European national museum survey results

The Network of European Museum Organisations has produced a new publication "Voices from the Museum: Survey Research in Europe's National Museums"

The report presents visitor perspectives on what it means to be a national museum and relations between national museums and identities.

This study presents the findings from interviews and focus groups carried out with visitors and minority groups at six European national museums. It looks at the connections that can be made between national, European and minority identities and how these frame very different experiences of the national museum. Whilst visitors were, on the whole, convinced that national museums represented a shared, collective identity, minority groups’ views differed discernibly.

Despite collectively forming a substantial section of the European population, minority experiences were largely absent from national museums, a situation that was recognized by less than 10% of museum visitors. Moreover, as noted by participants in the EUNAMUS focus groups, non-European minorities do not expect to be represented in Europe’s national museums.

The report is produced within the three-year research programme, EuNaMus – European National Museums: Identity Politics, the Uses of the Past and the European Citizen, coordinated at Tema Q at Linköping University. EuNaMus explores the creation and power of the heritage created and presented at European national museums to the world, Europe and its states, as an unsurpassable institution in contemporary society.

National museums are defined and explored as processes of institutionalized negotiations where material collections and displays make claims and are recognized as articulating and representing national values and realities. Questions asked in the project are why, by whom, when, with what material, with what result and future possibilities are these museums shaped.

Download the publication "Voices from the Museum: Survey Research in Europe's National Museums"