The purpose of this chapter is to track back the recent evolutions in the domain of museum management, as well as the upcoming changes. The factors shaping change will most likely affect the decisions and the activities of the key entities in museums context in the coming years. Technological innovations, changes in society, the growing and different requests from the audience, and the managerialization process—besides still ongoing—of some entities of the museum domain are among the engines of the ongoing evolution. This evolution is commonly recalled by the pivotal international institutions, and the ongoing change can be observed in the dissemination activities of these institutions, in the promotion they made, as well as in the contents of the recently issued reports, and in their indications that stimulate the debate between museum companies themselves and the world of research.
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The purpose of this chapter is to track back the recent evolutions in the domain of museum management, as well as the upcoming changes. The factors shaping change will most likely affect the decisions and activities of the key entities in the museum context in the coming years. Technological innovations, changes in society, the growing and different requests from the audience, and the managerialization process – besides still ongoing – of some museum entities are among the engines of the ongoing evolution (McCall and Gray, 2018; Chynoweth et al., 2020). This evolution is commonly recalled by the pivotal international institutions, and the deriving changes can be observed in the dissemination activities of these institutions, in the contents of their recent reports, and in their indications that stimulate the debate between museum companies themselves and the world of research.
UNESCO, ICOM, Europeana, NEMO, and the Museum Association are doubtless among the most relevant institutions in the setting of museum management guidelines and in structuring the cultural offering. Consequently, according to a longitudinal analysis of the debate and key topics that these institutions propose, 10 themes have been identified, containing both challenges and opportunities for the museum sector. Consequently, these themes will help in outlining the future trends in museum management. In detail, debates at local and international academic conferences, periodic publications, as well as those issued specifically as annual reports, and communications entrusted to – and through – the social media channels of the five institutions mentioned above were scanned. The choice of the five institutions depends on their operating and being influential worldwide, as well as on their being commonly cited by scholars (e.g., Samaroudi et al., 2020). Moreover, the different but complementary perspectives of these institutions may widen the overview of the hot themes in the museum management debate. The different nature of these institutions also leads to an expansion of the view and a reduction of the subjectivity that could have been derived from considering a single institution. Indeed, UNESCO is the UN agency that handles education, science, and culture, operating worldwide since 1945, while ICOM is a non-governmental agency, founded one year later (1946), that represents museums and their professionals worldwide. Europeana is the portal for digitization of the European Union; it was founded in 2008 and groups the digital products of 27 countries in Europe. Sharing similar goals, the Network of European Museum Organisations (NEMO) was founded in 1992 and consists of 128 national museum organisations, speaking for about 30,000 museums across Europe. Finally, the Museums Association is the entity working on behalf of the Arts Council of England, UK Research and Innovation, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and the Hamlyn Foundation, among others. It sets campaigns for museums in the UK and takes care of the ties between museums and communities, with a great influence in other countries as well.
Such a relevant set of changes must be observed carefully both by museum managers and in the realm of the relationships between museums and academia; indeed, scholars have paid a significant amount of attention to some of the most relevant novelties in museums, such as the effect of technology adoption on visitors’ experience (He et al., 2018) and the “oldness” of a museum in a world made “new” (Black, 2020), due mainly to the social context and technologies. In any event, the proliferation of so many novel elements led scholars to constantly call for research; indeed, some of the open questions refer to the digital transition of visitors’ experiences (Gorgadze et al., 2021), the shift towards sustainability in museum activities after several years of purposeful campaigns (Hedges, 2021), and perspectives on the long-term future of museums (Pauget et al., 2021).
For the reasons above, this chapter presents insights related to some of the advances already achieved and those that may be achieved in the future in museum management in a period of change. The table below (Table 1) summarizes the sources considered to depict these changes: