Visitor numbers to museums and exhibition centres in Germany stabilised at a high level in 2018
Press release from 12/20/2019
With around 111.6 million visits, the museums maintained the high level of 2016. The museums that took part in the survey reported around 8,800 special exhibitions, which is almost the same number as the previous year.
The museums participating in the survey reported a total of 111,662,229 visits in 2018. This is 2.4% fewer than in the record year of 2017, when the documenta and Skulptur Projekte Münster attracted a record number of visitors, but only around 200,000 fewer visits (0.18%) than in 2016. Of the 6,741 museums contacted, 5,334 institutions took part in the survey. A total of 4,865 (72.2%) museums reported their visit figures for 2018.
Dr Patricia Rahemipour, Director of the Institute for Museum Research, who has been in office since September 2019, states: "The current visitor figures for 2018 clearly show how important long-term surveys are, as they allow us to identify both trends and selective fluctuations. The Institute for Museum Research has been collecting annual figures on museums since 1981. This is an important source of information for museums and will therefore remain an integral part of the Institute's work in the future."
The trend towards special exhibitions continues unabated. More than every second German museum (58.8%) that took part in the survey presented at least one special exhibition in 2018. The number of special exhibitions remained almost the same compared to the previous year. A total of 8,750 special exhibitions were reported, an average of three exhibitions per museum.
The separately surveyed visitor figures for the exhibition centres declined slightly, although activity remained the same. The exhibition centres participating in the survey reported a total of 5,660,677 visits in 2018. This is around 1.24 million (18%) fewer than in the previous year, while the number of registered exhibitions remained roughly the same (1,955, +84). A total of 504 exhibition centres were contacted, 390 participated in the survey and 341 (67.7 %) reported visitor numbers.
Climate change has now also reached the museum landscape. For the first time, museums that reported falling visitor numbers cited the weather as the most common reason for the decline.
Accessibility and inclusion - there is still a lot to do
Only one in four museums indicated that they had been active in terms of accessibility and inclusion in recent years. 70% of the responding museums reported mobility measures, followed by measures to make content easier to understand, such as "easy language" (19%), and offers for people with visual impairments (17%). At around a fifth of the total number of measures reported, activities in the area of "easy language" account for a high proportion, suggesting that accessibility and inclusion are increasingly being considered together. The recommendations of the German Museums Association for more inclusive museums are gradually being taken into account.
Importance and quality of museums' online presence on the rise
For the fourth time since 2001, the Institute for Museum Research has surveyed the online presence and online offerings of museums. Over 94% of the museums that responded now provide information online, which is roughly the same proportion as in 2013. The number of museums that reported having their own website has also continued to rise over the past six years. In addition, around 34% of the museums that responded in 2018 stated that they provide information about their educational programmes online (2013: approx. 29%). Around half of the responding museums provided information on social media activities, with Facebook accounting for around 45% of mentions, ahead of Instagram (approx. 17%) and Twitter (approx. 10%)
In 2018, two-thirds of online presentation management was still in the hands of museum employees, with only 17.2% of the responding museums using an external service provider.
Prof Dr Hermann Parzinger, President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, explains on behalf of the museums of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation: "The museums of the SPK have also steadily expanded their virtual presence over the years. In addition to more traditional online presences, this naturally also includes virtual access to our collections, which is the only way to make this heritage of humanity truly comprehensively available. To this end, we have developed a digitisation strategy and a digital manifesto and are actively involved in the debate on open access. In addition, the SPK is leading museum4punkt0, a joint project funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, which also enables other museums to use the model digital applications developed there free of charge."
Prof. Dr. Eckart Köhne, President of the German Museums Association, emphasises in this context: "Digitisation in the museum sector is still not a matter of course. The costs for the necessary technical equipment, additional staff and their further training, among other things, present museums with major challenges.
Further information and data on the German museum landscape in 2018 can be found in the 97-page publication "Statistische Gesamterhebung an den Museen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland für das Jahr 2018" , which contains information on the individual federal states in addition to the presentation of museum visits by type of museum.
The publication appears in the series "Materialien aus dem Institut für Museumsforschung", issue 73 (2019) and will be available for download from December 2019.
Further enquiries about the publication can be directed to
Institute for Museum Research
In der Halde 1, 14195 Berlin
Tel. 030/8301-460
Fax: 030/8301-504.