The museum compared to other institutions
How much trust do museums enjoy compared to other organizations? Museum employees should be pleased.
Some museums are reporting record figures, others are struggling to survive. We are constantly looking at the museum landscape and collecting the latest studies on museums in German-speaking countries. There are exciting statistics that provide an insight into visitor behavior, working conditions and structures in museums.
Did you know that the majority of institutions in Switzerland (73.5 %) and Germany (56.3 %) have 5,000 or fewer visitors per year?
Larger institutions are probably better known. The Louvre had to introduce a cap of 30,000 daily visitors. Before the pandemic, the largest museum in the world had up to 10 million visitors a year. Incidentally, the most visited museum in Switzerland is the Swiss Museum of Transport with around 1 million visitors in 2023. However, the majority of exhibition venues are smaller museums. Here are the key figures for Germany and Switzerland:
Germany 🇩🇪
🏛 7,245 museums
📍90.2 % of German museums record 50,000 or fewer visits
👉 56.3 % up to 5,000 visitors
👉 12.3 % up to 10,000 visitors
👉 11.5 % up to 20,000 visitors
👉 10.1 % up to 50,000 visitors
👉 9.4 % up to 500,000 visitors
👉 0.4 % more than 500,000 visitors
Switzerland 🇨🇭
🏛 1,161 museums
📍95.7 % of Swiss museums have fewer than 50,000 visits
👉 73.5 % up to 5,000 visitors
👉 22.2 % up to 49,999 visitors
👉 4.3 % more than 50,000 visitors
Many museums are still struggling to bring their visitor numbers back up to 2019 levels. Some analyses and studies show that many museums are still unable to compensate for the pandemic-related slump in audiences. At the same time, the issue is how to get young audiences excited about culture.
So how can we make our history, art and science museums more accessible? In addition to a varied program and good storytelling, we need simple, intuitive and truly user-friendly tools that help you - as a curator, art educator and communicator - to focus on the content and engage with your audience.
Sources: Federal Statistical Office FSO / German Museums Association
How are great audio experiences created?
