Having spent my last reflective post on the changing landscape of research libraries, I thought I’d do some research on museums and came across this interesting article from 2016 entitled How the Rich Are Hurting the Museums They Fund. It speaks to how the museum patrons of big money are essentially feeding into the deterioration of museum sustainability. With most of the money going towards progressive or famous museums, there is less funding to secure the preservation of other museum establishments.

Smaller museums are and will continue to suffer under this trend. Some are losing money trying to keep up with bigger named museums like the MET for example. According to a report done by The DeVos Institute of Arts Management: “When grant funding is slashed, the organizations that suffer most are the smaller groups, which have lower levels of visibility among other donors…This means that arts organizations of color — along with rural, avant-garde and service organizations — suffer disproportionately.”

These smaller and dependent institutions cannot compete for attention in the way large, city ones can who have resources to gain more favor or attention. And with all of this going on, museum attendance had declined in recent years.

Read the full article about arts and philanthropy by Katherine Stanley by Medium.