The Museum Summer Night

The Summer Museum Night, the biggest promotional campaign of Slovenian museums and galleries and other institutions preparing programmes in the field of cultural heritage, will be held on Saturday, 15 June. At this traditional event, every year since 2002, museums and galleries have opened their doors until midnight for free visits and prepared a varied program, from guided tours of exhibitions, workshops, presentations, discussions, etc.

1,005 exhibitions in museums, another 123 for the virtual space

In 2022, museums, institutions with museum collections and galleries in Slovenia prepared 786 temporary and 219 permanent exhibitions in their premises, as well as 123 e-exhibitions made especially for the virtual space. 

Museums and galleries visited other institutions with their exhibitions: of the 386 tours, 78% were hosted in other places in Slovenia, 64 in other EU member states, and 19 in countries outside the EU.



Attendance at exhibitions has been increasing over the years

More than 2.17 million visitors saw exhibitions in museums and galleries in Slovenia in 2022, of whom 26% were foreigners and 29% were children and youth. 

Interest in museum and gallery exhibitions has been increasing over the past three decades, which is also confirmed by the indicators. In 1991, the year of Slovenia's independence, on average 1,282 people visited each exhibition. In 2022, the number was 2,165. In other words, on average 4,659 people visited exhibitions every day in 1991 and 5,962 in 2022. 



Cultural wealth of museums and galleries

Museums, institutions with museum collections and galleries kept around 9.2 million museum and gallery objects at the end of 2022; 57.8% of these items were inventoried. Almost 95% of the visual and artistic objects were photographs.
Museums and galleries allocated almost EUR 360,000 for the purchase of objects, and the value of the acquired objects was estimated at more than EUR 404,000.



Free exhibitions

In 2022, museums and galleries earned more than EUR 4.3 million from ticket sales. An individual visitor paid on average EUR 3.80 to see an exhibition. 
Many visitors did not have to pay an entrance fee. On occasions such as the International Museum Day, This Merry Day of Culture or the Summer Museum Night, entry to museums and galleries is free. In 2022, there were around 526,700 free visits. 

Is access to museums open to everyone?

In 2022, access to exhibition and event premises for people with physical impairment was properly arranged in 32 museums and galleries, partly arranged in 49 of them, and not arranged in 16 of them.
Access to the mentioned institutions was arranged for the visually and hearing impaired persons to an even lesser extent: 7 had fully arranged access, 46 had partly arranged access, and the remaining 44 had not arranged access. 



Educational programmes and other activities of museums and galleries

Many museums and galleries prepare various educational events for visitors, e.g. workshops, guided tours, interactive events, lectures, discussions, etc. In 2022, they prepared 38,768 such events, which were attended by around 862,000 visitors, among whom slightly more than 60% were children and youth.



In addition to educational activities, museums and galleries perform other activities that contribute to their financial resources. Thus, among 97 museums, museum collections and galleries, more than half (almost 56%) had a museum shop, etc. The category "other", the least numerous one, includes e.g. cinema activity, weddings, commission sales, etc. 



Museum and gallery workers

1,058 persons were employed in museums and galleries and museum collections covered by the survey, among them 10% were under the age of 35. The large majority (955) were employed full-time, while the remaining 105 were employed part-time. The occupational structure of full-time employees was as follows: 



External associates also contributed significantly to the implementation of the museum and gallery activity. There were 2,199 of them, most of them students. 



How are museums and galleries financed?

Of the total revenues of museums and galleries, which amounted to EUR 63 million in 2022, 83.9% was revenues from public resources, 15.1% was from own resources, and 1.0% was received by museums and galleries from sponsors, domestic or foreign. Museums and galleries received the main part of public resources from the state budget, namely 73.6%, followed by revenues from municipal budgets (23.0%) and from the EU (3.3%).