By Louise Upperton
Facing cuts in government funding, national museums in Ottawa are looking for new ways to raise money to bring popular exhibits to the public without raising admission prices.
So far it’s working. A Statistics Canada report released Mar. 9 indicates that Canadian museums still boast high attendance figures despite less funding from the federal government in the past few years.
The National Gallery estimates 650,000 visitors will pass through its doors by the end of the 1997-98 fiscal year, almost 160,000 more visitors than last year. Ursula Thiboutot, the National Gallery’s chief of marketing and communications, says that the rise in attendance is due to the success of the Renoir exhibit in 1997 that ran from June 27 to Sept. 14.
“That was the highest attended exhibition in our history,” says Thiboutot. “We had 340,000 visitors to the show and 560,000 to the museum in the same time, which surpassed our whole last year’s attendance.”
Hélène Lapointe, market research and planning officer at the Museum of Nature, says attendance is based on the kind of exhibit offered and if there’s sufficient funding to run that exhibit.
“All the museums were cut in the same way,” says Lapointe. “For the last few years, appropriations from the government have decreased. We’ve been able to put up exhibits anyway.”
Lapointe says she expects 16,000 more visitors this year than in 1996-97.
Thiboutot says to compensate for less funding, museums have to look at non-traditional ways of raising money. She says the gallery does not want to introduce an admission fee until it’s necessary.
“We had a $5 admission fee about three years ago. When we took it off we had a rise in attendance and we had a rise in revenues from the bookstore, from parking and from food services.”
The National Gallery has a very strong local attendance, she adds.
“You want to ensure that you’re not creating a barrier for the local population. People will spend $10 for a movie without thinking twice, but going to a museum they think twice about spending $5,” she says. “Unfortunately, that’s the way society is.”
The National Gallery is the only museum in the region to offer free admission to the permanent collection, charging only for special exhibits.
“Financially we don’t know how much longer we can hold onto that,” says Thiboutot.
Thiboutot says the gallery will be hiring a development officer this year and looking at a long-range fundraising campaign.
The Museum of Nature has also recently hired a development director.
“We’re starting to be more aggressive in fundraising,” says Lapointe. “We have to get funds from the private sector to afford future projects.”
Lapointe says a few corporations were involved in putting together the 1997 Arctic Odyssey exhibit that opened last summer.
Maureen McEvoy, communications manager at the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, says her museum suffers the same cuts in funding as the National Gallery because the two are affiliated.
McEvoy says the museum is being more proactive about donations.
“We used to have a modest, little donation box. Now we encourage people to donate.”
The most dramatic change for the Museum of Contemporary Photography was extending the length of seasonal exhibits. Instead of four exhibitions, the museum will only have three this year.
Lapointe adds that although the Museum of Nature continues to try and make up for the lack of government funding through donations and sponsorship programs, less funding means fewer exhibits.
“This summer we can’t afford to open a new exhibit so our main exhibit will remain the Arctic Odyssey.”