It’s no secret that art museums have seen better days. As far back as 2001, attendance at U.S. museums was already in stagnation, and the trend has only continued to deteriorate in the years since. In 2016, total visitors to art museums across Britain’s leading museums and galleries fell to just under 50 million—a 20 percent drop from the peak of 63 million in 1992. In the wake of covid-19 restrictions, the world’s busiest art museums saw the most significant drop set at 77%, from 203 million worldwide in 2019 to a paltry 54 million in 2020. And it’s not just attendance that’s down. Funding for arts and culture has been in decline for years, as government support has dwindled and private donors have shifted their philanthropic priorities. In the U.S., federal funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has declined by more than 60 percent since its peak in 1992. State arts funding has also fallen sharply, down 27 percent since 2008. As a result, many museums have been forced to make cutbacks, from reducing staff and programming to scaling back exhibitions and even selling off artworks from their collections. The situation is even direr in other parts of the world. In the United Kingdom, government arts funding was slashed by 30 percent between 2010 and 2015. And in Australia, arts funding has been cut by more than $10 million. These trends have put immense pressure on museums to find new...
