Just How Bad Is the Lockdown for Museums? A New Study of 650 Institutions Around the World Surveys the Wreckage

With museums around the world still shuttering
indefinitely, the financial fallout for institutions remains to
be seen. But now, a new survey from
the Network of European Museum
Organizations offers an up-close glimpse at how museums
are coping with the closures, and what the effects on their
operations have been.

The survey is still
open through April 17, but the first round of
responses, from 650 museums in Europe—including every nation in
the EU—as well as the US, the Philippines, Malaysia, French
Polynesia, and Iran, has already been illuminating. Some of the
biggest museums that attract the most tourists have seen 75–80
percent of their income disappear overnight.

Of those institutions that provided figures about income loss,
70 percent are losing more than €1,000 every week the closures
continue. At the top end are the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna
and the Stedelijk Museum and Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, which
say they are losing hundreds of thousands of Euros every week.
Private museums are also especially hard hit, with many reporting
that they will lose their entire budget during closures, which may
become permanent.

Almost every museum that participated in the survey was
currently closed, with only a handful of exceptions in Sweden,
Austria, and Albania. Many were unsure when they might reopen, with
estimates ranging from mid-April to as late as September.

The biggest impact seems to be on international exhibitions,
which are being canceled as international loans fall through. Thus
far, 70 percent museums have avoided laying off staff, but
freelance workers haven’t been so lucky; about twice as many
institutions are putting their contracts on hold. And longterm
infrastructure projects are being widely paused as uncertainty over
budgets and financial prospects grow.

The one sector that’s growing, of course, is museums’ online
presence. Sixty percent of respondents have been stepping up their
digital game, and 40 percent have seen online traffic go up, some
by as much as 500 percent.

The survey includes a call to action, in the hopes that
lawmakers will help museums survive these troubled times. “We urge
governments to invest in Europe’s cultural heritage in the future,
to support what binds us together, while so many other things drive
us apart,” read a statement from the Network of European Museum
Organizations.

Other museum groups have been pushing for government relief as
well, such as the American Alliance of
Museums and New York’s Metropolitan Museum Art, which last
month called for a $4 billion infusion
for the cultural sector. (It got less than five percent of
that.)

Now, Italian museum leaders are taking up the cause, calling for
the establishment of a “national fund for culture,” the Art Newspaper
reports. More than 2,000 signatories, including the heads of
National Museum of 21st Century Art in Rome and Venice’s civic
museums, have put their name to a Change.org petition
that insists that “we have to make Italian culture live, to give it
oxygen… [or] the repercussions… on the vast world of cultural
enterprise are extreme and could be fatal.”

The post Just How Bad Is the Lockdown for Museums? A New
Study of 650 Institutions Around the World Surveys the Wreckage
appeared first on artnet News.