France's museum visitor boom
Visitors are flocking to French cultural venues
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Also in this edition: 1,700 missing objects, more closure threats to local museums, British Museum director applications open, new sculpture park revealed, Macron’s controversial new culture minister
Happy Friday!
One of the week’s biggest stories — detailed below — is that it’s been revealed that 1,700 objects are recorded as missing from England’s national museums. It generated a lot of reaction.
Many sought to defend the figures, stressing the relative tiny size compared to the millions of items in the UK’s public collections. And many insisted the numbers were a victory as collections care has been chronically underfunded for decades.
This is all true. But it is is also true that the nation was so shocked at the thefts revealed at the British Museum last year in part because people were blindsided that a museum could not know the whereabouts of any items its care. 1,700 is not a small number when you had assumed that your taxes had been spent trying to keep that number at 0.
It is not wrong for people to have assumed this — and it’s not wrong if some people do think 1,700 is too high, whatever the context. It is equally not wrong for people to know what the number of missing objects recorded in a museum’s own systems are. What is wrong is that it took a thief at the British Museum to shine a light on the difficulties of looking after millions of objects.
So let’s welcome the transparency this story has generated. Heck, of ALL weeks in Britain, THIS is the week to embrace more scrutiny of state institutions. Let’s use it as a start for an open conversation on the value — and costs — of preserving the nation’s heritage.
— maxwell
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Need To Know
More local museums threats
A museum manager has warned they are “frightened of losing the history of the nation” while another has said “the future of [their] very institution hangs in the balance.” The comments were made to the Byline Times in a week that saw another English council plan to shut multiple museums to save money.
Conservative-run Hampshire County Council said it was under "immense pressure" to balance its budget by April 2025 and so plans to save £600,000 by cutting the grant it gives to Hampshire Cultural Trust which runs the county’s cultural venues. The Trust say this will force them to close five venues.
It said it anticipated shutting Ashcroft Arts Centre and Westbury Manor Museum by 2025 and Curtis Museum and Andover Museum and the Museum of the Iron Age would follow in 2026. And Eastleigh Museum's current closure would become permanent.
The move follows last week’s news — reported in this newsletter — that Suffolk County Council would completely eliminate arts and culture funding. Similar moves have been made by councils in Nottingham and Middlesbrough.
The comments to the Byline Times show fears are rocketing for the future of local authority museums in the UK due to councils being unable to balance their books. (Read more)
Missing museum items
1,700 objects have been recorded as missing from England’s government-funded museums and galleries over the past 20 years according to figures released under Freedom of Information to the PA Media news agency.
The V&A reported 180 missing artefacts, Royal Museums Greenwich disclosed that 245 items could not be found, and 550 are missing from records at the Imperial War Museums. The National Portrait Gallery said it had 45 "not located items" — including a drawing of Queen Victoria from 1869 — but insisted the objects are not missing or stolen. The National Gallery and Tate had no items recorded as missing.
The findings from the museums — all in receipt of public money — come during heightened public awareness about caring for collections, after a member of staff at the British Museum was sacked in August when items in its collection were found to be missing, stolen or damaged.
A spokesperson for Imperial War Museums said the recorded items were "typically low-value, mass-produced items" while a representative from the V&A said their figure “might mean…that a catalogue entry has not been updated after a collection move.” (Read more)
France’s visitor boom
Visits to France’s museums and monuments were up across the board in 2023 — led by a year-on-year 14% increase at the Louvre.
The Château de Versailles has returned to its pre-pandemic attendance levels with 8.1 million admissions. The Musée du Quai Branly recorded a 40% increase compared with 2022, while the 14 sites managed by Paris Musées welcomed 5.3 million visitors in 2023, an annual record. With 555,607 visitors, the Musée du Louvre-Lens exceeded its 2019 figures by 4.2%, while the privately run Musée de Montmartre recorded a 44% annual increase with 180,000 visitors.
Exhibitions were hugely well attended too — many outshining the UK’s expected figures for its blockbusters. Manet/Degas at the Musée d'Orsay welcomed an astonishing 669,160 visitors in four months. Shocking! The Surrealist Worlds of Elsa Schiaparelli attracted over 330,000 visitors to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, almost half its annual attendance. (Read more)
News from the UK
New year, new job? | Want to be the next Director of the British Museum? Don’t all rush at once. Applications are now open for the £216,000-a-year role. In comparison, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York pays its Director Max Hollein a base salary £783,000. Perceived front-runners — the Science Museum’s Ian Blatchford, National Portrait Gallery Director Nicholas Cullinan, and the Rijksmuseum’s Taco Dibbits — all declined to comment on the role when asked by the New York Times. (Read more)
Hitting the social heights | London’s National Gallery has hit 5 million followers on social media just a few months before it celebrates its 200th birthday. Rebekah Leary, Social Media Lead at the gallery told this newsletter that success was down to social, video, and content production being “all joined up” and “because our social manager Ellie and her officer Millie are fabulous…[and] everyone loves our educator Carlo doing a little spin.” Well done team, and do take a look at Carlo’s starring spins below.
Funding source to close | A trust which has given away £147m over two decades — including to countless UK museums and galleries such as the Foundling Museum, the Whitechapel Gallery and the National Galleries of Scotland — is to close. The Foyle Foundation will cease to operate in 2025, but will pay out the remaining £23m it holds in grants over the next two years. (Read more)
Art in the park | Warwickshire’s Compton Verney is opening a new sculpture park this March. The Georgian Mansion’s 120 acre grounds will become home to eight large-scale works by artists including Sarah Lucas and Helen Chadwick, and a spider sculpture by Louise Bourgeois. The park is part of the venue’s 20th anniversary celebrations, and will go on to host both temporary and permanent displays. (Read more)
News from around the world
Spain 🇪🇸 | Madrid’s Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum may keep a painting by Camille Pissarro that was stolen by the Nazis from a Jewish family, a US court has ruled. It’s the latest twist in a decades-long legal battle between the institution and the heirs of Jewish refugees. While the decision was unanimous, one of the judges said she had hoped Spain would voluntarily return the artwork to the family. (Read more)
France 🇫🇷 | Emmanuel Macron has stunned commentators by appointing Rachida Dati — a former minister for the rightwing president Nicolas Sarkozy — as the new culture minister. Dati is a key figure on the right in Paris. After her appointment, the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo wished the cultural community “lots of courage." Her appointment might complicate Paris projects such as the new layout surrounding the Notre-Dame and the ongoing €250m renovation of the Grand Palais. (Read more)
Greece 🇬🇷 | Following a 16-year renovation and £17m, the Palace of Aigai has reopened to the public. It was the largest building of classical Greece and the palace where Alexander the Great was proclaimed king. The opening was “an event of global importance” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said at a ceremony. Some of the funding for the work was from the European Union. (Read more)
USA 🇺🇸 | A man was arrested in the middle of a suspected attempted art heist. He was reportedly found by police on the roof of an art gallery in the city of Scottsdale in Arizona. He’s subsequently been charged after trying to steal artworks by Picasso, Warhol and Keith Haring. The gallery’s director said after the incident “this guy was a seasoned professional…this wasn’t just a smash-and-grab.” (Read more)
Best of the rest
Don’t pin your hopes | You simply can’t get into Chanel at the V&A, so the museum has partnered with Pinterest to bring the show’s content to the platform in a “first of its kind collaboration”. (More)
Design trailblazer exhibition | The very first solo UK exhibition of Italian giant of modernist design Enzo Mari is coming to the Design Museum in London. It’s curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director of the Serpentine Gallery. (More)
Ongoing reopening delays | Bristol’s (awfully named) science museum We the Curious has had to postpone its reopening. It’s been closed since a major fire, but now “supply chain delays” are blamed for further set backs. No new date has been marked. (More)
Museum cash-boost | The future of the recently-under-threat Royal Cornwall Museum in Truro seems secure after it received a £2.1m cash injection from the UK government’s levelling-up funds. The money will allow it to transform its galleries. (More)
Strikes loom in Liverpool | The PCS union claims National Museums Liverpool is the only employer out of over 200 to have yet to pay its staff a government-mandated £1,500 cost-of-living payment to civil servants. They’re now balloting for strike action. (More)
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