A guest feature by Littlestone.
The Dali Museum, Florida, United States
Image credit Matthew Paulson. Source Wikimedia Commons
Not all is doom and gloom… at least not when it comes to the number of museums in the United States. According to Christopher Ingraham, writing for The Washington Post, there are roughly 11,000 Starbucks and about 14,000 McDonald’s in the country – a total of some 25,000 outlets. That’s a lot, but not as many as there are museums, which weigh in at a whopping 35,000!
According to Mr Ingraham –
…the latest data release from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, an independent government agency that tallies the number and type of museums in this country. By their count the 35,000 active museums represent a doubling from the number estimated in the 1990s.
While most of us think of massive institutions like the Smithsonian and the Guggenheim when we think of museums, one lesson of the new data is that the majority of U.S. museums are small, nearly mom-and-pop affairs. Of the roughly 25,000 museums with income data in the file, 15,000 of them reported an annual income of less than $10,000 on their latest IRS returns.
Well done the United States! (full Washington Post article here). Meanwhile, if you feel you can help support museums in Britain, please consider offering some of your time to them, making a donation or buying books etc directly from a museum shop rather than going through one of the big retailers. The Beck Isle Museum in Pickering, North Yorkshire is a good example of how we can support the smaller museum, and the British Museum shop an example of how direct purchasing will help support larger museums and their varied activities.
The Heritage Trust 
2 comments
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04/04/2015 at 3:08 pm
michaellangford2012
Quite a few of the new crop of museums are private collections of art (let’s call them tax shelters) created by/for such as Alice Walton, who discovered that buying art (no matter how much you pay for it) is a good investment, and letting the public see it is REALLY good PR. At the end of the day, Walton still owns the art, the public is mollified, rinse, repeat…
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04/04/2015 at 4:26 pm
Littlestone
Hello Michael. Thank you for your comment.
Is it not also true to say that many museums, both in the United States and elsewhere, have their origins in private collections. The British Museum itself started with, “…the collections of the physician and scientist Sir Hans Sloane.” (Wikipedia). That’s just one example; another is the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England that began with the bequest in 1816 of the library and art collection of the 7th Viscount FitzWilliam. Indeed, the oldest museum in the world, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, was built between 1678–1683 to house the ‘cabinet of curiosities’ that Elias Ashmole gave to the University of Oxford.
There are many, many more examples of private collections morphing into great national institutions. Perhaps what is most important here is that all museums, art galleries etc (private or otherwise) is that they allow members of the public access to appreciate and study the fruits of mankind’s creativity.
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