For Museum Day: Museum attendance shows an upward trend

Since the re-independence of Estonia, the museum attendance has increased nearly three times, which is on average 4% growth per year. If such growth rate is going to continue, the museum attendance in Estonia will be 3 million visits in 2016.

The increase of museum attendance is not caused only by the growing interest of Estonian population and of tourists in museums, but also by diversification of possibilities to spend free time provided by museums. The growth of popularity of museums is also contributed by several Estonian museums’ participation in the pan-European museum digitalization project Michael, which makes some of museums’ collections accessible on the Internet. As a great event of the Museum Year, in 2009 a pan-Estonian Night of Museums was organised for the first time in which 100 museums were participating.

In 2009, there were 236 museums in Estonia. At the top by the number of museums is Harju county with 64 museums (of which 46 are in Tallinn), followed by Tartu and Lääne-Viru counties with 28 and 21 museums, respectively. Ranking is similar with regard to museum attendance, which was over 960,000 visits in Harju county, 490,000 in Tartu county and 182,000 in Lääne-Viru county.

In 2009, over 1,550 employees worked full-time in museums, in addition 400 worked as volunteers. Economic recession also affected the activity of museums. Compared to the previous year, the income of museums decreased by about 13% and was 501 million kroons. Income from the sale of tickets was 33 million kroons, which also decreased by 13% compared to the previous year. The expenses of museums amounted to 428 million kroons, of which 6% were spent on the completion of collections and 54% on labour. Museums invested 148 million kroons.

Statistics on Estonian museums are also available on the web site of the European Group on Museum Statistics (EGMUS) www.egmus.eu

Museum attendance, 1992–2009

On Saturday, 15 May 2010 another Night of Museums will take place, where there is free entrance to 130 museums, memory institutions and churches all over Estonia. Additional information http://oo.muuseum.ee