What kind of financial distress?

Changing landscape of funding streams

Change from 2009 to 2010. Red=decrease; Blue = increase

Changes in attendance

At the same time, there was a slight increase in attendance, particularly in the western part of the U.S. Many survey respondents attributed the small uptick to people  “staying closer to home, and are taking advantage of parks, historic sites and museums nearby.” Other common reasons offered for the boost in attendance include new “blockbuster” exhibits and better marketing (see our post about blockbuster exhibits).

Declining attendance was attributed to a general decrease in tourism, budget reductions, fewer visits by school groups, or local circumstances such as natural disasters or museum closures for renovations.

Budget-saving measures

What are museums doing to balance the books? They report the following cuts and changes:

See the AAM press release (PDF).

Source: Annual Condition of Museums and the Economy 2011, AAM

The Annual Condition of Museums in the Economy 2011 survey was conducted online between February 7 and 21, 2011. Invitations were sent to ~2,300 institutional members of the American Association of Museums, representing a cross- section of all museums in the United States, including art museums, children’s museums, history museums and sites, zoos and aquariums, science and technology museums, arboreta and gardens, etc. Responses were received from 383 institutions (17% response rate); in most cases, the survey was completed by the museum’s director, chief financial officer, or other senior administrator. Results have a margin of error of approximately ±5% for the entire population of U.S. museums.

In Tokyo and Kyoto, Hasegawa Tohaku pulled in the crowds, as did Abe Lincoln in Washington, DC. According to The Art Newspaper:

Forecasting exhibition attendance is an unpredictable science. Who would have thought that the six-foot-high plaster model of a statue of Abraham Lincoln would attract 9,290 visitors a day to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC? “Designing the Lincoln Memorial” lacked the magic words “treasures”, “impressionism” or “gold” in the title and yet it attracted 2.9m visitors in total, putting it third overall in The Art Newspaper’s 17th ­annual survey of attendance figures.

See the article, or a PDF on the top 30 exhibitions, plus tons of other data on total art museum visitors, various “top ten” lists, .

The data only includes museums who reported attendance rates for exhibitions to The Art Newspaper.