Why is it important to support museums financially? Do you support your favorite museums, and if so, how?

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3 Answers

  1. The ability of an ordinary visitor to help museums in some way is significantly limited by the fact that visitors go to the museum at a loss.

    Ticket revenues usually do not cover even the cost of operations-space, light, water, climate and basic staff-in addition to which the museum needs archives, insurance, temporary exhibitions, printed maps, research and restoration department, etc. If ticket sales were the museum's only revenue, then just to go to zero, the price of tickets would have to be two to three times higher — which would lead to a sharp drop in attendance.

    So, in principle, large museums cannot pay for themselves with tickets. And if someone thinks that museums just need to cut costs, then I'm afraid that they are already cutting everything that is possible.

    Museums are kept afloat either by private subsidies or by the state. The nature of this dependence varies greatly, but sometimes it reaches up to 90% — plus, the volume of grants usually obeys a power function, that is, most of them come from a very small percentage of donors (in simple words: a few people finance the entire museum).

    Bottom line — in the current state of affairs, you can sign up for membership programs, pay the full price of tickets, eat in a museum cafe and buy souvenirs, but the effect of these actions is extremely small because it scales poorly: museums cannot accommodate much more people than they already can.

    But you can also direct your efforts in the other direction.

    Museums can be seen as a proxy for society as a whole. Museum programs need freedom of speech, change of government, and non-interference of ideologies. Museum employees need a normal salary and social guarantees. The museum infrastructure needs trusteeship, which in turn is motivated from the outside, whether with private or public subsidies. Finally, museums also need normal people-from the board of trustees to visitors.

    It is bad for museums when the board of trustees consists only of oligarchs, the staff is begging and striking, curators are being dragged to court for political posts in social networks, and works are rotting because the state spent the cultural budget on a new submarine — while the halls are empty because the population is not better off.

    Etc. So if you want to help museums — you can vote, participate in public life, go to rallies, do not walk on the grass, pick up garbage behind you, keep the door to your neighbor. And so on, there's a lot of it.

    The more people who do this — the better it will be for museums.

  2. It is very important to support museums now, so that not only we, but also future generations can enjoy art. It should be remembered that in addition to exhibition activities, museums also carry out educational, research, publishing and many other projects, and this costs a lot of money. A modern museum is a large ecosystem that allows you not only to preserve works of art, but also to study and show them to a wide audience. Museums create a lot of jobs and help artists. By purchasing a ticket, sending money to an endowment fund, or purchasing a museum friend card today, you are making a contribution to the future!

  3. Asked , I answer. In order to answer your question, I will first explain the following. If the museum only has a name and was created for profit, such as the prison life Museum or the chocolate museum, then No. Such museums should not be supported financially. In other cases, such as the Leningrad Defense Museum or the Military History Museum of Artillery, it is necessary to maintain it. However, financial support should be assumed by the State, including expenditures in the corresponding budget line. The best support for such museums is to visit them with your children and grandchildren. Sergei

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