N E W  Y O R K  S T A T E ’S 
M U S E U M S

B U I L D I N G  C O M M U N I T Y

 

Museums have helped shape the American experience in the past, and they have the potential to play an even more aggressive role in shaping American life in the future. They offer a powerful educational model that can help redesign and reform American education, and they can be important centers of community development and renewal.

            Harold K. Skramstad, Jr., President Emeritus, Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village, An Agenda for American Museums in the Twenty-First Century, 1999

Museums and heritage organizations are everywhere in New York State.

·         There are approximately 1,900 museums, heritage organizations, and state and national historic sites in New York State.  The overwhelming majority of these institutions are chartered by the New York State Education Department.

·      In addition, there are another 1,600 institutions holding archival collections.

·      Most are small museums situated outside of large urban centers.

·      All 62 counties have at least one museum or heritage organization.

·     There is one museum for every 10,134 New Yorkers.^[1]

Museums are popular.  

·         In New York State, annual attendance in 2005 (including educational programming) to museums and heritage organizations, arboreta, aquaria, and zoos; nature centers, and state and national historic sites was 51.8 million visitors.  That’s 141,918 visitors per day.

·         Nationally, 81% of all adult travelers include a cultural, arts, heritage or historic site activity while on a trip of 50 miles or more. 

·         More than 29% of NYS visitors attend museums, historic sites, and cultural activities.  In fact, when compared to the primary activities enjoyed by visitors to other northeastern states, New York state visitors have the highest propensity to list cultural activities as a primary trip activity.

·         60% of New York State’s museums and heritage organizations are accessible to some degree to visitors with disabilities.

New York State museums are critical partners in K-12 education.

·         New York State is the only state in the country that incorporates its museums and heritage organizations through its state education department.

·         In 2005, 93% of Americans believe that arts education is vital to a well-rounded education for their children – an increase of 2% from 2001.

·         55% of museums in New York State offer standards-based programs for K-12 students.

·         The state’s museums and heritage organizations provided onsite educational programming to more than 4.461 million school children in 2006 (representing 35% of the NYS K-12 public/nonpublic school population).

·         2.195 million New York State school children received educational programming from museums and heritage organizations in their classrooms in 2006.

·         In 2006, more than 1.2 million school children have access to educational materials on the Websites of the state’s museums and heritage organizations.

 In   In addition to onsite, offsite, and Web-based programming, 90% of the state’s museums and heritage organizations develop and provide classroom materials for students; 82% provide resource materials for teachers; and 59% develop and offer teacher-training workshops.

New York State museums are good business.

·         Museums and heritage organizations in New York State employed more than 12,000 full-time and part-time people in 2002.

·         Museums are a steady growth industry:  the New York State Bureau of Labor Statistics projects museum employment will grow by 2.9% until 2012.

·         Tourists who visit museums spend nearly twice as much on their travel as those who do not.

·         In 2002, events celebrating the 225^th anniversary of the American Revolutionary War drew more than 125,000 attendees to dozens of historic sites in the Mohawk, Champlain, and Hudson River Valleys that created an economic impact in excess of $31 million.

·         74% of businesses recognize that it is important to have an active arts community where they operate. Nonprofit arts organizations, which spend $55.4 million each year, leverage a remarkable $37.4 million in additional spending by arts audiences — spending that pumps vital revenue into local restaurants, hotels, retail stores, parking garages, and other businesses.

·         Operating expenditures for New York State museums exceeded $1 billion dollars in 2002; the majority of these expenses are returned to the state’s economy in the form of wages, purchases, and sales taxes.

Museums protect our natural and cultural heritage.

·         79% of museums in New York State have permanent collections.

·         New York State’s museums are active collecting institutions.  In 2002, chartered museums and heritage organizations added more than 1 million items to their permanent collections.

·         After families, Americans ranked authentic artifacts in history museums and historic sites most significant in creating a strong connection to the past.

·         85% of the state’s museums and heritage organizations own their facilities, an increase of 15% since 1998.

·         $1.2 billion was spent on museum infrastructure from 1996-2004.

New Yorkers know what museums and heritage organizations do for their communities and want to help.

·         Nearly 12,400 New Yorkers volunteer their time to serve on boards of trustees of museums.

·         For every paid staff member, 3 New Yorkers volunteer their time and services to museums.

·         New York state’s museum volunteers annually contribute in excess of 9.6 million hours per year.^[2]

·         Without volunteers, the museums and heritage organizations in New York State would need a minimum of $1.73 million more a year to staff all program areas.^[3]

Data for this factsheet has been compiled by the Museum Association of New York (MANY) and comes from MANY’s own survey work, the New York State Education Department - State Museum Chartering Office, (Albany), the New York State Division of Tourism (2003 travel data), the New York State Bureau of Labor Statistics; the American Association of Museums (Washington, DC), Americans for the Arts’ Arts & Prosperity Report (2003), McKinsey & Company: You Gotta Have Art! (1997), and from the work of the Sustaining Museums Work Group.

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