Museums and collections, 2002

Nearly 44¹ per cent of the objects belong to the social history museums, and 29 per cent belong to the mixed social history and natural history museums. 78¹ per cent or 214¹ of the museums in the statistics are social history museums, whereas 10 per cent are art museums. 41 per cent of all the objects belong to museums located in Oslo. Hordaland and Sør-Trøndelag counties have 11 and 9 per cent respectively of the objects.

8.3 million visitors

The museum statistics for 2002 covered 276 Norwegian museums, but 2 of these had not been open to the public. The open museums had in total more than 8.3 million visits. The greatest museums with more than 100 000 visitors each represented about 5 per cent of the museums and had 47 per cent of the total visitors. The smallest museums, 15 museums, had under 1 000 visits each in 2002.

The museums in Oslo had the highest number of visitors in 2002. Just over 40 per cent of all the visits are in the Oslo-museums. The museums in Oslo cover about 12 per cent of the museums in the statistics. In Hordaland county, which has some more museums than Oslo, there were almost 1 million visits, or about 11 per cent of the total. In Sør-Trøndelag there were 800 000 visits. Aust-Agder had less visits. The six museums in this county had about one half per cent, or 40 000 visits to the museums.

4.1 million of the visits to the museums are registered as individual visits, and the rest of the visits were persons in groups. 47 per cent of the visitors to the museums were registered as paying visitors.

Buildings and constructions worthy of preservation

In addition to the registered collections the open museums at the same time administered 3 800 buildings and structures worthy of preservation. Social history museums had about 3 300 of these buildings. The museums in Oppland administered the highest number of the buildings and structures worthy of preservation, about 12 percent.

2 380 exhibitions

The open museums in the statistics had 2 380 exhibitions in 2002. Social history museums had a total of 1 680¹ exhibitions, whereas art museums had 283 exhibitions. The museums in Oslo had the highest number of exhibitions, about 13 per cent. The museums in Hordaland had 11 per cent of the exhibitions, closely followed by Nordland county with 10 per cent.

Of the exhibitions, 1 380 were basic exhibitions, about 750 were temporary exhibitions and 240 were travelling exhibitions. While Oslo had most of the total exhibitions, Hordaland had some more basic exhibitions than both Nordland and Oslo, 165, 161 and 156 respectively.

1.4 billion from public contributions

The museums included in the survey had a total of NOK 2 billion in total revenue. Public contributions comprised 68 per cent of the museums revenues, whereas ticket revenues comprised around 8 per cent. The rest of the revenues were other revenues with 19 per cent and revenues from gifts, funds and sponsors represented, with about 5 per cent.

The museums in Østfold had 89 per cent of the revenues from public contributions, whereas the museums in Nordland had the lowest subsidies, at around 52 per cent, and the highest share of ticket revenue, at around 18 per cent. Østfold had only 1.5 per cent of the revenues from ticket sales. Total expenditure for the museums in 2002 was NOK 1.9 billion.

More than 3 000 man-years

In 2002, 3 125 man-years were worked in these 274 museums. Of these, 2 978 were remunerated man-years and 2 200 of these man-years were by permanent employees.

For the first time SSB presents "New Statistics for the Norwegian museums and collection". The number in this statistics represents a share population of the Norwegian museums and will be more stable. Thus we will later on be able to compare figures over years.

Tables:

• Table 1 Museums and collections. Visits and exhibitions. 2002
• Table 2 Museums and collections. Size of collections. 2002
• Table 3 Museums and collections. Finance, employment position and man-years. 2002
• Table 4 Museums and collections. Visits and exhibitions, by visits. 2002