Tag: lockdown

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Museums in the Pandemic

Museum reopening after lockdown in the UK nations

When museums began to reopen after lockdown restrictions were lifted in spring 2021, were there any differences between the four nations of the UK? 

Our data gives slightly different pictures of the situation depending on how it is analysed. In one view, museums in England were more likely to reopen. In another, Scottish museums were more likely to reopen. Read on to find out more about our analysis. 

Between March and November 2021, museum websites increasingly mentioned that they were open. That trend reflects the relaxation of lockdown restrictions. In April 2021, outdoor attractions began to reopen and museums in Scotland were able to reopen towards the end of the month. Museums in the rest of the UK were able to reopen in May 2021. This pattern can be seen in the chart below. 

A chart showing the percentage of museums whose websites mentioned that they were open, categorised into the four UK nations, between March and November 2021. The trend for all four nations is an increase, with slight differences that are explained in the accompanying text.

An upward trend can be observed in each nation, and all apart from Northern Ireland show a very similar amount of change. For England, mentions of opening increased by 9% (from almost 45% of museum websites, to 54%), and in Wales they increased by the same amount (from 35% to 44%). For Scotland, there was a slightly smaller increase of 8% (from 42% to 50%). In Northern Ireland the increase was smaller again at 6% (from 47% to 53%). Scotland and Wales show slight downturns at the end of the period, but it isn’t clear what the cause of this might be.  

The picture looks somewhat different when examining indications of closure. The chart below shows the percentage of websites mentioning current closure between March and November 2021. As we might expect, the declining trend seen overall for mentions of closure is replicated here. For England, it declined by 17% (from almost 70% of museum websites, to 53%). For Scotland, there was just a 10% decline (from 64% to 54%), and this was the same in Wales (from 58% to 48%). In Northern Ireland, which has far fewer museums, the decline was slightly smaller at 7% (from 50% to 43%). 

A chart showing the percentage of museums whose websites mentioned that they were closed, categorised into the four UK nations, between March and November 2021. The trend for all four nations is a decrease, with slight differences that are explained in the accompanying text.

Mirroring the slight unexplained downturns in mentions of opening for Scottish and Welsh museums, here we see slight upticks for the same nations at the end of the period. But overall, reduced mentions of closure could suggest that, based on the language found on museum websites, museums in England were more likely to reopen than those elsewhere in the UK.  

That finding is slightly complicated by manually checking samples of the text we found on museum websites. That textual analysis suggests that Scottish museums were slightly more likely to reopen. In April 2021 – before lockdown was lifted – we found that 556 museums in England explicitly stated that they were closed due to Covid, compared to 101 museums in Scotland, 44 museums in Wales, and 22 museums in Northern Ireland.  

By September 2021, four months after restrictions had been relaxed, we found that 106 English museum websites still stated they were closed due to the pandemic, a reduction of 81% from April. By comparison, 16 Scottish museum websites still stated this, a slightly larger reduction of 84% over the same period. Museums in Wales and Northern Ireland showed a smaller reduction.  

Although the numbers are quite different, museum websites in both countries mentioning closure due to Covid decreased by the same proportion, 73%. In Wales, 12 museums still mentioned this in September 2021, down from 44, while just six museums in Northern Ireland did so, down from 22. So this analysis suggests that Scottish museums were slightly more likely to reopen than those in England, and museums in Wales and Northern Ireland show lower rates of reopening. 

These analyses by the nations of the UK all give slightly different views of the situation. Analysing mentions of opening on websites suggests that museums in England and Wales were very slightly more likely to reopen than those in Scotland, and museums in Northern Ireland the least likely to reopen. Analysing mentions of closure gives a different picture; one that suggests that English museums were more likely to reopen than those in other nations. But a closer analysis of website texts suggests a different picture again – that of Scottish museums being slightly more likely to reopen. 

Mark Liebenrood

Categories
Museums in the Pandemic

Accreditation, size, and museum reopening after lockdown

As lockdown restrictions were lifted in spring 2021, were there any variations in reopening between accredited and unaccredited museums, or between museums of different sizes?  

Briefly, accredited museums were more likely to reopen after lockdown than unaccredited museums, and larger museums were more likely to reopen than smaller museums. Read on to find out more about our results and analysis. 

Accreditation 

Between March and November 2021, museum websites increasingly mentioned that they were open: a trend that reflects the relaxation of lockdown restrictions. This pattern can be seen in the chart below. 

A chart showing the percentage of accredited and unaccredited museums whose websites mentioned that they were open, between March and November 2021. The trend for both types is a slight increase.

For accredited museums (orange line), mentions of being open rose by 10% (from 49% to 59%). Most of that change took place between April and June 2021, which was around the time that museums could reopen after lockdown. By contrast, mentions of being open rose by just 6% for unaccredited museums (from 40% to 46%). The greater change for accredited museums suggests that they were more likely to reopen than those that are unaccredited. 

We can check the data on opening by comparing it with that on closing and, indeed, over this same period museum websites were less likely to mention that they were closed.  

A chart showing the percentage of accredited and unaccredited museums whose websites mentioned that they were closed, between March and November 2021. The trend for both types is a significant decrease.

The chart above shows the percentage of websites mentioning current closure between March and November 2021. For accredited museums, this declined by 19% (from 77%, to 58% by November 2021). Again, a large part of that change took place between April and June 2021, although the situation was still changing noticeably until September. By contrast, for unaccredited museums mentions of closure on websites declined by just 10% (from 58% to 48%). That smaller decline in mentions of closure again suggests that accredited museums were more likely to reopen than those that are unaccredited. 

As described in our previous blog on the relationship between governance and reopening, we also manually checked samples of the text we found on museum websites for statements of closure due to the pandemic. In April 2021 we found that 456 accredited museums explicitly stated that they were closed due to Covid, compared to 268 unaccredited museums. 

By September 2021, four months after restrictions had been relaxed, we found that just 64 accredited museum websites still stated they were closed due to the pandemic, a reduction of 86% from April. By comparison, 76 unaccredited museums still stated this, a smaller reduction of 72%. So this analysis further confirms that accredited museums were more likely to have reopened, while unaccredited museums show a lower rate of reopening. 

Size 

The Mapping Museums database categorises the size of museums according to the number of annual visitors. Huge museums usually receive more than a million visitors a year, large museums between fifty thousand and a million, medium museums between ten thousand and fifty thousand, and small museums less than ten thousand. (read more on how we categorised museum sizes). 

As seen in the chart below, museum websites increasingly mentioned that they were open between March and November 2021, and this change differs between museum sizes. 

A chart showing the percentage of museums whose websites mentioned that they were open, categorised into four sizes, between March and November 2021. The trend for all four sizes is an increase, with smaller museums showing the smallest.

The larger a museum is, the more likely its website was to mention being open as this period progressed. For huge museums (orange line), there was an increase of 25% between March and September 2021 (from 67% to 92%), although this dipped to 83% in November. The sharp fluctuations observed in this group are to be expected when analysing the relatively small sample of twelve museums. 

For large museums (blue line), websites using the language of opening had increased by 14% by November 2021 (from 56% to 70%, although it had almost reached that point by June). Medium museums (green line) showed a smaller increase of 10% (from 49% to 59%), and small museums (red line) showed an even smaller increase of 6% (from 39% to 45%). 

As for accreditation, we can check the data on opening by comparing it with that on closing. Over the same period, as museums reopened mentions of closure on their websites decreased. 

A chart showing the percentage of museums whose websites mentioned that they were closed, categorised into four sizes, between March and November 2021. The trend for all four sizes is a decrease, with smaller museums showing the smallest decrease.

Huge museums showed the biggest reduction in the language of closure (from 100% in March 2021 to 67% by September). One of them, the National Portrait Gallery, closed in 2020 for refurbishment. 

The smaller a museum is, the smaller the decline in the language of closure. Large museums declined by 21% (from 83%, to 62% by November 2021), while medium museums declined by 20% (from 76% to 56% by September 2021). Meanwhile small museums showed just an 11% decline (from 60% to 49% by November 2021). That change is about half of that for medium and large museums. This suggests that smaller museums were much less likely reopen than medium, large and huge museums. 

To complement these summary analyses, we followed the same process outlined for accreditation by also manually checking samples of website text. In April 2021 we found just one huge museum that explicitly stated that it was closed due to Covid: this was Kelvingrove in Glasgow. There were 133 large museums making a similar statement, 230 medium museums, and 337 small museums. 

By September 2021, we found that just 13 large museum websites still stated they were closed due to the pandemic, a reduction of 90% from April. The reduction for medium museums was slightly less at 86%, with 32 still making similar statements. The reduction for small museums was even less at 74%, with 87 still advertising closure. So this analysis of website text also confirms that the smaller a museum is, the less likely it was to have reopened. 

Mark Liebenrood 

Categories
Museums in the Pandemic

Museum governance and reopening after lockdown

Which museums re-opened after lockdown restrictions were lifted in spring 2021, and did it vary by governance? In this blog we present our findings about the three largest groups of museums in our dataset: those run by local authorities, independents run on a not-for-profit basis, and private museums.

As seen in the chart below, museum websites increasingly mentioned that they were open between March and November 2021. That trend reflects the relaxation of lockdown restrictions. In April 2021, outdoor attractions began to reopen and museums in Scotland were able to reopen towards the end of the month. Museums in the rest of the UK were able to reopen in May 2021. 

A chart showing a gradual increase in mentions of reopening on museum websites between March and November 2021, for local authorities, independent not-for-profits, and private museums.
% of museum websites mentioning current opening

Local authority museum websites (orange line) show the largest increase (from 44% in March 2021 to 56% in November 2021), which suggests that they are more likely to have reopened than the other two groups. The increase can be seen as early as April, which may reflect websites updating in anticipation of full reopening in May 2021. The change in April may also reflect the reopening of outdoor facilities across the UK that month, prior to full reopening in May. Independent not for profit museum websites (green line) show a smaller change (from 41%, to 49% by August 2021), and private museums (blue line) changed by a similar amount (from 36%, to 45% by November 2021).

Over the same period, museum websites decreasingly mentioned that they were closed.

A chart showing a gradual decrease in mentions of closure on museum websites between March and November 2021, for local authorities, independent not-for-profits, and private museums.
% of museum websites mentioning current closure

The chart above shows the percentage of websites mentioning current closure between March and November 2021. The biggest drop is for local authority museums (from 77%, to 59% by August 2021), which again suggests that they are more likely to have reopened. That decline was slightly less on websites of independent not for profit museums (from 65% to 49% by September 2021). Private museums show the smallest change (from 49% to 44% by September 2021). This could suggest that private museums are least likely of the three groups to have reopened, but the chart of reopening above suggests that they were similar in this respect to not-for-profits.

Whether considering mentions of opening or closure, our summary website data suggests that local authority museums were the most likely to have reopened of these three groups of museums.

That finding is borne out by manually checking samples of the text we found on museum websites. In April 2021 – before lockdown was lifted – we found that 231 local authority museums explicitly stated that they were closed due to Covid, compared to 318 independent not for profit museums and 45 private museums.

By September 2021, four months after restrictions had been relaxed, we found that just 38 local authority museum websites still stated they were closed due to the pandemic, a reduction of 84% from April. By comparison, 72 not for profit independent museums still stated this, a smaller reduction of 77%. For private museums, 10 websites still stated they were closed due to the pandemic, a reduction of 78%. So this analysis also suggests that local authority museums were more likely to have reopened, while private museums and not-for-profits show lower rates of reopening.

These figures must be seen as approximate, given that not all museum websites are updated regularly and our search tools are far from perfect. But both types of analysis suggest that local authority museums were more likely to reopen after lockdown than the largest groups of independent museums.

Mark Liebenrood

Categories
Museums in the Pandemic

Long closures after lockdown

A rusted padlock hangs from a hasp that secures a wooden door. Cracking and dirt in the woodgrain are clearly visible.

When we set out to collect data on museums during the pandemic, we were eager to explore how long they remained closed and if they had reopened. The results were not what we expected and finding out why proved a more complicated process than we had anticipated.  

To recall, we have built a web-scraping tool to identify words that indicate open/closed on museum websites. Monthly website snapshots allowed us to see how these indicators changed over time and the graph below plots the period between March and November 2021. As you can see, and as we might expect, the references to closure (the blue line) drop and the references to opening increase (the red line).  

A graph showing indicators of museum website language during 2021. The vertical axis shows the number of museums. The horizontal axis shows the date the websites were accessed. There are six lines on the graph. From top to bottom, a green line shows online engagement; a purple line shows intent to reopen; a blue line shows closed currently; a red line shows open currently; a brown line shows staff working; a yellow line shows funding. The lines are explained in more detail in the text of this blog post.

Thus, the data confirmed our general sense of what happened in this period, namely that museums re-opened after lockdown restrictions eased. However, we were surprised that these indicators stabilized from September onwards. Around half of UK museums websites continued to use language that indicated ‘closed’. Conversations with museum sector staff confirmed that many museums had decided to remain closed in 2021, but we still felt our findings were somewhat high.  

We needed to know if the data was correct or if our software was malfunctioning, so we began to check results from individual websites. The result was reassuring in that our web-scraper had correctly identified ‘open’ and ‘closed’ terms. The problem was that the same language was used to describe a wide range of events or instances. For instance, websites announced that they were ‘closed for Christmas’ or that certain part of the museum complex, such as the café or galleries were closed. ‘Open’ was used in a similar way, such as in the case of online exhibitions.  

We needed to distinguish between usages of ‘closed’, and so Andrea Ballatore, our resident software expert, designed a new piece of kit. This allowed us to search and analyze specific terms in their linguistic context. We looked at a sample of 1200 museum websites as they stood in September 2021, and in 167 instances the term indicated the site was closed specifically due to the pandemic (‘The museum remains closed due to Covid-19’) and in a further 212 instances, the museum was closed for an unspecified reason although the majority of these are also likely to be due to the pandemic (‘The museum continues to be closed’; ‘We have taken the decision to remain closed during 2021’). There were 42 museums closed for refurbishment and a further 12 references to seasonal closure.  

Extrapolating from our sample, we can conservatively estimate that some 550 museums remained completely closed as of September 2021 for reasons connected to the pandemic, although it is likely that the number is likely to be higher. Beyond this, the other usages of closure we found referred to specific parts of a site (e.g. café, galleries), provided general information on opening and closing times, or less often, references to a museum’s history. That information is itself significant because it indicates that in addition to those museums that were entirely closed, many more museums were still experiencing some degree of closure. Large numbers of museums did not resume ordinary service.

In our future blogs we will be examining how those patterns of closure and re-opening varied according to museum governance and size, and presenting current data.  

Jamie Larkin and Fiona Candlin 

[Photo by Cristina Gottardi on Unsplash]