Broadly, despite the multifarious ways in which museums are established and maintained around the world, there are only four modes of governance:
line departments;
“arms-length” institutions;
independent not-for-profit associations;
private ownership.
Those museums in the last category that are operated for profit are excluded from the definitions of museums by the United Nations Educational and Scientific Organization (UNESCO), the Museums Association of Great Britain (MA), and the American Association of Museums (AAM), all of which define museums as not-for-profit. Not-for-profit privately owned museums are included in the definitions, but do not constitute a separate category since these museums, many of which are corporate institutions, may be operated under any of the other three modes of governance: thus a corporate museum may be a line department of its parent corporation, or may be established under a governing board established at arm’s length from the corporation, or may even be set up as a completely independent institution to which the corporation contributes grants. Thus it is sufficient here to consider the first three modes of governance, which characterize all those institutions that satisfy the internationally accepted definition of a museum.
Line departments
Line departments, by far the most numerous, are in most cases government museums administered by a department of the national, state, provincial, county, or municipal government. However, line department museums also include most university museums – such as a geology museum that is administered by the university’s earth sciences division – and corporate museums, such as the automotive museums maintained by each of Germany’s car manufacturers. In governance terms, all these museums have in common that they are administered as a line department of a larger organization that owns their buildings and collections.
Government line departments may report to a minister responsible for culture, education, tourism, or other government sectors. Although the Director of the National Palace Museum in Taipei is an appointed member of Taiwan’s governing cabinet, all other government line department museums around the world report through the relevant government hierarchy.
Specialized museums may report to ministers of their relevant departments – thus an agricultural museum may be part of a federal or provincial department of agriculture, and many postal museums and communication museums are an integral part of national postal or telecommunication services. Among the most numerous museum types in many countries (including the United States) are the military museums governed by the unit of the armed forces that they represent – regimental museums.
If line department museums have boards of trustees, they are usually advisory only. Sometimes called visiting committees, these advisory boards may have a broader or a more narrowly specified scope, but in any case they remain advisory to the governing body, which retains authority and responsibility for the institution. The mission, mandate, goals, objectives, and policies of these museums are established within guidelines set by the organizations of which they are a part – government departments, university disciplines, or divisions of a corporation. The larger organization owns the buildings and the collections, while staff, including the director, are employees of that organization – civil servants in the case of government line departments, university or corporate employees in the other examples. Recruitment, evaluation, and disciplinary processes are all subject to the policies of the larger organization – meaning civil service procedures for government line department museums – often resulting in a relatively static institution with limited capacity for change. Few of these museums have membership programs, and volunteers are usually scarce, since the public perception of many of these museums is that all tasks should be accomplished by paid employees, especially if these are taxpayer-supported, as in the case of government line department museums.
Funding for the operation of line department museums is in most cases a line item in the budget of the government, university, or corporate department of which they are a part. They may also qualify for grants, but their primary financial support comes from regular appropriations. Most line department museums offer free admission, but even if admission is charged, self-generated revenue – whether from ticket sales, retail, rentals, or food services – in most cases does not benefit the museum directly, with profits (sometimes all revenue) going into the general funds of the government, university, or corporation, not benefiting the museum directly; in the worst instances, government appropriations may even be reduced commensurate with any increase in self-generated funds. Such a financial structure has two obvious drawbacks:
1 1. The museum has no motivation to enhance visitor services that could generate additional revenue. As a result, visitor services in government line department museums around the world are often notoriously poor.
2 2. Annual appropriations are subject to periodic cutbacks, especially affecting government line department museums in times of economic difficulty. Since these cutbacks usually constrain the funds available for programs that may or may not be offered by the museum, rather than the salaries of relatively fixed civil service positions, over many years the salaries tend to creep up as a proportion of the budget, resulting in a dearth of operating resources for programming.
More complex systems
Some governments responsible for multiple museums have established museum systems, adding an administrative layer in the form of a national, provincial, civic, or state museums authority, in the hope of obtaining efficiencies of scale due to the centralization of such services as conservation, documentation, purchasing, security, accounting, or human resources. One result is often the erection of a non-public building in which many of these support functions can be maintained. Singapore’s Heritage Conservation Centre in Jurong is an outstanding example, which our company, Lord Cultural Resources, helped to plan. The individual museums, which usually retain their specific curatorial, education, and exhibition departments, may struggle to assert their identities in such a system, but in general these disadvantages are outweighed by the gains in efficiency due to centralization of other functions. In the case of Singapore, these include the Singapore Art Museum, the Singapore History Museum, and the Asian Civilization Museum, all of which benefit from the storage, conservation, and documentation services of the state-of-the-art Centre in Jurong; the entire complex is governed by the government-appointed National Heritage Board, which is currently proceeding with the renovation and expansion of two heritage buildings into a new National Gallery of Singapore.
Further complexity in governance can arise when the museum is part of a cultural complex. A cultural district may be simply an area within a city where a number of independent cultural attractions are located; or it may be a deliberately planned complex, as on Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Island in the United Arab Emirates, or in Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District. The Louvre Abu Dhabi, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, and the National Zayed Museum are currently under construction on Saadiyat Island, with a Maritime Museum also planned, while at West Kowloon a multidisciplinary museum named M+ is planned, along with an exhibition center and a range of performing arts venues.
The governance of each component of a complex – which may individually be line departments, “arm’s length” institutions, not-for-profit organizations, or private sector attractions – may need to be planned in relation to a central authority for the complex, if there is to be one. The concern is to respect the independence of each constituent while realizing advantages due to their association, such as common marketing, joint purchasing, security, or in some cases shared facilities. Our company has assisted with both the Abu Dhabi and Hong Kong projects, where final decisions as to governance are still under
