Why Have Museums Become So Popular?

As anyone who goes to look at art in New York during holiday week can tell you, museums are doing amazingly well. Not just in Gotham but around the world. Fiammetta Rocco writes: ‘Some of the new enthusiasm for museums is explained by changes in demand. In the rich world, and in some developing countries too, the share of people who are going on to higher education has risen spectacularly in recent decades. Surveys show that better-educated folk are a lot more likely to be museum-goers. They want to see for themselves where they fit in the wider world and look to museums for guidance, which is why so many of these places have been transformed from “restrained containers” to “exuberant companions,” as Victoria Newhouse writes in her book, “Towards a New Museum.”

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