New Zealand’s museums and galleries are worth $5.6 billion: report

New Zealand’s museums and art galleries have been valued at $5.6 billion in a first-of-its-kind economic report, released today.

The finding has been met with a call from Museums Aotearoa, the peak body for the country’s museum sector, to improve funding for cultural institutions that are struggling to maintain collections and pay staff due to lost visitor revenue from the Covid-19 pandemic and soaring inflation.

The report – by economic researchers BERL – found museums’ and galleries’ collections of more than 45 million objects were worth $3.6b, while their buildings were worth $2b. The sector employed 3365 full-time equivalent workers.

“We’re very firmly part of the economic machine of our economy and our communities,” said Museums Aotearoa chief executive Adele Fitzpatrick, adding the sector also had incalculable social and cultural value. “This is a call for central government to play a stronger role, and recognise the value the sector gives back.”

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Many museums and galleries were “at the mercy” of councils, Fitzpatrick said, despite holding nationally-significant collections. That had led to an ad hoc funding system, with inequities in places that valued museums less than others.

Museums Aotearoa believed the $5.6b was a “very conservative” figure as it was based on publicly-available asset information.

Fitzpatrick said despite that, any business with an asset base of that size should be able to return significant profits – but that was not happening with museums and galleries.

She said people had to move away from the “headcount at the door mentality”, recently shown by Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown in his disparaging remarks about Auckland Art Gallery’s visitor numbers.

The research also found that 11,065 volunteers supported the sector. Fitzpatrick said that was a marker of how the sector helped to keep older people active in and engaged with their communities.

In 2018, about 906,000 students visited museums and galleries. Despite that, Fitzpatrick said many museums and galleries had lost contracts with the Ministry of Education recently for school visits.

It was “very concerning” funding was being shifted away when the New Zealand history curriculum was about to come into force in schools.

Museums and galleries were important places for students to discover local histories; inspire, educate, excite and enrich them; and help them figure out their identity or what they may want to do in the future, Fitzpatrick said.

They were also huge tourism drawcards: in 2018 more than 17.5 million visits were made to museums and galleries. About 3.9m of those visits were from about 1.4m unique international visitors.

Many museums and galleries offered visitors free entry but had enormous overheads to care for collections on behalf of all New Zealanders, Fitzpatrick said.

Since the start of the pandemic, voluntary donations had been wiped out, and other revenue from charging entry to special exhibitions and from on-site retail, hospitality and venue hire had dried up.

The report found medium-sized museums and galleries were most at risk of going under, with an average net operating deficit of $277,000.

Larger institutions were in a precarious position with an average surplus of $89,000, which Fitzpatrick said was small considering the scale of their operations, while smaller institutions were in better financial shape but relied heavily on volunteers.

Otago Museum director Ian Griffin said Te Papa was the only museum to receive consistent funding from central government, despite other institutions holding nationally significant collections as well.

Parts of Otago Museum were not even protected by sprinklers in the event of a fire due to difficulties sourcing money, Griffin said. “This has got to change.”

Museum staff were highly skilled workers – think conservators that take care of artworks – but they were not highly paid and there was a lack of training in New Zealand, Griffin said.

Researchers who used museums’ natural history and science collections were also hesitant to pay for access.

Investing more in museums could have a transformational impact on the lives of Kiwis, Griffin said.