Activity of museums and galleries, 2024

Key statistics:

• museums, museum collections and galleries in Slovenia prepared 1,191 exhibitions last year, more than 69% of which were temporary;
• more than 2.8 million visitors visited exhibitions, a quarter of whom were children and young people;
• around 606,000 free tickets to see exhibitions were issued, or approximately one fifth of visitors.

Exhibitions in museums and galleries attracted more than 2.8 million visitors

In 2024, there were 100 museums, institutions with museum collections and galleries in Slovenia. They hosted 826 temporary and 365 permanent exhibitions, i.e. 1,191 in total (in the pre-epidemic year of 2019: 1,406). 



Exhibitions attracted 2,824,553 visits, of which 22.8% were by visitors from abroad. Children and youth accounted for 25.8% of all visitors. An average of 2,372 visitors viewed each exhibition last year. In other words: there were 7,739 visitors to exhibitions in museums and galleries per day on average.



In addition to exhibitions in their own premises, museums and galleries prepare exhibitions for virtual space. Last year, they offered 67 such exhibitions with about 61,400 e-attendees, while in the epidemic year of 2020 there were 185 e-exhibitions with 650,600 e-attendees. Visitors therefore prefer live tours to virtual ones, if these cultural institutions are open to the public.

Cultural wealth of museums and galleries

These institutions had around 10.2 million museum or gallery objects in their collections; 53.9% were inventoried. The largest share, 47.8%, were visual or fine art objects, including photographs; the latter dominated among all objects with a 45.7% share.

Museums and galleries also educate visitors

Many museums and galleries also prepare various workshops, guided tours, interactive events, lectures, discussions, etc. for visitors. Last year, they organised 37,875 such events (before the epidemic, in 2019: 42,894), with about 983,200 people attending in total (in 2019: approximately 961,000 people).

Since 2020, we have also been inquiring about virtual educational events offered by museum and galleries; in that year, they prepared 1,757 such events, while last year 276 educational e-events were held.

Were museums and galleries accessible to people with impairment?

Thirty-seven museums, institutions with museum collections and galleries provided fully arranged access to exhibition and event premises for people with physical impairment, 49 had partly arranged access, and 14 did not yet set up any such access.

For the time being, access to the mentioned institutions is still available to a lesser extent for sensory impaired persons: it was fully arranged in ten, partly arranged in 50, and not arranged at all in 40 of them.

Ticket sales revenue higher than last year

Museums and galleries earned approximately 5.5 million euros from ticket sales. Visitors had been paying about the same amount to see an exhibition since 2016, i.e. about 4 euros on average, while last two years the average ticket price rose to slightly more than 5 euros. However, not everyone had to pay an entrance fee: according to our data, these institutions also issued just over 606,000 free tickets for days such as the Summer Museum Night or The Merry Day of Culture.

Students represented the largest share among external associates

Employment in museums, institutions with museum collections and galleries has changed very little over the years. Last year, there were 1,111 employees and 2,214 external associates. Among the regular employees, 11% were under the age of 35 years and the majority (1,030) were employed full-time. This structure has also remained almost unchanged over the years.

As in previous years, the largest share of external associates was students (33.7%), followed by those with contracts for copyrighted work (23.7%), the self-employed professionals in culture (18.7%), sole proprietors (11.8%), associates under a work contract (4.6%) and volunteers (4.5%); the remaining 3.1% were agency workers and workers of limited liability companies.

Public funds are the main source of income

The total revenues of museums and galleries for the implementation of activities amounted to 70.9 million euros; the largest amount – 58.5 million – was revenues from public funds, of which the state contributed 42.7 million euros. Their own revenues from cultural and other activities brought museums and galleries 11.1 million euros, and donations and sponsorships from Slovenia and abroad 1.3 million euros. 



The total expenditure for the implementation of museum and gallery activities amounted to 72.4 million euros. Almost 57.5% was spent on labour costs, including payments to external associates, 32.1% covered museum and gallery activities, and the remaining 10.3% was earmarked for investments and operations. 


Tables with the latest data are available in the SiStat Database.