Istat takes snapshot of Italian museums: mostly small, do little research and employ 1 volunteer for every 4 workers

Istat-National Institute of Statistics today published the results of the research I musei, le aree archeologiche e i monumenti in Italia (Museums, archaeological areas and monuments in Italy), which offers a precise snapshot of our cultural heritage, with reference to the year 2017. The first fact that emerges from the analysis is that Italy enjoys a very high number of cultural institutions: 4,889 public and private museums, archaeological parks, monuments and monumental complexes, spread over 2,371 municipalities across the country. These are mostly small museums: if we also include the 12.6 percent of museums whose visitor numbers are unknown, 77.3 percent do not get to count an influx of at least 10,000 visitors (36 percent are those visited by an audience of between 1,000 and 10,000 people, and 28.7 percent are those that count less than 1,000 visitors in a year). Only 3.6 percent of museums score more than 100,000 visitors (with 0.7 percent making more than 500,000), while museums with between 10 and 100,000 visitors account for 19.1 percent. In all, 119,069,134 visitors visited Italian museums in 2017 (52,796,935 in state museums, 66,272,199 in non-state museums). The regions where the largest audiences are concentrated are Lazio (over 30 million), Tuscany (over 21 million) and Campania (12 million). The regions with the fewest visitors are Molise (150,893), Abruzzo (342,885) and Basilicata (404,037).

There are one in three municipalities where there is at least one museum facility, there is at least one in one hundred square kilometers (as a result, on average to find a museum you do not have to move more than ten kilometers from your home), and one for every twelve thousand inhabitants. The regions with the most museums are Tuscany (528), Emilia Romagna (482), and Lombardy (409); those with the fewest are Molise (43), Basilicata (45), and Valle d’Aosta (87). Italian museums are mostly municipal: out of 4,889, as many as 2,067 are managed by municipalities, while in second place in terms of type of management are ecclesiastical museums (569), and then those managed by the Ministry of Culture (478). The least frequent are provincial museums (80), while there are 1,172 museums managed by foundations (257), associations (446), private citizens (179) or other private facilities (290). Then there are 121 museums run by schools and universities.

There are 47 out of 100 museums that have internal regulations (led by Lazio followed by Lombardy and Campania, with percentages of 71.4, 66.7 and 56.7, respectively), while there are just 32.6 that have accounting statements specifically dedicated to describing operating costs and revenues (in first place again are the museums of Lazio, followed by the Autonomous Province of Trento and Lombardy: 52.2, 45.3 and 43.5 the percentages), and the majority are those that open at set hours (80.5 percent) or also provide for on-demand openings (70.9 percent). Overall, Italian museums opened to the public an average of 5 days a week, and 63.7 percent of them open at least 24 hours a week (with peaks of 80.7 percent in Sardinia, 77.3 percent in Lazio and 74.4 percent in the Autonomous Province of Trento, while the lowest rates are in Friuli-Venezia Giulia where only 40.7 percent of museums open at least 24 hours a week, followed by 48.6 percent in Liguria and 51.3 percent in Piedmont). By contrast, 70.5 out of 100 museums open at least 100 days a year (or at least 1 day in 3).

As for activities, there are 43.7 percent of museums that have organized exhibitions (which, overall, ensured an input of 18,597,499 visitors, of which 9,846,233 were at state sites) and 64.7 percent where educational activities are carried out. The practice of renting to private individuals is not yet widespread: only 21.8 percent of museums have granted their halls (although there is a 16.6 percent non-response rate). Very few museums do research: just 36 percent (compared to 48.7 percent who do not do research and 15.3 percent who do not answer). Very few museums allow tickets to be purchased online: they are only 9.9 percent (the most virtuous are museums in Lazio at 18.4 percent, those in Tuscany at 16.3& and those in Campania at 15.5 percent, while none are recorded in Molise and Basilicata). Better are the percentages of presence on social networks, but more than half of the museums do not have a presence on social networks: 48 percent have an account (the most active on the web are the museums of Umbria, at 65.9 percent, followed by those of Sardinia at 56.9 percent and those of Lombardy with 56.2 percent).

As for labor statistics, Italy’s 4,889 museum institutions employ 38,338 workers, 28,617 of whom are employed at state sites. Each museum has an average of 9 employees, and there are an average of 21 in state institutes and 7 in museums run by other entities. The museums where the average number of workers is highest are those in Campania (41), followed by those in Liguria (31) and Piedmont (29). By contrast, the numbers in Molise (5), Abruzzo (6) and Friuli-Venezia Giulia (12) are low. The use of volunteers is wide: there are 10,975 of them (one for every nearly four workers, and 44.8% of museums have at least one, while there are even 2.2% of museums where more than 20 volunteers are employed on average), in addition to the 1,378 National Civil Service workers (only 15.1% of museums employ SNA workers).

Finally, in 2017, 41.3 percent of Italian museums received public grants, while only 24.1 percent received funding from private individuals, and 29.9 percent obtained revenue from the sale of additional services to the public. In terms of interventions, only 6 percent of museums have implemented seismic building improvement, 52 percent have a safety and emergency plan, 31.2 percent are included in the municipal civil protection plan, and 36.3 percent have conducted staff training courses on the safety of property and people.

Istat takes snapshot of Italian museums: mostly small, do little research and employ 1 volunteer for every 4 workers

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