What can a museum gain and lose if it is obliged to economise by having shorter opening hours in the winter?
MúzeumCafé 38.
According to Imre Tóth, director of the Sopron Museum, it depends whether the possibilities have been identified. In the long run new solutions, financial policies and practices have to be formed, and new functions have to be given to museum spaces which are temporarily or even permanently closed. Accepted practices have appeared embodying concepts which were unimaginable a couple of decades ago.
János Gábor Ódor, director of the Mór Wosinsky Museum in Szekszárd, believes that in terms of legal provisions and museological principles, every visitor is important and opening hours have to be worked out according to the regulations. In so far as we lose sight of that, in the short run an institute can gain a small amount of money, but in the long run it can lose some of its visitors.
Erzsébet Reznák, director of the Kossuth Museum in Cegléd, says that in recent times her museum has been closed on three occasions; periodical closure has always involved a break in February. The Kossuth Museum is among the town’s distinguished institutes. The museum isn’t simply a space for exhibitions, a public collection or a place of work. It’s an irreplaceable meeting point, a community-forming body. In that light it’s worth weighing up the costs as well as the reasonable savings.
For years, all institutes belonging to the Budapest History Museum have had shorter opening hours in the winter. The popularity of the Castle Museum is closely connected with the amount of tourism in the capital – in summer more than half the visitors are from abroad. There are far fewer people visiting Aquincum and the Kiscell Museum in the winter, due to it getting darker earlier. Yet shortening the opening times in winter by two hours doesn’t result in any considerable reduction of running costs.