SIC 8412 Museums and Art Galleries
SIC 8412
This industry classification includes establishments primarily engaged in the operation of museums and art galleries. Art galleries and dealers primarily engaged in selling to the general public are classified in SIC 5932: Used Merchandise Stores and SIC 5999: Miscellaneous Retail Stores, Not Elsewhere Classified.
712110
Museums
712120
Historical Sites
The numerous U.S. museums seem as permanent and stable a part of the cultural landscape as schools and libraries, but it was not until the late nineteenth century that they attained social respectability and civic solidity. Museums had existed since the founding of the country, but they were often small collections of odd paraphernalia, housed in someone's home or carted around by circus masters such as P.T. Barnum. Nonetheless, U.S. museums grew as the country grew and became a source of civic pride.
In the mid-2000s, there were about 17,500 museums in the United States, including establishments that were not classified in this industry, such as zoos and arboretums, which are covered in SIC 8422: Arboreta and Botanical or Zoological Gardens. Nine of out ten counties in the United States have at least one museum. Slightly more than a third of museums are free to the public, but the average admission price is $6.
Supported by government funding and private donations, modern-day museums became elaborate storehouses of America's and the world's artistic, scientific, historical, and technological past. In the process, they became very big business, attracting more than 865 million visitors a year, or 2.3 million per day, with a handful of about 50 museums and art galleries boasting attendance of 1 million or more visitors annually. Contemporary museums are supported by billions of dollars of annual support from government sponsorship, corporate donations, and public membership, and they employ and educate a wide range of professionals.
The museum world is fragmented and hard to summarize. A comprehensive study conducted by the American Association of Museums (AAM) counted 8,179 museums in the United States in 1989. About three-quarters of them were founded after 1950, and less than 5 percent have origins in the nineteenth century. These institutions are distributed throughout the United States in roughly the same proportion as the population. By 2005, the Institute of Museum and Library Services recorded approximately 17,500 museums.
Fifty-nine percent of museums are privately run and 41 percent are run by the government, usually state or municipal authorities. Only 7 percent of the nation's museums are operated by the federal government. Government-run museums are most commonly found in southern and western states (slightly more than half of museums in these regions are public) and are least commonly found in the northeastern states (only about 27 percent of museums in the New England and Mid-Atlantic regions are public).
Museum budgets total some $4 billion, but this money is not evenly dispersed. Just 8 percent of museums have annual budgets of $1 million or more. Fifty-seven percent operate with $100,000 or less, and 38 percent have $50,000 or less to spend. Using budget size as an indicator, museums in the United States are generally small institutions. When budget size is adjusted to the differing operation costs of museum types (for example, a science museum needs a $5 million budget to be considered large, but a nature center requires only $800,000), 80 percent of museums can be described as small. About one-half of museums have endowment funds, with total museum endowments valued at $14 billion. However, 93 percent of this endowment money is held by large museums, especially art museums, which hold $10.6 billion, or 76 percent, of all endowment money. Personnel expenses account for the largest share of museum operating expenses, taking up a median of 54 percent of museum budgets. D! espite this large investment in personnel, museums are still heavily dependent on volunteer staff to accomplish both day-to-day tasks and special functions. About 377,000 people were museum volunteers in 1988, with 10 percent of them working full-time schedules of 35 hours or more per week.
In addition to serving as conservators of the nation's cultural and scientific heritage, U.S. museums have a strong commitment to education. Sherman Lee, former director of the Cleveland Museum of Art in Ohio, claimed in Past, Present, East and West that "in the world of visual images …the museum is the primary source for education. Merely by existing—preserving and exhibiting works of art—it is educational in the broadest and best sense, though it never utters a sound or prints a word."
Most museums provide educational programs for both children and adults, including guided tours, study groups, special lectures, and demonstrations. Forty-nine million children visited a museum as part of a school group in 1988. Historic sites, history museums, and zoos were the most likely choice for school groups. Many museums have joint programs with universities or colleges to provide work experience and research opportunities for college students. The American Association of Museums (AAM), a national membership organization representing all types of museums and museum professionals, provides an ongoing series of educational programs and seminars to ensure that museum professionals are as well educated as their visitors. Their 1991 publication, Excellence and Equity: Education and the Public Dimension of Museums, addressed the need for museums to continue...
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