Introduction

Museums have been booming in popularity both in Britain and elsewhere in an unprecedented fashion since the 1960s. The kind of phrases and sentences used to describe the phenomenon are: ‘public visibility and popularity have never been greater’ (Bloom and Powell, 1984); ‘a time of unprecedented growth and interest in museums and exhibitions but also at a time when the museum world is facing an apparent crisis’ (Vergo, 1989); ‘more visited, more venerated and more criticized than ever before’ (Hudson, 1985); and ‘one of our few growth industries’ (Hewison, 1986). According to a national survey carried out in 1989 for the Museums Association by Touche Ross Management Consultants, around half the adults in Britain had visited a museum or an art gallery in the previous two years.