The view from within: a curatorial account of the rise and fall of visits to London museums from 1851–2016. A research note

Abstract

This note addresses two questions: what comparing patterns of attendance at a group of museums and art galleries since 1851 might reveal? and how might the museums themselves have explained those figures? This note considers the rises and falls of visit numbers amongst a sample of 15 London museums over a 160-year period, and how the institutions themselves perceived those figures. The data used here were gathered from the museums’ published annual reports and internal documents, including daybooks and memos. Their presentation here introduces readers to an exceptionally long time series, and to the conventionally neglected voices of museums’ managers, whose circumstances and attitudes informed those museums’ management. These notes show that certain external factors affected simultaneous rises and falls in the majority of museums’ figures across the sample, although there were always exceptions. Some trends are revealed as general tendencies over a number of years. Discrete internal factors, such as temporary closures and exhibitions create peaks and troughs at individual institutions.

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