The Blockbuster Phenomenon: a new museum trend
Museums in Australia, like other pleasure-giving public organizations, are adapting their activities so that they more closely reflect the marketplace.

[A] Since the 1980s, the term “blockbuster” has become the fashionable word for spectacular, high-profile museum exhibitions that have the ability to attract large crowds. A blockbuster is a “large-scale loan exhibition that people who normally don’t go to museums will stand in line for hours to see” (Elsen 1984). Once the museum that created the exhibition has shown it to their local market, it can be offered to other organizations for a fee. This means that you can boost your own door takings and make money from boosting someone else’s door takings.

[B] While partaking of the excitement of the blockbuster, visitors thus lured are likely to stay longer at the museum. Betty Churcher, when Director of the Australian National Gallery, summed up the new blockbuster creed as follows: “The bonus of the blockbuster exhibitions is that people come to see the blockbuster and they stay to look at the permanent collection, so you are getting broader exposure for your collection.”

[C] Museums across the UK, USA, Canada, and Australia currently operate under a system of plural funding: revenue raised through contributions by federal, state, and/or local governments, combined with revenue raised through admission charges and other activities. Maintaining and increasing visitor levels is thus paramount and involves not only creating or hiring blockbuster exhibitions but providing regular exhibition changes and innovations. In addition, the visiting public have become known as customers rather than visitors, and the skills that are valued in museums to keep the new customers coming through the door have changed. Curators are now administrators, and being a museum director no longer requires an Arts degree—but public relations skills are essential if the museum is going to compete with other museums to stage traveling exhibitions that draw huge crowds.

[D] The convergence of museums, the heritage industry, tourism, profit-making, and pleasure-giving has resulted in the new “museology.” This has given rise to much debate about whether it is appropriate to see museums primarily as tourist attractions. In literature from both the UK and USA, the words that are starting to appear in some descriptions of blockbusters are “less scholarly,” “non-elitist,” and “populist,” while others extol the virtues of encouraging scholars to cooperate on projects and to provide exhibitions that cater for a broad selection of the community rather than an elite sector. Whatever commentators may think, managers of museums worldwide are looking for artful ways to blend culture and commerce, and blockbuster exhibitions are at the top of the list.

[E] But do blockbusters held in public institutions really create a surplus to fund other activities? If the bottom line is profit, then according to the records of many major museums, blockbusters do make money. For museums in some countries, it may be the money that they require to replace parts of their collections or to fix buildings that are in need of attention. For some museums in Australia, it may be the opportunity to illustrate that they are attempting to pay their way by recovering part of their operating costs. Also, creating or hiring a blockbuster has many positive spin-offs: blockbusters mean crowds, and crowds are good for the local economy, providing increased trade for shops, hotels, restaurants, the transport industry, and retailers. The argument that the arts provide sustained economic benefits has been well illustrated in impact studies in the USA and UK.

[F] However, blockbusters require large capital expenditure and draw on resources across all branches of an organization, and the costs don’t end there. There is a Human Resource Management cost in addition to a measurable “real dollar cost.” Receiving a touring exhibition draws resources from across functional management structures in project management style. Everyone, from general laborers to building services, front of house, technical, promotional, educational, and administrative staff is required to perform additional tasks. Furthermore, as an increasing number of institutions try their hand at increasing visitor numbers and memberships (and therefore revenue) by staging blockbuster exhibitions, it may be less likely that blockbusters will continue to provide a surplus to subsidize other activities due to the competitive nature of the market.

[G] It has been illustrated in both the UK and USA that the blockbuster ideology has resulted in the false expectation that the momentum required to stage blockbusters can be maintained continually. Creating, mounting, or hiring blockbusters is exhausting, with the real costs throughout an institution difficult to calculate. Secondly, as some analysts have argued, the “shopkeeping” mentality and cost-benefit analysis and a pure concentration on the bottom line can squeeze substance out of an exhibition. Taking out substance can be a recipe for blockbuster failure and therefore financial failure.

Perhaps the best pathway to take is one that balances both blockbusters and regular exhibitions. However, this easy middle ground may only work if you have enough space and have alternate sources of funding to continue to support the regular, less exciting fare. Perhaps the advice should be to make sure that you find out what your local community wants from you and make sure that your regular activities and exhibitions are more enticing.