These story has been on my mind for a while: Museum Center has $87M economic impact.

The Cincinnati Museum Center generates an annual economic impact of $87 million and delivers $27 million in household earnings for more than 1,100 local workers, according to a new study by the University of Cincinnati.

I think every museum should have this study done. Then there’s this story: Other museums hope to benefit from Art Institute’s new Modern Wing.

The Art Institute of Chicago’s new Modern Wing is bound to make such a splash that the Museum of Contemporary Art and the city’s smaller museums and galleries are preparing for the ripple effect.

What’s unknown is whether they’ll catch the wave or be submerged by it.

So, a large enough museum has a serious enough economic and cultural impact. No real surprise in the role culture plays in regeneration projects.

I’m not entirely sure about the political systems culture has at a state/local level in the US. I hope someone can tell me. I do know that there isn’t a culture portfolio/department/secretary of state like there is in the UK. The UK Culture Minister does have quite a wide scope of responsibilities and powers.

At a regional municipal level in the UK,  local councils have culture departments (often falling into disrepair because of budget cuts or becoming the responsibility of quangos).  I’m going to assume its relatively the same everywhere, that there is a culture aspects to local government.

A large city museum could form formal partnerships with every other cultural institution in an area. Then form links to the smaller projects going on. A large museum could just become the de-facto culture department right under a local government’s nose. A museum could offer some serious organisation, support, resources and reputation to every other cultural activity in a city area. Acting as the hub, or even a place to host a weekly forum and if the museum can do a better job promoting culture in a town…

It comes down to the organisation. If a museum, with a council of city culture around it, can make a serious improvement to the culture as well as the economic standards, then it could surely it could start deciding cultural policy. What could the local government do? Oh, so you plan to cut our funding, eh? In that case we will shut down all of your city’s culture. Let’s see the economic impact that would make.

I’m expecting to be called a dirty communist here because I’m essentially talking about unionising the cultural institutions of a city. I may just be thinking out loud here, but with the economic crisis and museums shutting down/cutting budgets I fully believe that many of them will survive through major collaboration projects. If it works, and a city’s culture partners all help each other out do some kind of year long city festival that saves their budgets then what reason is there to remove the partnership? What reason is there to stop after the economic crisis has past?

For this to happen, you would need a pretty big museum (small or medium ones wouldn’t be able to pull people towards it) and a local government not taking culture seriously enough. Very quickly, you could have a group having a severe influence over something many countries have a top-level politicians overseeing.

Like I said, just thinking out loud.