Visitor numbers to German museums and exhibition centres rose again in 2014
Press release from 12/16/2015
German museums and exhibition centres recorded a total of almost 118 million visits in 2014, almost 3 million more than in the previous year. These figures were published by the Institute for Museum Research at the National Museums in Berlin and the German Museums Association. They have been conducting the annual statistical survey of museums and exhibition centres in the Federal Republic of Germany since 1981. For 2014, 6,372 museums and 470 exhibition centres were invited to take part. In addition to visitor numbers and other statistical data, such as admission prices and opening hours, information was collected in 2014 on provenance research, museum management and the use of volunteers in museums.
Museums report around 112 million visits in 2014
Around 4,900 museums reported a total of 111,984,066 visits. This means that the number of visits to German museums is once again slightly higher than in the previous year (2013: 110,425,002 visits). There were significant increases in local history museums and palace and castle museums, among others, while natural history museums once again recorded declines.
The most frequently cited reasons for the increase in visitor numbers were special exhibitions and the expansion of public relations and museum education programmes. The museums reported a total of 9,058 special exhibitions, of which around 40 per cent were art exhibitions. In 2014, the year of the survey, German museums commemorated the outbreak of the First World War, which significantly increased the number of special exhibitions with a historical focus.
Prof Dr Eckart Köhne, President of the German Museums Association, comments: "Museums and exhibitions with their originals offer the opportunity for impressive art and cultural experiences on relevant topics. In order for these to be realised in exhibitions, they need to be made accessible through research. This is the only way for museums to remain interesting for their audiences."
Visitor numbers to exhibition centres also up slightly
In addition to the number of visits to museums, the overall statistical survey also includes the number of visits to exhibition centres that do not have their own collections but predominantly present non-commercial exhibitions of a museum nature. For 2014, 310 exhibition centres reported a total of 5,885,635 visits (compared to 5,309,434 in 2013). Around 89 per cent of all special exhibitions in the exhibition centres were art exhibitions.
Special topic 2014: State of research on collection history and object provenance in German museums
As part of the annual survey, the Institute for Museum Research asks different additional questions each year. One of the special topics of the current survey was provenance research at German museums. The topic had already been addressed in the overall statistical survey in 2012, although at that time the focus was on collection items that had come into museums between 1933 and 1945. The 2014 survey focussed on researching the collections as a whole. 4,080 (64%) of the museums contacted responded to the question of whether they are researching or investigating the history of their collections and the provenance of their objects as a whole. More than half of them stated that they were actively conducting research on these topics. A further 10 per cent planned to do so.
Prof Dr Hermann Parzinger, President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, commented: "Researching the provenance of the collections must always be part of the work of academic staff. However, certain topics still require more in-depth research: in addition to the search for Nazi-looted art and other foreign possessions, we need to devote ourselves to the provenance of archaeologica, ethnologica or human remains, for example."
Publication for download
Further information and data on the German museum landscape in 2014 can be found in the 104-page publication "Statistische Gesamterhebung an den Museen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland für das Jahr 2014". It is published in the series "Materialien aus dem Institut für Museumsforschung", issue 69 (2015) and is now available for download at www.smb.museum/ifm. A printed publication can be requested free of charge (Institute for Museum Research, In der Halde 1, 14195 Berlin, Tel. 030/8301-460, Fax: 030/8301-504).