| FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 19, 2008
Press Contacts
202-653-4630
Mamie Bittner, mbittner@imls.gov
First Comprehensive US Government Report on Museum Public Finance
Reveals Complex Funding Patchwork
Washington, DC—The Institute of Museum and Library Services today released, Exhibiting Public Value: Government Funding for Museums in the United States. The study provides the first major review of public finance for the museum sector. It explores public support from federal, state, and local government sources, focusing particular attention on levels of financial support and types of delivery mechanisms.
According to Dr. Anne-Imelda Radice, IMLS Director, “Public funding helps museums deliver quality services that strengthen communities, families, individuals, and the nation.” She noted that, “While the study documents the variety of methods through which the museum sector receives government support, it also exposes gaps in the network of support at the local, state, and national levels.”
This is one of the few studies to examine U.S. museums as a sector separate from other cultural institutions. The museum sector includes aquariums, arboretums, botanical gardens, art museums, children’s museums, general museums, historic houses and history museums, nature centers, natural history and anthropology museums, planetariums, science and technology centers, specialized museums, and zoos.
The study was developed in response to requests for an examination of alternative funding strategies for the nation’s museums, including a population-based grant program to the states for museum services. The national study sought to collect and provide detailed data to inform the development of sound, evidence-based policy. It also provides examples of existing federal-state partnerships in the cultural sector including the IMLS Library Grants to States program, support for state arts agencies from the National Endowment for the Arts, and support for state humanities councils from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Finding highlights include:
- The U.S. is home to a remarkable diversity of museums. Budgets, staffing, and other resource needs range dramatically across the sector, as do visitorship and the geographic reach of museum services. Slightly more than 70 percent of U.S. museums are private nonprofit entities; the rest are public-owned and managed by various forms of government including states, public universities, city, and county governments. For-profit entities are a very small part of the sector (0.2 percent).
- This diversity is also reflected in the variability of museum revenue streams. Survey respondents reported a patchwork of financial support with institutions of all types reporting different combinations of revenue from earned income, private donations, government contributions, and investments. While the majority of museums in the sample reported receipt of public funds from at least one level of government – federal, state, or local – there was no consistent pattern of public support across the museum sector.
- The study examined several programs of federal support including national competitive programs at the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Science Foundation, as well as congressional earmarks that go through numerous federal agencies. In 2006, the last fiscal year examined, federal support from these sources exceeded $149 million dollars. Of this total, 44 percent was made up of congressional earmarks, 23 percent came from NSF, 21 percent from IMLS, eight percent from NEH, and four percent from NEA.
- The study found that direct federal support to museums tends to be concentrated in several geographic areas and that it tends to flow to museums for specific types of services. IMLS, the only federal agency with a statutory mission of supporting all types of museums to build their institutional capacity for public service, was also the only federal agency that provided support for museums in every state in all seven years examined in the study (2000 – 2006).
- The study found a wide range of mechanisms to support museums at the state level, but few states had single agencies that coordinated funding across the entire museum sector.
- Local public support for museums is significant in the United States and for some types of museums provides over 50 percent of all government support.
- The study found several similarities when examining existing federal-state partnership programs, including requirements for planning and evaluation as well as processes to engage the public in program development.
- Qualitative information gathered through site visits and public hearings underscored the value of competitive peer review processes at federal, state, federal-state partnership, and local levels.
The decentralized nature of public funding for museums in the United States required data collection from many different sources, using a variety of research methods. Data were collected through a cooperative agreement with the Urban Institute from the administrative records of federal, state, and local government agencies; national non-governmental entities; more than 1,000 museum survey respondents; and more than 100 individuals through hearings and in-depth interviews across the country.
While the study shed light on the rich complexity of museum funding, more research is needed. Specifically, there is a great need for a consistent, reliable museum census, greater standardization of data in the field and among funders and administrative data managers, more information about the nature of museum support at all levels of government, and a more systematic analysis of the human or social impact of museum services, according to the study.
Radice expressed her interest in continuing to enrich data available to the museum community and said, “I hope that this report sparks continued dialogue about ways of effectively and equitably structuring public funding to encourage a strong and vibrant museum sector that contributes to the nation’s goals for education, lifelong learning, and civic engagement.”
Download, view, and print the report in a pdf file http://www.imls.gov/pdf/MuseumPublicFinance.pdf
(2.4 MB) |
