ABSTRACT
This chapter justifies the focus that is placed on New Walk Museum and Art Gallery and provides a preliminary, if brief, history of both the establishment of the Museum and Leicester City, where the Museum is located, itself. The broad changes that have taken place in the City and the Museum in terms of social change as it has affected life in the City, changes in economic circumstances as they directly affected the Museum, the political changes that have affected the exercise of local political choices, and the professional changes that have influenced the ways in which the work of the Museum has been undertaken are all discussed. Detailed data on visitor numbers to the Museum from the 1870s up to the 2020s is provided. This chapter then forms the basis for the detailed examination of each dimension of change in later chapters.
