and drew over 10,000 people per day! Not sure what anyone could see at that density)
• The top ten Decorative Arts, Antiquities, Impressionism, Old Masters, Mediaeval and Thematic exhibitions
• The top ten 19th Century, Asian, Architecture and Design, and Photography exhibitions
• The top ten exhibitions in Tokyo, London and Paris
• Comparisons with previous years

So it looks as though the blockbuster is alive and well and critical to keeping those numbers up. But before we all get too disheartened about this being the only way forward, bear in mind the phenomena of the response to British Museum director Neil MacGregor’s radio program in the UK. Broadcast three times daily on Radio 4, MacGregor gave a series of 15 minute lectures on 100 objects in the BM’s collection. Not only did this result in an extraordinary 20 million downloads from the Museum’s web site, but attendance jumped by 250,000.

What I particularly love about it is the medium MacGregor chose to use. No visuals, just people’s imagination as he described each object and the history behind it. Perhaps that is what largely drew people to explore the Museum’s collections further

Julian Bickersteth

Managing Director
internationalconservationservices

Visitor participation in museums

The wonderful Musee d’Orsay post-impressionism exhibition currently at the National Gallery of Australia really is a must-see experience, even for those who have seen the paintings in their home venue in Paris. Apart from so many iconic paintings being in one place at one time in Australia (apparently one wall alone has over $1 billion of artwork on it), one thing that stood out for me was the lighting. It is absolutely beautifully lit. None of that fried-egg-bright–painting-against-a-dark-background stuff. The walls are all washed with light and then the paintings themselves subtly picked out. It is all very unobtrusive until one realises how alive they all seem – apparently the director of the Musee d’Orsay commented on the fact himself. And a tip - go late on Friday or Saturday night as the exhibition remains open to 7pm after the main Gallery closes at 5pm and the crowds are much less.

The Director, Serge Lemoine, also praised the children’s room, saying that he really liked such an approach but it would be frowned upon in Paris as dumbing down the art. Developed by the head of education and public programs at the National Gallery, Peter Naumann, it has been a run-away success. Essentially he has reproduced (some in his own hand) various of the paintings such as the Van Gogh self portrait and Starry Night, and then encouraged children to have a go themselves. So they might create their own portrait, which then gets put in frame alongside the Van Gogh or collage more stars to put in the massively blown up starry night covering one wall. It has a great vitality to it!

And it led me to consider an interesting posting on Nina Simon’s blog on participation in museums. Nina has divided the museum sector into four, History museums, Art museums, Science centres and Children’s museums, and looked at what opportunities and challenges there are for participation. It is worth summarising, as it broadly ties in with my perceptions of such:

History museums
- Opportunities – best of the four for participatory projects such as story telling and crowd sourced collecting. Given the incredible popularity of genealogy also great places for visitor generated projects. And given their social content also good places for community dialogue.
- Challenges – validating visitor stories to ensure they are authentic and do not contain offensive views, and maintaining a narrative thread that is intelligible and enjoyable to visitors.

Art museums
- Opportunities – inspiring visitors to create their own art in response to what is on display (see NGA above). Providing participatory projects led by artists to encourage active social participation.
- Challenges – most art museums suffer from more separation between curatorial and education/public program departments than other forms of museums. Most curators do not want educational/participatory events included as they might distract from the aesthetic experience (see Lemoine’s response to what his French colleague would say above).

Science centres
- Opportunities – subject matter ideal for participatory projects and long history of interactivity, as well as widespread use by school groups as learning places.
- Challenges – can be lack of multiple perspectives offered, and controversial or complicated topics avoided as difficult to ensure they can be fun.

Children’s museums
- Opportunities – generally highly interactive and encouraging of participation to explore new ideas and narratives.
- Challenges – big issues around privacy concerns, taking photos and asking for personal data.