Key Takeaways
- Almost 530 museums have closed in the UK since 2000, with the risk of closure highest in the first 10 years of a museum’s life.
- The growth rate of museums has "flattened" and the sector is ageing, with fewer new museums opening every year.
- Private museums have the highest rate of closure at 37%, while local authority museum provision has also shrunk significantly.
- Funding cuts are the most common trigger for local authority museum closures, while rising costs are the biggest risk for independent museums.
- The study found that footfall is no guarantee of survival, with many museums closing despite attracting significant numbers of visitors.
Introduction to the Report
The UK museum sector has experienced a significant number of closures over the past 25 years, with almost 530 museums shutting their doors since 2000. A groundbreaking report published by the Mapping Museums Lab at Birkbeck, University of London, has shed light on the reasons behind these closures and what happens to the collections of closed museums. The report is based on a large-scale, two-and-a-half-year research project that examined the closure of 524 museums between 2000 and 2025.
Museum Closures and Opening Rates
The study found that although 870 museums had opened over the same period, the growth rate of museums has "flattened" and the sector is ageing, with fewer new museums opening every year. The closure rate has stabilized to around 1% after reaching a high of 2% during the austerity years of the early 2010s. However, the data also showed that age is a significant factor in determining the risk of closure, with museums much more likely to close before they are 10 years old. Many new museums that opened in the late 20th century did not survive until 2025, according to the report.
Types of Museums and Closure Rates
Private museums, which are run by individuals, families, organizations, or businesses, had the highest rate of closure at 37%. Local authority museum provision has also shrunk significantly, with the rate of closure outpacing opening among local authorities. The report recorded the loss of 139 museums, which is 8% of the local authority sector, over the past 25 years. Ten districts that had local authority museums in 2000 did not have any in 2025, including Barnet, Wandsworth, Neath Port Talbot, and Caerphilly. By contrast, the closure rate for independent museums rarely rose above 0.5% over the same period.
Reasons for Closure
A wide range of reasons were cited for closure, with funding cuts being the most common trigger for local authority museums. "Local authorities are struggling to cover the costs and the rising costs of statutory services, and museums are an area where spending can be legally reduced or indeed cut entirely," said Fiona Candlin, the director of the Mapping Museums Lab. Meanwhile, rising costs were the biggest risk for independents. "Museums often close incrementally," said Candlin. "They gradually reduce their opening times. They shift to seasonal opening, they end up just having open days, and finally, they are completely closed."
Footfall and Survival
The study showed that footfall is no guarantee of survival, with 30 large museums, each attracting between 50,000 and 100,000 visitors a year, closing since 2000. More than 100 medium-sized museums that received between 10,000 and 50,000 visitors also closed, with medium-sized museums reporting a higher rate of closures than openings over the 25-year period. "These museums had an audience; they were serving their communities," the report said. "They may have been uncommercial or unsustainable, but they were not irrelevant."
Collections and Closure
The research project explored what happened to collections after closure. It found that in recent years, the collections of closed local authority museums were increasingly likely to be put in storage or remain mothballed in situ rather than being transferred to other museums. No reports of irresponsible disposal were found by the study. "On the contrary, it was clear that staff at closed museums had often put a great deal of time, thought, and imagination into securing appropriate homes for their collections," the report said. The research found that such transfers went to a wide variety of recipients, including other museums, the armed forces, civic organizations, schools, and universities, as well as some more unusual venues such as care homes, lighthouses, and airports.
Conclusion and Future Directions
The Mapping Museums Lab has launched an open-access web application allowing users to explore and visualize the data. Neil Mendoza, who led the UK Government’s 2017 Mendoza review of museum provision in England and is now the chair of Historic England, said the data gathered gives a snapshot of a "dynamic sector". "We need to understand the museum sector completely… It’s not a totally negative picture," he said at the launch event. "In a way, it’s quite a positive picture, as well as the thinking about the terrible times that people can go through in the sector." The data will help inform discussion on what the UK museum sector should look like in future, he said. "What kind of museum sector do we want? What kinds of museums should we have? How many should we have? Do we have too many? Do we have too few?," he asked. "[With the data] we will be able to understand museums by size, by location, by type, by outcome. It’s really useful and it’s really going to be important for museums."