WHEN major museums in the world’s capitals start to complain that they’ve been getting too many visitors, this sends a signal to local cultural workers in Manila and the rest of the country: If you can’t attain optimal visitor numbers, what you have been doing has proved wrong all this time.
Antoine Froidefond reports for the Agence France-Presse (AFP): “Mass tourism spurred by cheap flights and richer emerging economies is forcing the world’s top museums to rethink their welcome, notably by boosting access, embracing apps and improving ancillary services such as eateries and gift shops. The overhaul is dictated by the sheer numbers of visitors crowding galleries to catch a glimpse of the Mona Lisa, a Van Gogh canvas or a Michelangelo statue. Nearly 10 million people a year pass through the Louvre, 7 million visit the British Museum, and 6 million go to the Met in New York.”
And it seems these top-tier museums are now “complaining.”
The president of the Louvre, Jean-Luc Martinez, noted: “The Louvre was conceived for 5 million people. For the past three years straight we’ve had more than 9 million.” Talk about the best of problems: They have their cake and they’ll be eating it, too.
According to the AFP report, Martinez has launched the Pyramid Project that aims by mid-2016 to improve entry through redesigned ticket offices, lines and cloakrooms, all in an effort to produce more customer attention. “If the visitors aren’t taken care of,” he asks, “how can you expect their experience seeing the works of art to pass off well?”
The Louvre isn’t the only victim of too much success. In New York City, the Museum of Modern Art, or MoMA, wants to grow again by tearing down an adjacent building just a decade after an extension saw MoMA double its capacity to 3 million visitors a year. Back in France, the Palace of Versailles is expanding, too, to accommodate a 2,700-square-meter space that can fit in 10 million visitors each year.
Meanwhile, other museums have opted for a constellation of improvements such as upgrading the quality of their restaurants, developing designer gift shops, and extending opening hours.
Said Musée d’Orsay President Guy Cogeval about his famous landmark in Paris: “Traffic management is one of my big concerns. We are trying to better spread the visitors around.”
Clearly what’s needed are smart solutions that act as logistics tools. Due to globalization where culture now looms as an international product with millions hungry for a taste, there is not only a quantitative increase of customers but a qualitative differential: More visitors now hail from vastly different backgrounds. Containing these within an order and a logical narrative that all can follow might seem an insurmountable task. Noted the AFP report: “Museums are finding that they no longer cater to a public well-versed in the history and artistic movements on show, but to visitors needing more context and information to process what they are seeing.”
Luckily, these visitors follow certain generalizations: They often travel in groups or families, and they often make beelines for the most famous artworks. In the Louvre’s case, this is very classic: Notice the crowds always swarming in front of the Mona Lisa painting and the Venus de Milo statue. In addition, surveys show that visitors make a trek to just one landmark museum per year, and that their average age has dropped significantly to under 30. For museum officials, this crystallizes a sort of success since they would like to see more young people turn up at exhibits.
What are the smarter ways museums plan to adopt to make sense of these new realities?
First, they are redesigning some of their references. Information that might seem obvious from a Western viewpoint might need a little more explanation for these visitors. A few museums have taken up the challenge by establishing outposts and displays in other parts of the world.
Meanwhile, several museums are going the digital route to support their collections, giving visitors the opportunity to load information onto their smartphones or tablets before traversing the halls. Such mobile applications can be tailor-fit for a breezier and zippier visit, as interests are custom-fit after users answer a quiz. Such personalization follows a trend where museums borrow tactics and technologies used by big retailers.
Of course, a conundrum exists that’s also a solution: Several museums now offer virtual models that are just as popular as the real thing. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York last year received more than 26 million visits via its web site, while the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., clocked in around 6 million.
Finally, Martinez of the Louvre makes a poignant declaration: “It’s paradoxical to present the amount of visitors as a problem. A museum’s mission, after all, is to allow the widest public possible the chance to see its collections.”
For museum professionals in the local scene, such observations should spur the team back to the drawing board, and assess why local visitors have dwindled when there is so much museum activity everywhere else.
Image credits: Fabrizio Morando