Good value and great fun: annual “museum nights” like this one in Bern in 2017
KEYSTONE / PETER KLAUNZER
Swiss museums attract more than a million people a month on average – with art museums being the most popular, followed by historical and technical institutions.
On Tuesday, the Federal Statistics OfficeExternal link released its first round-up of statistics related to museums. There are 1,111 Swiss museums, most of them (367) regional or local. After these, art (171), technical (140) and historical (126) museums are most common.
In 2015, Swiss museums registered 12.1 million admissions – more than half of them at 49 institutions. Art museums attracted 3.3 million visitors. While the most popular museums welcome more than 50,000 guests annually, nearly 75% get fewer than 5,000. Altogether, Swiss museums gave 102,500 tours.
There are museums dotted all over the country; every fourth village has one, notes the statistics office. Most are in German-speaking Switzerland, but Italian-speaking canton Ticino has the highest density.
In 2014, 72% of the population visited a museum, an exhibition or a gallery, notes the statistics office, adding that of those with a tertiary degree, 88% visited a museum.
Many museums are financed via public coffers – with nearly half listing public monies as their main source of funding. These statistics may well influence how much money museums receive in the future.
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A collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist masterpieces built up by Zurich arms dealer Emil Georg Bührle are on display in Lausanne.
Chaplin museum celebrates first birthday with world record
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The record was set to mark Chaplin’s birthday and to celebrate the first year of “Chaplin’s WorldExternal link”. The museum devoted to the London-born comic actor, director and composer is located in a 14-hectare park and occupies the mansion where the Chaplin family lived the last 25 years of Charlie Chaplin’s life.
Bührle Collection masterpieces on show in Lausanne
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A collection of masterpieces built up by Zurich arms dealer Emil Georg Bührle is on display at Lausanne’s Fondation de l’Hermitage museum.
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With competition from social media and other online diversions, museums need to find innovative ways to keep the public’s attention.
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Set among the pretend foliage, speckled light and sounds of jungle habitats lie everyday objects and ceremonial items. Recorded monkey screeches, bird squawks and even illegal logging can be heard, reminding visitors of the life and struggles of the Amazonian populations. This is Amazonia – The Shaman and the Mind of the ForestExternal link, where…
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