The pandemic did a number on museums in the U.S. and worldwide. When these institutions closed for varying lengths of time, they lost admissions and membership revenues while people, perhaps, lost the habit of going to museums. Many museums pivoted to online programming (e.g., digitized collections, exhibitions, educational material), which made visiting institutions seem optional. Foreign tourism to the U.S. from Europe and Asia also dropped during this period, and audience numbers have continued to lag behind pre-pandemic levels, particularly at museums on the east and west coasts—several of which raised admissions fees from $25 to $30 in 2023. Complicating matters is the fact that there are simply fewer people in the urban centers where most major museums are located thanks to liberal work-from-home policies instituted during Covid.

Some museums responded to the ongoing strain with highly visible changes. New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum laid off employees, while the Dallas Museum of Art furloughed some full-time staff, reduced the number of traveling exhibitions coming to the institution and had fewer open days each week. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art eliminated twenty staff positions, citing a 35 percent decline in visitorship compared to 2019 attendance. It stands to reason that other institutions faced similar challenges even if they responded differently, and uncertainty may ultimately have dealt museums a larger blow than reduced attendance.

Many museum officials did more during the pandemic closures and slow reopenings than fret and hope things would return to normal, but it’s not always clear what worked and didn’t. At Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2023 attendance reached 425,000, up from 375,000 visitors in 2022 and 345,554 in pre-pandemic 2019, which may be the result of people taking full advantage of the ability to be out in the world, maskless.

Across the nation, museums........

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