Global visitors return. Yet UK struggles
PLUS: Cullinan bags British Museum Directorship
Happy new financial year (in the UK at least) to all those who celebrate
Yet this won’t be a happy year for museums and galleries — it’ll be the toughest in recent memory. Yes, worse than during Covid as at least at that time the government was giving out billions of pounds of financial support. And worse than the previous year because although there are some signs the macro economic picture is improving, last year was so challenging 2024/25 budgets are much smaller as a result.
News from Berlin this week — outlined below natch — provides one of the most prominent and explicit examples of museums reducing opening hours due to the precarious financial climate. In the German capital as in many other global cities, energy costs and inflation have been so high that keeping the lights on and the doors open is becoming prohibitively expensive. A bleak prediction from me is that we will therefore see more venues follow suit.
The new head of Museums Wales has all but confirmed as much. Like many, they are also experiencing an insult-to-injury £4.5 million funding cut, in this case from the Welsh government. “We’ve got to be brave and open about what [the economic reality] might mean” Jane Richardson has said in a recent interview when asked about closures. “We will have to become smaller as a museum.”
Unfortunately, as we begin this new year, Richardson almost certainly won’t be the last museum Director to say this.
Now onto the news.
— maxwell
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Need To Know
Cullinan bags top job
The Director of the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) — and recent contributor to this newsletter — Nicholas Cullinan has been appointed as the next Director of the British Museum. In a statement he said he was looking forward to leading the institution into a "new chapter."
The museum industry has hailed Cullinan’s hire, noting that his success in steering the NPG through their three-year, £42m overhaul stand him in good stead to do the same with the British Museum’s huge redevelopment — although this one will take many more years and will need many more millions of pounds.
The Daily Telegraph’s chief art critic Alastair Sooke said he was “the energetic populist the besieged institution needs.” The Guardian equally hailed him as “energetic” — alongside highlighting his close friendship with Courtney Love. Only the Sunday Times was more cautious, with critic Waldemar Januszczak noting that for his first five years at the NPG “[Cullinan’s] leadership was so light we barely noticed.”
This newsletter sides that Cullinan is an excellent pick — on paper he’s the very best person for the role. But the top job at the British Museum is a job like no other. Yes, there’s the inside-job theft scandal to fully resolve, yes there’s controversy over sponsors, and yes the restitution debates rumble on. Yet the role the museum plays in soft power is unparalleled. Its network of stakeholders — and those it must be accountable to — is truly global. Navigating that is the hardest challenge, and one the previous leadership failed at. (Read more)
Liverpool’s strikes go all the way
The Director of National Museums Liverpool has said she finds it “incredibly upsetting” to see empty museums while her staff strike to secure a government-mandated cost-of-living support payment the museum group has said it cannot afford to pay.
In an update, Laura Pye confirmed that the PCS Union had rejected a new offer that would have seen 50% of the demanded payment given to staff, on condition of ending the eight-week strike — which has shuttered many of their venues since February — early. Even this offer “would have put increased pressure on a budget which is already in a difficult place” Pye said.
Yet in perhaps-not-the-best-of-optics, days later National Museums Liverpool revealed the architectural designs they are spending £58 million on, to allow two museums to “meaningfully address contemporary issues.” The two venues — the the International Slavery Museum and Maritime Museum — will both close for three years while they are redeveloped. (Read more)
Global visitors return — yet not in UK
Many of the world’s art museums have returned to pre-covid levels of visitors according to the Art Newspaper’s annual survey of attendance.
A host of huge venues have exceeded 2019 or are in a ‘back-to-normal’ range, including the Met (which is 10% up on 2019) the National Museum of Korea Seoul (up 25%), the Vatican Museums (down only 2% on 2019), the Prado in Madrid (down 5%), the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC (down 6%), and the British Museum (down 7%). The Louvre in Paris is just 8% down on pre-pandemic levels but tops the global attendance table yet again, with 8.9 million visitors.
Concerning though is that in total, the top 100 museums received 175 million visitors in 2023. That’s up on 2022’s 141 million, but still well shy of the 230 million visitors recorded in 2019.
But the survey reiterated what recent UK-figures have shown — British venues continue to struggle. London’s National Gallery has the largest number of missing visitors in the world — 3 million have disappeared since 2019, which is a near 50% difference — while the RA and Tate Britain are also well over 40% down. (Read more)
News from the UK
Shuttered ⛔ | After 80 years, the London-founded Marlborough Gallery — which has locations in the UK, Spain and the USA — is to cease all global operations. It will soon begin selling off its 15,000 artworks thought to be valued at $250 million. The gallery has seen a gradual decline in recent years, with big hitters such as Maggi Hambling parting ways with them after 30 years last month. (Read more)
Unveiled ✅ | The new Perth Museum has opened to critical acclaim, large crowds and wall-to-wall national press coverage. The £27m venue — now the permanent home of the famous Stone of Destiny — “reinvents local museums” according to the Guardian, with its “inspiring, fun exhibits.” It is is “open, accessible and absolutely stuffed with wondrous things” according to the FT. 3,000 people visited on its opening day. (Read more)
Late 😞 | "Unforeseen delays" have resulted in the reopening of the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford pushed back until 2025. The museum was temporarily closed last June for major refurbishment, but difficulties with the construction of a new lift mean it will now open in two phases next year instead. Museum director Jo Quinton-Tulloch said the change in plans was "frustrating". (Read more)
Mixed 📊 | At least 467 museums have closed in the UK since the Millennium according to new research by the Mapping Museums Lab at Birkbeck and Kings College universities. However, the sector is much bigger than in 2000 due to the rapid increase in the number of independent and private museums. 627 of these opened in the same time. Interestingly, there’s even been net increases in the number of university and national museums. (Read more)
Going… 🔨 | “The most important work by Titian to come to the auction market in more than a generation” is about to go under the hammer at Christie’s in London. Rest on the Flight into Egypt was last up for sale 145 years ago and is expected to fetch £25 million, in part because of its previous owner Napoleon. It was also stolen from a British stately home in 1995, and was recovered at a bus stop in London’s Richmond in 2002. (Read more)
News from around the world
USA 🇺🇸 | Just in case the new Beyoncé album wasn’t quite ubiquitous enough, the pop superstar’s team projected marketing visuals for the Cowboy Carter LP onto a number of New York museums. The Guggenheim facade featured lines of projected text saying “This ain’t a country album. This is a ‘Beyoncé’ album” while other institutions had the album artwork projected onto them. “The Guggenheim was not informed about and did not authorize this activation” a museum statement read. (Read more)
Germany 🇩🇪 | Berlin State Museums have said they are slashing the opening hours of nine of their 17 venues due to “tight budgetary constraints”. The museums — including the Altes Museum and Bode-Museum — will see a doubling of the number of days they are closed each week and they will also have their remaining weekday opening hours reduced. Two of the group’s biggest venues however — the Alte Nationalgalerie and the Neues Museum — will get later opening hours during the summer. (Read more)
USA 🇺🇸 | A new $100-million project to overhaul the Ellis Island Museum in New York has been announced. A major part of the work will be to expand the family history center, adding 90 million arrival records to its database to reach a total of 154 million names. “This is a historic effort…to assure that it remains vital and relevant,” Jesse Brackenbury, president of the Statue of Liberty – Ellis Island Foundation said. Work will finish in 2026. (Read more)
USA 🇺🇸 | Oregon's Portland Art Museum has revealed is mammoth $111 million expansion will open in late 2025. 95,000 sq. ft of new or revamped public and exhibition space are part of the project, as is the construction of the new Mark Rothko Pavilion — Rothko’s very first exhibition was at the museum — which will serve as the new public entrance. 98% of the funding raised for the capital campaign has come from private sources. (Read more)
USA 🇺🇸 | Over 700 prints by some of the world’s greatest artists including Henry Moore and Albrecht Dürer have been donated to a Florida museum. The Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach has seen their print collection increase by 40% thanks to the gift from the real-estate developer Jonathan “Jack” Frost. The museum is “like a home away from home” Frost said in a statement. (Read more)
Best of the rest
Late night visits | South London’s Horniman Museum has kicked off a new programme of late night-openings. The first Thursday of each month will now see the venue open until 9pm for free. (More)
Not rocket science | The Science Museum Group’s Development department has rebranded itself as simply ‘Fundraising and Partnerships’ due to a lack of awareness of what the previous title means (fair point).
Wallace en vogue | Alexandra Shulman — who helmed British Vogue for 25 years — has become one of seven new trustees of London’s Wallace Collection. Architect Spencer de Grey who oversaw the British Museum’s Great Court is another. (More)
Concerning closure deficit | The Castle Museum in York lost £400,000 in revenue last year due to an emergency closure after the discovery of dangerous Raac concrete. It "cannot continue to trade at a deficit" according to local councillors. (More)
ICYMI | Last edition’s most read newsletter story: The Victoria and Albert Museum seeks SEVEN new trustees
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