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Is The Acropolis Museum Losing the Numbers Game?

Acropolis Museum in Athens, Greece

An opinion piece by Dr James Beresford* – Since opening in June 2009, the €129 million Acropolis Museum has become the most popular museum in Greece. It has also become the embodiment – made manifest in glass and concrete – of the Greek desire to see the Marbles of the Elgin collection returned from the British Museum to Athens. Unfortunately, however, it has become painfully clear that the Museum has failed to attract anywhere near the numbers of visitors that were confidently predicted in the run-up to its inauguration.
In an interview in Time magazine in 2007, Professor Dimitris Pandermalis, the current President of the Museum, claimed there would be more than two million visitors passing through the galleries of the Museum each year. Writing in the Museums Journal the previous October, art historian Tom Flynn, a leading advocate for the return of the Marbles to Greece, also noted: ‘The old Acropolis Museum currently attracts around 1.5 million people each year. The Greeks hope their New Acropolis Museum will at least double that figure.’ Unfortunately, however, the Museum has consistently failed to fulfill such expectations. Over its first four years, the attendance figures compiled by the Museum staff recorded a total of 5,440,343 visitors – considerably fewer than the eight million its President predicted, and less than half the 12 million postulated by Dr Flynn.
It is, perhaps, unfair to deride the vastly inflated visitor numbers that Greek officials and commentators were guesstimating for the Acropolis Museum prior to the economic tsunami that would sweep across Greece. However, even in the summer of 2009, as the Museum was due to open its doors to the public and when the economic crisis was already underway, the then Culture Minister, Antonis Samaras, was still keen to use the predicted attendance at the museum to push for the return of the Marbles from London, and it was noted in Athens Plus: ‘The museum is also expected to … [attract] some 10,000 visitors a day and about 2 million every year, an in-flux that Culture Minister Antonis Samaras believes will shift public opinion in favor of the Parthenon Marbles’ return’ (19 June, 2009, p.4.)
Despite the hopes pinned on the Museum by the current Greek Prime Minister, when the nose-dive in the Museum’s attendance was first publicised last month in the Museums Journal, international campaigners lobbying on behalf of the return of the Marbles to Greece were quick to argue that visitation numbers had no relevance when applied to the repatriation debate concerning the Marbles. It is certainly true that legal, historical and ethical claims are equally, if not more, important to the repatriation campaign. Nonetheless, even the Acropolis Museum’s official end-of-year ‘Highlights Report’ published in the summer of 2011 was clear that ‘Museum visitation numbers are a measure of the Museum’s success.’ If the President and Board of the Museum are sticking to this criterion then, with visitor numbers between 50–75% lower than initially expected, it is difficult to regard the Museum as anything but a failure. If there is any truth in the old proverb ‘the proof of the pudding is in the eating’, then it seems the public appetite for the cultural treasures contained within the Acropolis Museum has been woefully overestimated.
Perhaps of more concern than the recession-hit attendance totals is the rapid tail-off in visitors over the course of the Museum’s short lifetime. During its first 12 months of operation (June 2009 – May 2010), visitor numbers to the new museum were a creditable 1,950,539, falling just short of the two million anticipated by Professor Pandermalis. However, an increase in the entrance costs from €1 to €5, the deepening effects of the recession, and a decline in curiosity as the novelty of the new museum wore off all had a debilitating effect on visitor numbers. Between the first and second years of operation there was a massive drop of 640,680 visitors. The Museum’s own attendance records indicate this fall-off has continued over the last two years, albeit slowing considerably.
More worrying are figures compiled by the Art Newspaper which indicate an accelerating decline in visitors to the Acropolis Museum. Beginning in 2010 (the first full calendar year in which the museum was open to the pubic), there was a fall of 111,018 visitors over the course of 2011, while this drop more than doubled in 2012. Equally unsettling is the plummeting position of the Acropolis Museum when compared against the attendance of other international museums. Reaching 25th position in 2010, the Acropolis Museum dropped 13 places in 2011, and an additional 21 places in 2012, finishing last year in 59th position – a fall of 34 places in just two years.

Table 1

Year

Visitor

Numbers

Decline in Visitors From Previous Year

June 2009 – May 2010

1,950,539

June 2010 – May 2011

1,309,859

640,680

June 2011 – May 2012

1,143,886

165,973

June 2012 – May 2013

1,036,059

107,827

New Acropolis Museum. Official visitor numbers spanning June 2009-May 2013. (Figures courtesy of the New Acropolis Museum.)

Table 2

Year

Visitor

Numbers

Decline of Visitors From Previous Year

World Ranking (Based on Visitor Numbers)

2010

1,355,720

25

2011

1,244,702

111,018

38

2012

1,020,920

223,782

59

Art Newspaper. Visitor numbers for the New Acropolis Museum, 2010-2012.

Such results differ radically from those achieved this May when The Times ‘commissioned a panel of inveterate museum-goers’ to compile a list of the top 50 international museums in which the New Acropolis Museum took third place, right behind the British Museum. (Top of the list was the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC.) However, rather than follow the lead of the nine art critics, academics and journalists who compiled The Times list, the paying public has voted with its feet, delivering a damning verdict on the Acropolis Museum.
The fall-off in visitors to the Acropolis Museum must be addressed. With Greece still on its economic knees, everyone hopes the Museum can be turned around and become a popular and financially lucrative attraction. At present the Acropolis Museum barely manages to cover its annual operating costs of €7 million; any further fall in the numbers of paying visitors coming through its doors will see the expensive Museum becoming a further drain on the already depleted Greek public purse. Lack of revenue may also place important conservation projects carried out within the Museum at risk and threaten the jobs of some of the 200-or-so Museum employees.
There are, nevertheless, grounds for optimism. The decline in visitor numbers should be reversed in 2013 as the Greek tourist sector reports a boom in international holidaymakers who have flocked to the country throughout the summer. Political upheavals affecting countries such as Egypt and Turkey have also redirected many tourists to Greece. That said, the current instability of neighbouring Mediterranean countries hardly guarantees a bright future for the New Acropolis Museum.
Professor Pandermalis declined to be interviewed regarding the poor attendance of his museum. Nonetheless, he issued a statement that noted: ‘The Acropolis Museum is proud to have welcomed the highest number of visitors in a Greek museum despite the enormous economic crisis in Greece.’ The statement went on to add that, ‘Having already placed the visitor at center stage, the Museum’s main goal is to continue to attract hundreds of thousands of visitors through inspiring programs, all of which are published on the website and to offer more quality services using a variety of approaches.’
The President of the Acropolis Museum is correct to emphasise the tough economic conditions as the primary cause for the relatively low visitor numbers. Nevertheless, despite the Professor’s reassuring words, there is a pressing need to examine the possibility that visitation to the New Acropolis Museum has been undermined by the intrusion of politics into the cultural arena. The Museum was, after all, designed and constructed principally to function as a propaganda tool to aid Greek politicians in their quest to reclaim Elgin’s trophies: the focus on the Museum’s proximity to the Acropolis rock, its visual link to the Parthenon, and the natural Attic light flooding through the galleries, were deemed necessary strings to add to the bow of those petitioning for the return of the Marbles. These considerations led to the Museum running vastly over budget and delayed construction for many years. Yet despite the vast amount of money invested in the Acropolis Museum, the display of the objects within the galleries – including the battered rejects of the Scottish Earl’s collecting mania – can, frankly, be rather dull, especially for those visiting with children. Labeling of many of the artefacts is also frequently uninformative or overly simplistic. As such, while there is no doubt that the completed Museum is a wonderful venue in which to present the archaeological treasures of the Athenian Acropolis, and it clearly appeals to many art critics, as well as others with a professional interest in museums. Does more attention therefore need to be paid to providing interactive facilities, with greater emphasis placed on more family-friendly displays, which might inspire both Greeks and international tourists to visit – and revisit – the Acropolis Museum?
Should deterioration in visitor numbers continue then the Acropolis Museum will soon begin hemorrhaging finances, leading to a further drain on the public purse over and above the €129 million that was expended during the construction process. The Museum not only risks becoming a money pit, and a long-term drain on the finances of the Hellenic state, but failure to boost visitor numbers also risks branding the Museum a one trick pony; a building primarily intended to repatriate the Marbles from London rather than meaningfully engage with the paying public. As such, there needs be cold, hard analysis of the fall-off in visitor numbers in an effort to identify the underlying problems and formulate strategies to turn the situation around.
Greece has some of the finest archaeologists and culture professionals in Europe. If the best of these are promoted to positions of influence within the Acropolis Museum, and are given free rein to work unencumbered by political interference, they can undoubtedly turn the situation around. Any members of the board and staff of the Museum found to have been assigned to their positions through political patronage need to be replaced with meritocratic appointments of young and dynamic Greek archaeologists and museologists. If such action is taken, then the Acropolis Museum can begin to deliver the visitor numbers originally prophesied.

*James Beresford is an archaeologist and specialist in ancient maritime history. He is currently based in Athens writing a book dealing with the effects of the economic crisis on the Greek heritage sector. Until the summer he was Assistant Professor at Lahore University of Management Sciences. He has also taught in Japan, the United Arab Emirates as well as the United Kingdom, and was editor of Minerva: The International Review of Ancient Art & Archaeology. 
 

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