Best practices in the management of a museum

The management of cultural institutions, which is talked about a lot nowadays, goes back a long, long time.  Who doesn’t know the Greek or Roman theatres?  They didn’t function by themselves.  For sure, behind the stages, there were people, the majority often anonymous, who made sure that everything functioned correctly.

And what can be said about museums? Throughout the world there have been teams of people, sometimes more numerous, often rather reduced, often referred to as administration, and now linked to resources, who have carried out the ‘functional’ work.

At the Museu Picasso of Barcelona there are a number of us that work in the administration of the centre.  We could call ourselves the back-office.  Everything from the area of production, maintenance, security, management of the public, management of the services and obviously the economic administration.  Without each of these functions, it would be difficult for the museum to open its doors every day and offer the visitors exhibitions, talks, concerts, and all types of activities linked, in our case, to the life and work of Pablo Picasso, or the neighbourhood in which we are located,  La Ribera.

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How do you look after more than 900,000 visitors a year? Taking care of Visitor Services at the Museu Picasso

With close to million visitors a year, open to the public 10 hours a day, six days a week, plus evening activities, like all good museums the world over the Museu Picasso has a great team working in what tends to be known as ‘visitor services’.

The fact is that a million visitors a year isn’t all that much compared with the more than eight million who visit the Louvre, but our museum has something of a handicap in terms of its physical structure of five medieval palaces, connected to one another. A wonderfully rich historical heritage and an excellent example of secular Catalan Gothic architecture, with some wonderful details, the place is a bit of a maze, and it isn’t easy to guarantee a smoothly flowing itinerary.

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