Photo by Tom Stepleton

So what do I love?  This, coming from a man about to get married in eight days.  Besides my fiance, I love the City Museum.  Why do I love the City Museum?

1. Organic – The museum was started by Bob Cassilly and his wife Gail Soliwoda sculptors turned real estate developers.  They in collaboration with their artist friends started a museum and it grew.
2. Community Based – The museum started with the help of local artists, teachers, students and craftspeople making it of St. Louis.  There is no other museum like it in the world, making it an attraction to St. Louis.
3. Welcoming – The “voice” of the museum is welcoming, it is about the visitor, not the museum, as a visitor “what do your think?”, “what can you make?”.  The museum is outward facing not inward facing, the museum’s “voice” is  saying “we are here for you !”.
4. Arts Lens – Almost all of the experiences at the museum are through the “lens” of an artist.  As a visitor you become an artist and see the wonders of the world as an artist sees them.
5. $12 Admission – A local movie in St. Louis is $6.75 (I looked).  Although museum admission is more than a local movie, they offer $10 tickets on Friday and Saturday after 5Pm, a brilliant idea to attract couples and under 18 visitors.
6. Event Based –   Last time I visited I had my fortune read, although different than a typical museum event, the museum is event driven.
7. Encourages Conversation – The museum made me happy, I was standing at the top of the stairs waiting for my friend and playing with one of the stairway rollers, a group of kids came up and together we started spinning the rollers.  Upstairs, I had a conversation about my friends collection of flashlights and how his collection would fit in at the museum.  These are not big conversations, but the place is so happy and free you find yourself talking to people.
8.  Wonderful – In every sense of the word, the museum creates “wonder”, the museum is wonderful as in exciting and the museum is wonderful as in unusually good.
9. Constructivist – There are almost no text panels in the museum, the museum allows the visitor to deconstruct their previous thinking and change their views
10. Workbench Attitude – The world is lacking in workbenches.  I don’t know of any homes with a workbench today.  Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak launched their business in Job’s garage at a work bench.
11. Hands on, Minds on, Body on- The City Museum activates all of the senses, works with different learning styles and is interactive using your hands, your mind and your body.
12. Artful – Makes me want to go home and make Art, maybe the highest compliment a visitor can pay to a museum.

City Museum
701 North 15th Street
St. Louis, MO 63103
(314) 231-2489
http://www.citymuseum.org/

Obituary of Bob Cassilly Founder of the City Museum

Citi des Sciences et de l'Industrie

World’s Top 10 Science Centers, most visited Science Museums, data as of 2010 / 2011

Top 10 Science Centers – Worldwide

1. Citi des Sciences et de l’Industrie  5,000,000
2. Science Museum, London 2,700,000
3. Shanghai Science and Technology Museum, 2,500,000
2. National Science and Technology Museum, Taiwan 2,050,790
4. Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago 1,605,020
5. Pacific Science Center, Seattle 1,602,000
6. Museum of Science, Boston 1,600,000
7. Science City, Kolkata 1,522,726
8. Ontario Science Center  1,509,912
9. Deutsches Museum, Munich 1,500,000
10. California Science Center Los Angeles, Los Angeles 1,400,000

Top 10 Science Centers – USA
1. Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago 1,605,020
2. Pacific Science Center, Seattle 1,602,000
3. Museum of Science, Boston 1,600,000
4. California Science Center Los Angeles, Los Angeles 1,400,000
5. St. Louis Science Center, St. Louis 1,400,000
6. Franklin Institute 892,804
7. Liberty Science Center, Jersey City 866,000
8. Fernbank Science Center, Atlanta 865,000
9. California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco 882,000
10. Exploratorium 600,000

Working on understanding “Museum Satisfaction” in different types of museums, starting by creating lists of the world’s top museums by category.   (Art Museums, Children’s Museums, Natural History Museums, Science Centers, Corporate Museums).  Will then work on surveying the public on “Museum Satisfaction” by type of museum.  I started with the Top 10 Art Museums visitation.

Visitor attendance data for Science Centers is much more difficult to find. For Science Centers, in the USA, I am using 2010 Annual Reports when available, please do not quote the data as it is unverified. I am interested in feedback and omissions. 

I believe museum visitation starts prior to visiting the “bricks and mortar”, Interested in “museum satisfaction” for both the local museum and the global museums and understanding how local museums can compete in a new global market.  A latter step will be comparing museum visitation as compared to museum website visitation of the world’s top museums by category.

Making a distinction between Science Centers and Natural History Museums, Top 10 Natural History Museums is my next project then, corporate museums and Children’s Museums.  The definition of types of museum is not constant between countries, and the definition of what counts towards museum statistics differs between countries.  Even within countries, what counts as a “visit”  differs museum to museum , some museums count all entries through the doors, including staff, contractors, off site programs and with “sister museums”, making comparing worldwide data very difficult.

Resources:

Asia Pacific Network of Science and Technology Centres: http://www.aspacnet.org/
Association of Science-Technology Centres: http://www.astc.org/
Australasian Science and Technology Exhibitors Network: http://www.astenetwork.net/
British Interactive Group: http://www.big.uk.com/
Canadian Association of Science Centres: http://www.canadiansciencecentres.ca/
European Network of Science Centres and Museums: http://www.ecsite.eu/
North Africa and Middle East Science Centers Network: http://namesnetwork.org/
National Council of Science Museums: http://www.ncsm.org.in/
Network for the Popularisation of Science and Technology in Latin America and the Caribbean: http://www.redpop.org/
Southern African Association for Science and Technology Centres: http://www.saastec.co.za/
Cultural Policies: http://culturaincifre.istat.it/sito/musei/musei.htm
Touring Club Italiano: http://static.touring.it/store/document/19_file.pdf
UNESCO: http://www.uis.unesco.org/Culture/Pages/default.aspx
EGMUS: http://www.egmus.eu
Cultural Policies: http://www.culturalpolicies.net/web/index.php
Official Museum Directory: http://www.officialmuseumdirectory.com
American Association of Museums: http://www.aam-us.org/
International Council of Museums: http://icom.museum/

*  Getty listed as Getty Center Only (Getty Center: 1,205,685 visitors; Getty Villa: 405,710 visitors)

I am becoming more interested in comparing “bricks and mortar” museum attendance as compared to the on line museum experience.  As a first step, researched top Art Museum attendance and Art Museum exhibition attendance. As next steps I will create similar attendance information for Science Centers, Children’s Museums, Natural History Museums and Corporate Museums and compare their attendance to their online visitation.

Notes:

Data used was supplied by the museums.  Many museums have one ticket for the entire museum and cannot provide individual attendance for temporary exhibitions. Institutions offering a number of exhibitions for a single ticket, are shown as one entry. Institutions with more than one building included separate museum attendance figures for each venue.

Data Source:
The Art Newspaper, April 2011, “Exhibition & Museum Attendance Figures 2010″

1. Atelier4 (A4): Custom-built crates from recyclable and renewable materials. (718) 433-3500.
2. Art Crating: Local shipping and installation. Caters to major Chelsea galleries. (718) 218-7250.
3. Cadogan Tate: European network, worldwide shipping and a brokerage service that deals with customs. (718) 706-7999.
4. Crozier Fine Arts: One of the oldest craters in the business. Offers private office spaces attached to storage vaults. (212) 741-2024.
5. Ship/Art International: Packing and shipping mastery on the West Coast, with climate-controlled transportation anywhere. (650) 952-0100.
6. Atthowe: Art storage and installation.  Oakland California.  (510) 654-6816
7. Dietl International Services: Large international network and customized logistical services. (212) 400-9555.
8. Dun-Rite: Rigging, installation and storage. Well versed in large-scale sculpture. (718) 991-1100.
9. Ilevel: Known for creative collaborations with collectors on placement and display as well as white-glove treatment. (212) 477-4319.
10. US Art: Art Handling, Art transportation and installation, (781) 986-5595
11. Artex: Art Handling, Art transportation, crating and Art installation, (301) 350-5500
12. Fortress Fine Arts: For Art moving, packing, installation, climate controlled storage (718) 937-5500
13. More Specialized Transport: Sculpture rigging and  installation (201) 678-0060
14. Box Art : Fine Art Crating (718) 782-6100

List partially from New York Times, December 2, 2007, THE CONNOISSEUR; Masterpiece Planner

1. The City Museum
2. The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis
3. Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose
4. Minnesota Children’s Museum
5. The Children’s Museum of Manhattan
6. Chicago Chicdren’s Museum
7. Bay Area Discovery Museum
8. Kohl Children’s Museum
9. Children’s Museum of Pittsburg
10. Portland Children’s Museum

Runners Up

11.Boston Children’s Museum

12.Please Touch

13.Port Discovery

14. Brooklyn Children’s Museum

1.    Exploratorium
2.    Denver Museum of Nature and Science
3.    The Tech Museum of Innovation
4.    Center of Science and Industry (COSI)
5.    Museum of Science and Industry
6.    Science Museum of Minnesota
7.    Liberty Science Center
8.    Museum of Science Boston
9.    Exploration Place
10.  California Academy of Science

Runners Up
11.  California Science Center
12.  Pacific Science Center
13.  Oregon Museum of Science and Industry
14.  Detroit Science Center
15.  Discovery Science Center

1. Mutter
2. City Museum
3. Museum of Outsider Art

1. Mass Moca
2. DIA
3. San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art
4.