The free entry debate

I had dinner last week with senior staff from the Natural History Museum in London, here in Australia for the opening of the new Scott exhibition at the Australian National Maritime Museum. Do make time to visit it if you are in Sydney until October or catch it after that in London at NMH or mid next year in Christchurch at the Canterbury Museum. And spare a thought for our colleagues at the latter museum, who had just finished getting straight after the February 22nd earthquake when another one struck last week and took them almost literally back to square one again.
But coming back to NMH, they have a nice problem of over crowding. At weekends and on public holidays they can have as many as 22,000 visitors a day and that is significantly compromising the quality of the visit. Overall numbers grew by 10% last year taking them over the 3 million visitors a year mark , and fourth in the UK museum popularity stakes behind the British Museum, Tate Modern and the National Gallery. So their focus is now on how to fill the Museum on quieter days and also ensure the quality of the visit is maintained. Bear in mind that all National museums in the UK are still free entry, despite political murmurings of doing away with this.

Meanwhile on the other side of the Atlantic, achieving growth in visitor numbers is taxing senior museum executives, with numbers either plateauing or sliding at most major museums. One significant difference is that they are almost without exception ticketed entry institutions. The Met may still be the third most visited museum on the planet (after the Louvre (8.5m) and the BM (5.8m) at 5.2 m visitors per annum), but they have decided they need to raise the entrance fee on July 1st from $20 to $25.

That is causing some interesting debate as reported in the NY Times last week. Perhaps the most interesting are: a) whether public museums have a moral obligation like libraries to be free, i.e. should the public have to pay to see what belongs to them and b) how should an entrance fee compare in value to say a cinema ticket or a meal.

No one has a definitive answer to these issues, but there is little doubt that the acres of treasures at the Met remain good value for hours of edutainment even at $25. The bigger consideration is whether the rise is going to discourage lower income visitors, and indeed whether the price hike is in fact a way of limiting over crowding. The Met says very much not and points out quite validly that the entry fee is only recommended, and voluntary. Either way it is going to be interesting to watch their visitor numbers.

Julian Bickersteth
Managing Director
internationalconservationservices

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

Google Art and the power of the real thing

I have been playing with Google Art on and off since it was released a month or so ago, trying to get excited about it. Certainly the technology is amazing and the ability to walk round 385 galleries in 17 world museums and zoom in on the paintings within them impressive. But it comes down the same thing I have commented on before namely, the technology taking over from the art appreciation itself. Check out a similar view in the Boston Globe by art critic Sebastian Smee.

But as Smee points out the reason the 17 museums have allowed Google into their hallowed halls is to encourage more visitors to come and see the real thing. Does one naturally follow the other, i.e. does investing in your on-line presence as a museum pay dividends in increasing your visitor numbers? I used to cite ‘French research’ as proving that it did, which was sloppy as I could never actually source that research.

However I have recently come across a study undertaken by IMLS (Institute of Museum and Library Services) in 2008 on precisely this issue. Interviewing over a thousand people on the statement: “The Internet does not kill libraries and museums”, they came to the conclusion “Internet use is positively related to in-person visits to museums and libraries”- I never realized that my museum visiting was actually an ‘in-person visit’, but now I know!

What they really mean is that adults who use the internet are more likely to visit libraries and museums. Indeed they manage to put a figure on it, namely that in 2006 internet access increased adult visits to museums in the US by 75%. They go further by coming to the conclusion that in-person and on-line visits to museums serve important and complimentary roles in supporting a wide variety of information needs. By looking at information needs addressed by the two types of visits (in-person as distinct from on-line) , the study identified that 94% of the in-person visits are about informal learning and recreation (as against formal education or work-related issues) whereas this drops to 83% when on-line. Another interesting fact that came out of the IMLS study is that the more on-line visits that are made, the more that person is likely to visit a museum.

So now I feel better about Google Art! And to add to that, as a conservator, there is no doubt that its ability to provide such detailed analysis of the paint surface is a useful addition to the conservator’s tool kit, when seeking to understand comparable painting composition and potential deterioration.

Julian Bickersteth
Managing Director
internationalconservationservices

Increasing those visitor numbers

I blogged in April last year on the subject of building museum revenue and cited the Dallas Museum of Art's success in using qualitative visitor surveys to identify four types of visitor clusters, namely: Observers, Participants, Independents and Enthusiasts. The innovative strategies that have been implemented as a result of the surveys has resulted in a 100% increase in attendance, and is about to be published by the DMA with Yale University Press under the title Ignite the Power of Art; Advancing visitor engagement in Museum Experiences.


So what are these strategies?

• Establishment of the DMA's Center for Creative Connections, which encourages visitors to explore their own creativity and introduce them to new ways of experiencing art, ranging from filmmaking workshops to performance activities

• Introducing an Interactive exhibitions based program, by including immersive soundscapes with appropriate exhibitions, adding performances, and artists' talks within a dedicated space within the galleries, and including musical interludes

• Using Smartphone tours, cleverly marketed under the smARTphone label. This is an increasing part of the art museum scene, and DMA have taken to it wholeheartedly to provide access to supplemental information about the works. They cite examples as watching a video of Jackson Pollock painting whilst standing in front of one of his artworks, listening to excerpts from Ovid's Metamorphoses that inspired Jacques-Louis David's 1722 painting Apollo and the Diana attacking the children of Niobe, and discovering the meaning of Aramaic inscriptions that appear in a Roman mosaic.

• Developing public programs, especially after hours tours, during which there are multi-disciplinary events and performances. I particularly like the idea of 'insomniac tours' led by DMA's director Bonnie Pitman, and bedtime stories for the younger visitors.

I am particularly interested in where smartphone use is going in museum and gallery interpretation and will be blogging more about this shortly. Meanwhile the lessons from DMA's success are surely a) get to know your audience well and b) tailor your offering (within reason) to what they want, remembering that it will not be one size fits all.

Julian Bickersteth
Managing Director
internationalconservationservices

Museums and the Buzz at Otago

The latest edition of ICOM News contains an interesting article which identifies three aspects to successful museums as follows:

• Community engagement, i.e. ensuring that your local community is closely involved with the museum, both within and without
• Innovative and unexpected exhibitions – exhibitions that offer fresh perspectives
• Doing things well – maintaining high standards in everything from museum design to cleanliness of toilets

I would add a couple more, namely:

• A strong corporate culture
• A social space, namely a museum where people feel welcome and want to return to, where they are happy to meet their friends

So it’s always stimulating to unexpectedly come across a museum which is eminently successful, and I have just been lucky enough to spend 24 hours in Dunedin, New Zealand at the Otago Museum with the Director, Shimrath Paul and the Director Exhibitions, Development and Planning, Clare Wilson.

New Zealand consistently out guns Australia with its visitor numbers, with Te Papa in Wellington the most visited museum in Australasia at a cool 1.5 million last year. And the Otago Museum is no exception with an amazing 600,000 during a special exhibition year in 2008-09 but still in a regular year over 400,000. This is in a city with a population of only 120,000 and not much more in the local rural catchment area. Compare that with the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney (population currently 4.2 million) on 470,000 visitors in 2009-10.

Has this achievement come from following these criteria for successful museums?

Let’s check it out:

• Community engagement. The Otago Museum has a complicated governance model being essentially a regional museum with funding from a number of local councils. Each of these has to be kept happy as rate payers monies are being channelled to the Museum . Last year the Museum was Winner of the Otago Chamber of Commerce Business Excellence Award for Tourism, reached out into communities in Otago with a SciCity based outreach programme, and ran Halloween guided tours round the Museum alongside a fortnightly series of live performances from kapa haka to Irish dancing. It’s noticeable that the museum guides are called communicators in the staff list, reflecting the importance the Museum sees in their role in this area with the community.
• Doing things well. The Director did tell me they have discovered a number of people come to the Museum only to use the toilets so that part of the criteria is being achieved! But the Museum does present well with succinct signage, solid looking interactives and clear labelling.
• Innovative and unexpected exhibitions. Two particular exhibitions caught my eye. One was a series of mini exhibitions in the foyer as a ’taster’ to the permanent exhibitions , being no more than a large showcase of, in turn, Indian ornate daggers, Macedonian pottery and Sir Edmund Hillary’s personal memorabilia. These change every two or three months. The other was a completely unexpected delight, namely a rainforest exhibition which morphed into a Butterfly gallery with live butterflies. Spectacular and a real draw card for repeat visitors, as the butterflies only last a few days so are constantly changing.
• A strong corporate culture. This is where the Museum really does excel – you can feel it in the place just chatting to staff. And they have done this by creating a Strategic Plan into which all staff contributed during an intensive bonding session away from the Museum, and then more importantly actually sticking to what the Plan says they were going to do. Indicative of this is that in the staffroom there is a list of “behaviours we need and respect” and “ behaviours we will not tolerate”. Check out the Plan on their website, where these are listed – it is well worth a read.
• A social space. The entrance was redeveloped to reorientate the face of the Museum from a busy road to the local park a few years ago and the result is an airy glass walled atrium which is inviting and full of buzz and people. The café is in this space, and the coffee was excellent – such an important part of museum visitation if people are going to be encouraged to return. Indicative of this, the Director was himself checking out the coffee as a new barista had started the day I was there.

So if you are down that part of the world I do recommend you call in.

Julian Bickersteth
Managing Director
internationalconservationservices

Retaining members

Ensuring that members renew their memberships each year is a key objective for most membership based organisations. For instance at the National Trust of Australia, with which I am closely involved, we know that we have regular core members and then opportunistic ones, the latter being those that either join to support a particular heritage cause or more pragmatically to get free entry to National Trust houses world wide when they are travelling. The core group tend to renew unprompted, the opportunistic ones may need chivvying along. The traditional way to do this is by personally phoning them to encourage them to renew, with the added advantage of getting feedback on the organisation. However this is expensive in terms of resources and may have only limited success.

Most museums and galleries have major membership programs. The highly successful MOMA membership program boasts an astonishing 130,000 members. But in times of economic downturn membership renewals are often the first to be chopped from personal budgets.

A couple of interesting case studies I have come across show some different ways to retain members. ICOM News reports that at the Tate in the UK, membership had risen to 90,000 when the GFC hit in 2008, at which point retention rates, having been around the 90% mark, started dramatically falling. So at what sounds like considerable cost to the management, an external data analysis company, Tullo Marshall Warren was brought in to help solve the problem. Members were broken down into eight segments, based on their propensity to lapse. Particular focus was made on the frequency of visits to the various Tate galleries (Tate Britain , Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives), as it was discovered that if visits start to tail off in the last six months of membership, there is a high chance of lapsing. If a member has lapsed for over 24 months, it was a waste of time targeting them.

It may all sound like the bleeding obvious and Tate themselves acknowledge that there were no major surprises. But what it has helped them do is to work out how better to retain members before they reach the lapsing stage. After three months of membership an email is sent to members, offering a ‘Tate treat’ in the form of a designer travel wallet when they next visit. At six months they are sent a pack of post it notes with reminders of the exhibition schedule and at nine months, just before the renewal process, the ‘Tate treat’ is a free coffee at the Museums’ cafes. Retention rate is back at 90% so it seems to be working.

Meanwhile across the Atlantic at the Whitney in New York, a different route is being employed to retain members, by offering a ‘Curate your Own’ membership. Members can select one of five specialised buckets of benefits to add to the core admission and discount member benefits. Driven initially by falling membership as the GFC hit, the Whitney wanted to find a way of connecting with their members and the experiences they most value at the Whitney, admittedly off a much smaller base than the Tate of 12,500 members. Through focus group work, they discovered five strong attitudinal segments, each of which was developed up into its own package of benefits.

The five are:

• Social, for those who enjoy cocktail parties and previews, and social gatherings around cultural events
• Insider, for those who like to see behind the scenes and be able to talk directly to curators and conservators
• Learning, providing regular lectures and gallery talks, and access to educational programs
• Family, providing such benefits as kids passports, stroller tours, and guest passes for family carers
• Philanthropy, for those wanting to support the Whitney’s work

Sounds like a great idea, but very labour intensive to organise and deliver. It is also unclear at present if it has helped retain or grow members at the Whitney.

Julian Bickersteth
Managing Director
internationalconservationservices

Museum statistics

We all know the Disraeli quote that There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. So I hesitate to draw attention to the latest offering from the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Arts and Culture in Australia: A Statistical Overview
However it does make for interesting reading. It’s just been released (October 2010), but only covers the year 2005-2006. The information is now going to be regularly updated, so that for instance the section on attendance in selected cultural venues for 2009-2010 is due out by next month.

Let me provide a snapshot of what I found to be some of the more interesting statistics, all of which relate to the period 2005-06:

• Australians on average spent 0.3% of their time visiting entertainment and cultural venues, which is the same as that spent on religious activities and three times as much as that spent at sporting venues.
• 3,630,000 people attended art galleries and 3,611,900 attended museums (i.e. almost equal) as compared to 5,699,000 that attended zoos or aquariums (surprisingly high) and 1,508,000 that attended classical music concerts (surprisingly low).
• Significantly more females attended art galleries than males, whereas only marginally more females attended museums than males.
• The frequency of attendance at art galleries (36% only once, 46% 2-4 times and 17% 5 times or more) was significantly higher than at museums (50% only once, 39% 2-4 times and 11% 5 times or more).
• 57% of overseas visitors attended a museum or art gallery and 62% visited a historic building or site
• State funding of collecting institutions varies widely, an interesting comparison being between the three major eastern states. On the face of it, there is a massive discrepancy between museum spending in Victoria and NSW, with the latter being far more supportive. Likewise in Queensland , it looks as though Archives are being disproportionately supported, though this may be due to capital works.

                                       Art galleries  Museums   Libraries    Archives


                     NSW           $49.9m          $138m          $67.3m          $7.9m

                     Victoria        $43.7m       $46.9m       $85.9m        $15.1m

                    Queensland    $36.2m    $37.1m    $48.8m       $51.9m

• Employment in museums and art galleries rose from 5,422 in 2001 to 6,204 in 2006 a rise of 14%, whereas employment in libraries dropped a massive 39% in the same period from 11,451 to 6,986, no doubt partly due to the introduction of technological services

A few thoughts arising from these stats:

• What is the offering that zoos/aquariums are providing that attracts so many more visits than art galleries and museums? Is it all about attracting kids?
• The significantly increased frequency of visits (i.e. return visitation) to art galleries over museums is in my view due to the better handle art galleries have on creating social spaces, i.e. places where people want to come to socially interact and dwell.
• With over 6 million overseas tourists and students coming to Australia each year, the fact that 57% of them visit a museum or art gallery must make us focused on how we cater for them.
• There are a large number of unemployed librarians out there.

It is also worth taking a look by comparison at a new UK site that Creative Choices has put out called Data Generator, which is designed to help individuals and businesses access the latest economic and demographic research and analysis. It looks to be a useful online tool that can help with advocacy, strategic decisions, future planning, funding applications and presentations, and if nothing else proves the point that statistics do indeed have a use.

Julian Bickersteth
Managing Director
internationalconservationservices

Brooklyn Museum - and the value of visitor numbers

I blogged recently on the issue of falling visitor numbers at the Brooklyn Museum, and was politely reprimanded by Sally Williams, the Public Information Officer at the Museum, for not looking at the ten year average attendance as a more accurate statistic.


But it raises a fundamental question as to whether the health of a collecting institution can be measured by the number of people who come through the front door. And it is particularly apt that the New York Times should focus on this issue (and some others) in “Sketching a future for Brooklyn Museum”. As the NY Times says, “For more than a century the Museum has been one of the country’s most important cultural institutions, and for more than a decade it has also caused controversy … By some measures it has succeeded. By others, including attendance goals articulated by the Museum itself, it has not.”

The NY Times asked various experts to comment on issues confronting the Museum including falling attendance, and their responses are enlightening, particularly in the mixed views on the value of visitor numbers. Philippe de Montebello, the recently retired Director of the Met, kicks off, reflecting on the difficulty of positioning the Brooklyn Museum when so many world class museums exist just over the water in Manhattan. He takes the high-brow view that a visit to any museum should be an uplifting experience, whereas the Brooklyn has headed for the popular culture route (implicitly implying a dumbing down of the content). Karen Brooks Hopkins, President of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, has leapt on this popular culture as a key to success, saying that although visitor numbers are down, “the demographics are unbeatable: Brooklyn audiences are young, diverse and adventurous, which has enormous positive implications for the future.”

Rochelle Slovin, Director of the Museum of the Moving Image, has taken the same view highlighting the popular hip hop and salsa Saturdays at the Museum (a recent one on July 3rd drew an incredible 24,000 people) as no different to string quartets at the Met evenings in terms of concept – just a different flavour for a different audience.

Maxwell Anderson, Director of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and an increasingly visible museum commentator, posits that with so little revenue coming from admissions (typically 2-4%) the focus should be on evaluating museums on their contribution to research, education and conservation, along with their ability to be a hotbed of creativity.

Peter Marzio, Director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, takes a different tack, praising the Brooklyn for pioneering a new path and “transforming itself into an ecumenical museum by focusing its collections and programs on the diverse neighbourhoods of Brooklyn”. Interesting use of the word ecumenical – I think he means drawing together in a common space the many different local groups.

Finally into this space has gamely strode the Director of the Museum, Arnold Lehman. No-one particularly likes a panel of experts telling them how to run their museum better, but Lehman has graciously acknowledged all their comments as valuable.

And his response is a simple one, namely that the Brooklyn Museum’s interest is in who is coming to the Museum, not in their numbers. As he states, the Museum’s commitment to engage with the local community, rather than be challenged by it, has resulted in the most diverse and youngest audience of any general fine arts museum in the country.

So who wins this most interesting dialogue (and would that we could have such a discussion in the Australian press)? Unfortunately, despite the feel-good nature of the plaudits that many of the experts heap on the Brooklyn Museum and its international reputation for being innovative, the fact that the article has been written directly results from press around falling visitor numbers. And as Wenda Gu, a Brooklyn artist says, “Attendance is the most important and objective measurement of a museum’s success”.

Julian Bickersteth
Managing Director
internationalconservationservices

MOMA and too much of a good thing?

I have recently blogged twice about Glenn D Lowry (here and here), the current superstar of the US Museum director scene and his status is justified by a recent article in the New York Observer.


Three million people visited MOMA in the year to the end of June 2010, a new record in its 81 year history. Why the success? On the face of it, because it seems to be doing all the right things in current museological thinking. It’s a participatory museum, it’s a social space where people want to come to see and be seen and it has a dynamic exhibition program of temporary and permanent collections, along with associated media and film. Most notably, it has managed to reduce its typical visitor from a 55 year old woman to a 40-something of either sex.

But of course such success does not come without its critics. At the glitterati end, the opening night parties are frequently uncomfortably packed and amongst the art critics it is seen to be far too crowded to allow for any real engagement or ability for contemplation of the artworks. In the words of Tom Eccles, Chair of Curatorial Studies at Bard College, “the drive to become a social space is more of a fetish in museum theory right now”.

Well guys, you can’t have it both ways. On the one hand, static or falling visitor numbers are bewailed and the need to make museums more welcoming encouraged, and then when the crowds do come it is seen to “compromise” the experience. (I am reminded of the V&A keeper who proclaimed the Museum was at its best when there were no visitors).

Within this context, there’s an interesting new book out entitled ‘Do Museums Still need Objects?’ by Steven Cann (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010). Cann’s premise is that objects have a diminishing role in museums as people have lost faith in the ability of objects alone to tell stories and convey knowledge. He posits that the move to turn museums into social spaces has been at the expense of the objects, with the focus being on the space itself (witness the architectural statements of Daniel Libeskind’s Berlin Jewish Museum or Frank Gehry’s Bilbao Guggenheim).

I would contend that Cann misses the point. Yes, the number of objects on display may have become less and yes, successful museums are succeeding through creating social spaces where people want to be, but the draw card is always going to be the real object. We know the power of the real over the virtual is compelling. And by having fewer objects on display often their ability to tell stories can be enhanced rather than diminished. MOMA may be too popular for its own good in some people’s eyes, but its success is fundamentally due to the depth of its collections and the way in which it interprets and makes them accessible.

Julian Bickersteth
Managing Director
internationalconservationservices

How to keep those museum visitors coming back

Any discussion of innovation in museums invariably mentions the Brooklyn Museum. From being a pioneer in maintaining populist shows such as “Star Wars”, to developing a photography show curated online by the public (see previous blog), we who work in this sector are always attentive of what they will come up with next.
So it is particularly disappointing to read in the New York Times this innovation has not transfered into visitor numbers. From 585,000 in 1998, numbers dropped to 420,000 in 2008 and 340,000 last year. And this is in an environment when the visitor numbers for most other New York cultural institutions are remaining stable.

So what is Brooklyn doing wrong, or more to the point what are the others doing right to keep the visitors coming? Over in Manhattan at the Met under its new director Thomas P. Campbell there is, according to the Financial Times, a “decidedly frisky feel”. Recent Met adverts show couples kissing in front of a Rodin sculpture, three grinning children in front of a gallery of Egyptian mummies, beside their friend wrapped in toilet paper, both with the catchline “It’s time we Met”.

This is all part of what Campbell identifies as two movements that are changing the workings of museums by: (a) shifting the focus from connoisseurship to greater socio-political contextualisation; and (b) no longer only speaking to an elite upper middle class. Both run the danger of dumbing down the museum, more often defined as “popularising”. I have no problem with either movement if it does achieve in making collections more accessible, just so long as behind it all there remains the appropriate curatorial rigour.

And if you want to see what accessibility can really mean go no further than Japan where booming attendances reflect the perception among young people that visiting museums is cool.

The four most well attended institutions in the world last year were all in Japan. The ‘National Treasure Ashura and Masterpieces from Kofuki-ji’ exhibition at the Tokyo National Museum attracted an astonishing 15,960 visitors per day. Rest assured hardly anyone could see anything but that is bye the bye - by contrast visitors to the recent NGA Masters from Paris exhibition complained they could not see anything on days when there were under a third of this number. Overall visitor attendance to national museums in Japan has risen by 200% in 10 years.

Japan’s museum sector requires a study in its own right to understand what is going on, though clearly the concept of museums as meeting places where it is cool to hang out is one of their achievements. All museums should aspire to this as a fundamental starting place to maximise repeat visitation. I noted in my previous blog that MOMA in New York has 135,000 members. On the basis that each of these members has joined because they will visit the Museum more than twice a year (thus justifying the cost of membership) visitation is already guaranteed at over 270,000.

So I think one of Brooklyn Museum’s problems is that a 2008 survey showed half of the museum’s visitors were not only non repeat visitors, they were first time visitors. When your overall visitor numbers are rising that’s not a bad result, but when they are falling as dramatically as theirs are, it’s disastrous, unless you can convince a substantial proportion to come back again.

Julian Bickersteth
International Conservation Services

Cultural rights and the future of museum visiting

It is a given that almost all museums are seeking to broaden their audiences and increase their visitation numbers. Some are more successful at this than others, but the GFC cannot disguise the fact that worldwide in broad terms those numbers just aren’t improving, and indeed may be going backwards. And it is not just our sector of the arts. US statistics from the National Arts Index show that overall attendance at museums, galleries, orchestral, dance, opera and theatre performances declined across the board by about 10% over the last ten years. And a key cause of this can be laid at the door of arts funding which in the corresponding period has dropped in relative terms by c 25%.

So I read with great interest an article in the Spring 2010 Journal of the Royal Society of the Arts on what we might be able to do about this. I must admit to being a very inactive Fellow of the RSA, but a great (tacit) supporter of all it stands for and in particular its’ thought provoking Journal. This article is by Bill Ivey from Vanderbilt University in Tennessee.

Ivey’s basic premise is that the argument for public investment in culture is unable to compete with education, healthcare and the environment. The old arguments for the value of the arts to public policy have gone as far as they can, and culture is increasingly seen as something governments get around to funding with the money left over after everything important has been paid for.

We’ve seen this most starkly in Australia in WA where the state is riding its second mining boom, and yet the arts, having missed out on any benefit from the first, is now seeing funding cut back further.

So what does Ivey suggest we do about it? Firstly he suggests we start from the premise that artistic heritage and creative practice are at the heart of a wide range of human engagements that are critical to both happiness and the workings of democracy. And secondly we redefine our sector to encompass an arena of human activity that is just as important as healthcare and the environment, namely our 'expressive life'. This has both a past (our heritage) and a present (everything from ethnic and community traditions, and social dancing to amateur music making and arts education in and out of schools).

Expressive life is much harder to marginalize than the arts, as it engages so many components of our daily lives (and therefore our legislative and social framework). Ivey then comes up with an innovative and (I think) terrific concept of a Cultural Bill of Rights that can justify the pursuit of a vibrant expressive life as a democratic public good. It might read as follows:
1. The right to our heritage – the right to explore music, literature, drama, painting that define both our nation’s collective experience and our individual and community traditions.
2. The right to the prominent presence of artists in public life – through their art and incorporation of their artistic visions in democratic debate.
3. The right to an artistic life – to the knowledge and skills to play an instrument, draw, act, dance, compose, design.
4. The right to know and explore art of the highest quality and to the lasting truths embedded in those forms of expression that have survived through the centuries
5. The right to healthy arts enterprises that can take risks and invest in innovation while serving communities and the public interest.

Will it wash with funding bodies? Certainly it would be so energizing to see public debate around the issues, as the current picture is one of minimal debate, and increasing marginalisation in forward funding for our collecting institutions. That in turn is going to do nothing to increase visitation.

Hanging out in Museums

I see the issue of Edmund Capon’s retirement from the Art Gallery of NSW is in the news again. Not that Edmund has said he is going to retire, but rather that at 69, the view is that it is probably going to be this year that he feels he has achieved enough. His language indicates this namely "We’re getting to that stage where I think the pace of evolution in the AGNSW needs a bit of a kick up the bottom and maybe, you know, I’m holding that up". The potential successors are already being rolled out from the art gallery director recycling file, including Michael Brand, ex-National Gallery of Australia and Art Gallery of Qld and more lately director of the Getty Museum, from which he resigned 4 years into his 5 year contract last month, Christopher Menz, who recently resigned from the Art Gallery of SA (see previous blog) , Tony Ellwood current director of the Art Gallery of Qld and Timothy Potts, ex director of the National Gallery of Victoria, and currently director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Whilst all worthy candidates it would be good to see a few new faces from the younger generation of art curators being considered.

Edmund’s reign at AGNSW has been a highly successful one, but it was interesting to read of the critics already circling, albeit anonymously. One frontrunner for the job who asked not to be named was quoted as saying "there’s not nearly enough space and there’s too much of an ad hoc approach in which the Gallery tried to be all things to all people". Others argue it is geared to the casual tourist rather than artists, scholars and residents.

I’m not sure I agree with either. Yes there is always the need for more space but by moving the paintings store off site and opening up the space as the new John Kaldor Galleries, there has been a significant increase in exhibition space. And in terms of popularity with residents, there is no doubt that AGNSW is the place to hang out. I was there of an evening last month when the Gallery was open and it was chock a block with an enthusiastic crowd doing everything from exhibition viewing, and eating at the cafe to just hanging out.

And hanging out is an increasingly critical part of why successful museums are successful. AGNSW is lucky with its location – not sure I would like to hang out in Sydney at the Powerhouse or the Australian Museum for example, but that is helped by the way that the main space encourages engagement. It is a welcoming space, unlike, for example the foyer at the National Gallery in Canberra, or the Art Gallery of SA.

Hanging out is part of the social phenomenon of new museum going. James Christen Steward, the new director of Princeton University Art Museum has articulated this well. He believes museums should be a space for everyone, even those without the intellectual curiosity to look at the collections. "We need spaces in which other forms of community engagement can happen, where it’s possible for people from every walk of life to come together to hash out what’s needed to have a satisfying life". Steward identifies the building lay out as critical to this, but has also initiated a series of moves to aid the social process including
- re wardrobing the attendants
- opening until 10pm on Thursday nights
- getting colleges within the university to stage social events in the galleries
- more frequently changing exhibitions

Yes, it is easier for an art museum to do this than a natural history or science/ design museum, but not exclusively. Both the Natural History Museum in London and the American Museum of Natural History in New York have been trail blazers in this aspect of creating a socially welcoming environment.

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.

Visitor trends that disagree

I have blogged before about the lipstick phenomena and its impact on museums, and also the effect that the GFC and the resulting increase in domestic holidays have had on visitors. Now comes conflicting information from a number of sources on the issue.

AFP reports on 15th December 09 that Madrid’s Prado Museum reported near record numbers for 2009, and the Art Newspaper on 9th December 2009 also reports in its annual survey of major collecting institutions from around the world that two thirds saw an increase in visitors.

However The US Chronicle of Higher Education reports on a downturn in visitor numbers (11th December 09) based on a recent National Endowment for the Arts survey on American art habits. The survey reveals that more and more Americans have stopped going to museums, though before we slit our wrists, let it be clear that we are in the same company as music concerts, opera, ballet and even movies.

To be fair the information is not in conflict. We know there is a short term rise in museum going, but the overall trend is unfortunately negative. And why? The article is well worth reading not just for itself, but also for the ensuing blog commentary. In summary the reasons given are:
· The economy
· Lack of relevant teaching and arts education at primary and secondary level
· Losing our sense of the public sphere – we would rather look at things in the privacy of our own home
· ‘Disneyfication’ of museums (this was in a blog comment) , i.e. too many bells and whistles and not enough real things
· Disallowance of photography in museums (also in a blog comment) thus stopping any ‘fun’. Interestingly the blogger gets the need to limit photography for conservation reasons, but believes ( probably with some justification) that the ban is more about a matter of control over images for reproduction purposes
· And finally Adoration of the internet , i.e. we can get it all on-line, including close ups of all those great paintings – “Who needs to go to the Frick to see Rembrandt’s self portrait when the picture can be had for two easy clicks on the keyboard?”

The last point is interesting. We have consistently said , based on evidence out of French research (though I could not put my hands on it) that the more people look at art museum images on the net the more they want to see the real, but this is now suggesting that is not the case.

Sobering stuff, but at least we now have the ‘metrics’ identifying the problem, so we can plan what to do about it.

Tracking visitor numbers – metrics rule

‘Metrics’ seems to be the new buzz word around town. Metrics are everywhere. It is increasingly with them that we decide what to read, what stocks to buy, which poor people to feed, which athletes to recruit, which films and restaurants to try. The once-mysterious formation of tastes is becoming a quantitative science. Check out a rather cynical article about their pervasiveness in the New York Times November 20th 2009 edition.

Like almost everything, such matters seep through eventually to the museum and galleries sector. By the way, I used to refer to this as the ALM sector - for Libraries, Archives and Museums with museums of course covering art museums otherwise known as galleries. But the acronym increasingly in vogue seems to be GLAM - for Galleries, Museums, Archives and Museums. I like it and will run with that form from now on.

So where is the GLAM sector on metrics? The answer is two part, as the level of metrics varies enormously between the real and the virtual. Let me tackle each in turn.

On the real, namely how many visitors come through the physical doors, where they go and what they do once inside the institution, there is an embarrassing lack of knowledge. Almost all museums have some form of counting system, either through ticketing, or in the case of free entry museums, through counting systems. However even these are invariably inaccurate. There are many stories of attendants with hand clickers clicking away at random to ensure the visitor quota is achieved. Automatic counting systems give better accuracy, but still have difficulty distinguishing between visitors and staff ( and indeed inanimate objects like strollers or boxes). And once inside the institution there is no tracking of visitor paths, establishment of time spent within the institution or dwell times in front of exhibits quantified. One friend of mine admits that the closest he gets to this is sending staff out with a felt pen and a floor lay-out of the galleries, and tracking the route visitors take by hand. When they dwell in front of a particular exhibit, the felt pen is left on the paper in that spot, leading to a bigger splodge of ink. See my blog from June 2009 on the issue.

On the virtual, things are a little more advanced. We all know the power of Google Analytics, which is giving considerable granularity to web site metrics. But the Powerhouse Museum is now doing great work and mining more deeply into what their visitors do on the Museum’s web site. Read Seb Chan’s most interesting latest thoughts on the matter. Seb reports particularly on the issue of repeat visitations to web sites and understanding who is coming back, how often and why.

All is not lost on the real side of things however. We are looking at a mobile phone technology which allows tracking of visitors (all within privacy requirements) , with the added benefit it can reveal how long each visitor stays in the museum, where they dwell, whether they have been before, and, in the case of international visitors, which country they come from. We need to catch up fast to the same level of understanding that Google Analytics can provide for those web site visitors, and in due course work out the crossover.

Why museum visits rise in recessions

I’ve blogged before about the mixed messages that we are getting from data about visitor traffic during the recession.

But there really does now seem to be evidence that visitor numbers are rising on both sides of the Atlantic, as reported by Brook S. Mason in The Art Newspaper published online 29 Jul 09. The English National Trust says numbers are up by 8% in May compared to last year and overall by 24% this year. As always the detail reveals a bit of an explanation in that visits to Beatrix Potter’s house in the Lake District have almost doubled since the film ‘Miss Potter’ was released. But in the US too the National Trust is seeing between a 20% and 50% increase. “Staycations” (only in America would you find such a word) in the US seem to be driving attendance at some National Trust properties. “We have anecdotal evidence confirming that people are spending less, staying closer to home and visiting more of our sites,” says James Vaughan, National Trust vice president for historic sites in Washington, DC.
“Compared to the cost of a theatre or movie ticket, seeing an artist’s home or historic site is a relative bargain,” says Helen Harrison, director of the Pollock-Krasner House in the US. “Plus, the buildings are air-conditioned and a ticket is only $5.” In the UK, Ms Reynolds says that the cost of a National Trust family membership is less than a single day at a theme park.
My question is do museum/historic house visitors really weigh up before a visit whether to head out to the movies or to a museum experience? Surely we are about giving them a very different experience, not one that can be compared to a movie.

My view is that we are managing to draw more visitors because we can offer them a spiritual experience, either through their being in an historic house, generally a place of beauty and one full of stories, or their being in a museum or gallery, which invariably will be a church-like space in terms of size and contain a broad array of artwork and artefacts all of which can tell stories.

In summary therefore I get the bit about Staycations, i.e that there are more people staying at home and undertaking local visits. But I don’t buy into the 'bargain' idea of a museum visit as against the theatre or the movies. We need to see them as completely different experiences and build on that. I believe the visitor does too and will continue to respond well when they see us emphasising that difference.

The power of the real

It’s so stimulating to achieve a museum visit that reinforces the power of the real. Much as I promote how digitizing collections and getting them on the web is encouraging people to come and see the real thing, it still gives me a buzz to find a museum full of visitors all seriously engaged and clearly enjoying looking at real objects.

Such a place is the Oxford University Museum of Natural History and the adjoining Pitt Rivers Museum. Despite living in Oxford for three years I had never been to either which I now much as they are both museums that would repay many repeat visits. The Museum of Natural History is housed in a wonderful Victorian Gothic building opened in 1860, with the main display area being the Great Court. This is a cathedral like space with a glass roof supported by cast iron columns and surrounded by four arcades in the form of a cloister. It is a space that immediately makes one want to be there, a real intake of breath place – I liken it to the new central court at the British Museum. How important is that in museum design! Beautifully designed exhibits and lots of real objects to touch from fossils to stuffed birds and animals. Kids everywhere, and not just in school groups, i.e. they had dragged their parents along for a further visit.

Off the back of the Great Court opens the Pitt Rivers Museum. I had read about the redo this has recently had in museum journals, but on first site you would not know it. No glitzy well lit new showcases, in fact no well lit anything – it is all kept dark for reasons of conservation, so much so that torches are provided at the information desk! The Museum was founded in 1884 when Augustus Pitt Rivers, an influential figure in the University’s archaeology and anthropology departments who gave his collection of 20,000 objects to the University. One of his gift conditions was that the objects should be displayed by how they were made or used rather than by age or cultural origin. The collection has now grown to more than half a million artefacts, and it feels like most of it is on display. The showcases are packed solid with objects many with the original tiny hand written labels. It goes against all that modern museological thinking promotes – there is no start or finish, no story to follow – but it certainly works. Again the museum was full of people peering into the depths of dark showcases. Why? Because of the drawing power and fascination of the real.

It’s an exhilarating eye opener to why people continue to visit museums – and more on that in my next blog.

The power of place in historic house museums

Visiting various National Trust properties in the UK in June, I was reminded about the power of place. Stunning as these places are physically, whether it be their gardens e.g. Sissinghurst, their buildings, e.g. Waddesdon Manor, or their collections, e.g. Kingston Lacy, the reason visitors want to come back to them is more about the ‘spirituality’ of the place than the aesthetic pleasures they provide. As numbers of visitors to historic house museums continue to fall from highs in the 1980s, particularly in the US and Australia, the challenge is to find ways to attract people back and at the same time new audiences.

One way that the English National Trust is having significant success in attracting repeat or new visitors is by creating groups of like minded people that enjoy meeting at one of their properties because of the power of the place. By this I think they mean that it is a place where they can meet people who share their interests, enjoy social activities, even volunteer to help conserve their heritage, all in the setting of a place that has a ‘spiritual’ dimension through its history, beauty, or association. They have over 350 active groups.

Another clever way is by associating the place with a good gastronomic experience. This goes beyond just having a good restaurant. Using the slogan “Savour the taste, remember the place”, the National Trust is pushing the line that if you can give people good food in an inspiring place then again they will be more likely to come back. Overlaying this with a focus on organic food grown on Trust farms gives it another dimension. As the Trust says, they ‘passionately believe that there has to be a change in the way we all think about food, how it’s produced, where we buy it, and how we cook it’ (has Jamie Oliver had THAT much influence?!) .

The National Trust in England is one of the great heritage success stories of how to build a vast and loyal membership base (well over 3 million), and they have obviously been helped by a large population on a small island and some extraordinary properties. However the National Trust in Australia could learn from their focus on the power of place. As a board member of the NSW branch, I look forward to seeing what we can do.

Museum visitation is falling but what are we doing about it?

I’ve heard anecdotally for some time that the number of young people attending classical music concerts is dwindling, and certainly the lack of interest from my children in such despite studying music through to final year at school has reinforced this. But now out of the US has come news of double-digit rates of decline for classical music, jazz, opera, musical theater, ballet and dramatic plays attendance since 1982.

The same study has unfortunately also shown that the percentage of eighth-graders who reported that they visited an art museum or gallery with their classes dropped from 22 percent in 1997 to 16 percent in 2008. As the National Endowment for the Arts has also released new data showing that fewer adults were choosing an art museum as a leisure-time destination, the trend seems to be all downwards. In 1992 26% of adults reported that they visited an art museum, but the number for 2008 dropped to 23%. The exception, perhaps not surprisingly, was in Washington DC, where 40% of adults said they had visited a museum in 2008, reflecting tourism and free admission at most major museums.

I can’t lay my hands on equivalent data for Australian museums , but I’ve seen similar in relation to falling numbers visiting historic house museums. At the National Trust of Australia (NSW) we’ve realized we cannot buck the world-wide trend so we are looking at different ways of making the house museums work. This ranges from encoraging affinity groups to use them ( e.g. local community book clubs) to maximizing opportunities to use the site for functions/ hire out in innovative ways. Are museums doing the same, i.e. being innovative with the use of their resources? I immediately think of where the web fits into all of this. We know that there is evidence that the more activity there is around museum web sites, the more physical visits seem to occur. And those physical visits can be spread more widely - places like the Powerhouse Museum are regularly opening up their stores to provide greater access to their collections.
What we do unfortunately know is that government funding bodies still set great store by numbers coming through the door, so these falling trends do not bode well for the sector.