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Mapping UK Museums highlights a threefold increase during the late 20th Century

Research looks at how the UK museum sector has changed since 1960 and what factors prompted its growth

A photo of the The Mechanical Music Museum, Suffolk
Mechanical Music Museum, Suffolk

Mapping Museums

During the late twentieth century, the number of museums in the UK more than tripled. It was generally accepted that the majority of the new museums were independent, but otherwise there was very little data on when the museums opened, where, what subjects they covered, or whether or not they survived. The Mapping Museum research project was devised in response to the absence of coherent data on that expansion. Our aim was to document and analyse how the sector changed between 1960 and 2020. 

What we’re researching:

Mapping Museums began with three over-arching questions:  

  • How has the independent museum sector changed since 1960? 
  • What factors prompted and facilitated the increase in numbers of independent museums?  
  • Were the new independent museums symptomatic of wider cultural concerns and, if so, what? 

To address those questions, our research was divided into four overlapping phases: data collection; designing and building a database and project website; data analysis; accounting for patterns and trends in the data via desk-based and interview-based research. 

The project has three main outputs:

  • A database containing information on over 4,000 museums. The data can be browsed, searched, and visualised, and is free to use under the terms of the Creative Commons (BY) license. 
  • A website that houses the database and web application, and resources linked to the project. These include a glossary, transcripts of interviews  with museum founders and links to films and podcasts.
  • A book that analyses how and why so many new museums were established in the late twentieth century.  

“This project has produced the first authoritative, longitudinal database of UK museums, and we’ve written a report detailing patterns and trends in museums’ growth and closure since 1960. It’s all open access and we hope it will inform policy and practice across the sector, as well as being of interest to the wider public" says Professor Fiona Candlin, Professor of Museology, Department of History of Art.”

A photo of the Hamilton Toy Museum, Perthshire
The Hamilton Toy Museum, Perthshire

What will the impact be?

"This project has produced the first authoritative, longitudinal database of UK museums, and we’ve written a report detailing patterns and trends in museums’ growth and closure since 1960. It’s all open access and we hope it will inform policy and practice across the sector, as well as being of interest to the wider public," says Professor Fiona Candlin, Professor of Museology, History of Art department.

Project Fact-file

Further Information

For more on Professor Fiona Candlin (Principal Investigator)

More on Professor Alex Poulovassilis (Co-investigator)

The Mapping Museums Blog

Mapping Museums Website

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