What is it about?
The paper looks at the rise and fall of visit figures for a number of London Museums over 160 years to identify the similarities and differences between the institutions, both large and small. Internal and external factors emerge that can independently or conjointly strongly influence the visiting pattern of their audiences.
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Why is it important?
This paper particularly focuses on the views of museum curators and how they report on and interpret their figures. It draws out common factors and checks if these factors impacted on all the museums in the same way (increase or decrease) and in the same time period. And if not why not?
Perspectives
By gaining access to archives: correspondence, notes, minutes of meetings, the curators' voices come alive and offer an insight to board room politics, anxieties about the institution's reputation and what issues they considered beyond their control.
Vicky Woollard
City University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The view from within: a curatorial account of the rise and fall of visits to London museums from 1851–2016. A research note, Cultural Trends, August 2018, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/09548963.2018.1503790.
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