The Groninger Museum

Today I visited the Groninger museum. It is located near the railway station, so you can easily get there by train. At this moment there is an exhibition about David Bowie, which is very special. Another special thing was that I could have a talk about tourism with the manager of the Groninger Museum!
He had a lot to tell about tourism. When you think about a museum, tourism is not the first thing that comes to mind. First, the manager told about the history of musea. He used the theory about the 'Grand Tour' (Edensor, 2009). In early modern times, rich people traveled through the classical world in Europe. The first small museums were erected. These museums were only open to people who were 'well dressed'. While on tour, rich people could visit a museum. Later, museums were more and more open for all people, however rich or poor you were. This was an important development in the history of museums.
These days visitors still travel to see an exhibition. For the manager of the Groninger museum, it is a challenge to keep attracting Dutch visitors. For many foreign visitors their visit is just once, because they will not revisit the Netherlands soon. So the manager wants the Dutch people to keep visiting his museum. Therefore, the museum has to be attractive for various groups. Students are a difficult group. How do you get the students interested in a museum?
I think it is important that a museum is not too expensive, since students don't have very much money. Maybe it is a good option to have an exhibition about travelling, since most students like to travel.

Interesting light in the museum

Another aspect of tourism can be found in maintaining the collection. The collections have to 'travel' to the museum. Some collections, for example, travel from Japan to the Netherlands to New Zealand. It is interesting how collections travel a lot too, not only the visitors.

This was a very interesting visit, I have learned a lot!

References

Edensor, T. (2009). Tourism. International Encyclopaedia of Geography, 301-312.