Museums on the Map. 1995-2012

Just how many more museums do we need? The answer is not entirely clear to anyone, but museums keep sprouting across the world at great pace, surprisingly indifferent to sustained periods of economic crisis and slashed budgets.

Museums on the map, a survey that analyzes the so-called "museum boom," takes 652 new museums and museum extensions, completed between 1995 and 2012, as case studies, exploring the "museomania" phenomenon from a statistical point of view. And the results yielded by the survey are certainly telling.

The geographical ratio, to begin with, is notable. Of the 652 new museums (understood as collecting institutions) created in the period, a whopping 315 were built in Europe despite its prolonged economic woes and pervading governmental cuts to cultural budgets. The US comes second in the ranking with 139 new museums built. Fifty were created in the rest of the Americas. Asia as a whole saw only 129 new institutions crop up during the period-less that half the amount in Europe-despite the region being poised as a major economical force and driver of the art market. Oceania and Africa round out the tally with 16 and five new museums, respectively.(Artnet)