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ViGiLO - Din l-Art Ħelwa
ISSUE 54 • NOVEMBER 2020
KEYHOLE VIEWS and Local Museum Publics By Sandro Debono There is no question that the local museum ecology, including public, nongovernmental and private museums, has been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. Many are the factors at play. Much relates to the sudden shrink in tourism arrivals which confirms, yet again, that local museum publics are still prevalently tourists. This continues to be the case in spite of the significant efforts to bring local publics to the museum happening over the past decade.
T
he local museum public is nothing short of a paradox and Eurostat Culture Statistics for 2019 provide the necessary research to explain it. Indeed, the Maltese rank high in terms of acknowledging the significance of the country’s cultural heritage. Well over 80% consider this to be the case (Self-Reported Importance of Cultural Heritage - September to October 2017, 40). On the other hand, Malta has one of the lowest percentage of local publics visiting cultural sites in Europe. Less than 30% are known to visit a cultural site between one to three times. From that percentage, around 10% are registered as having visited over four times (Frequency of cultural participation in the previous 12 months, by cultural activity, 2015, 129).
There is even more to this data that awaits further in-depth study. Visiting times and relevance remain unquantified. Quality of experience, which is a generic term by the latest research, or participatory content too. The high frequency of repeat visits is certainly on the low side. This state of fact can be arguably read in some of the generic statements that one hears from time to time. ‘Foreigners foster a greater awareness towards our cultural heritage than we do’, some would state. Others claim, more specifically, that ‘we visit museums abroad, knowing too well that we have a history that is equally significant’. To a certain extent, it may be fair to consider the clamour for free access by local publics registered, yet again, in more recent
