Museums for the many? Rhetorical optimism and the failure of sustained political will at three London government-funded museums – then and now

This article contends that there are considerable similarities between nineteenth- and twenty-first-century aspirations for museums – not least, in respect to promises of “museums for the many”. Despite contemporary policy makers of different political allegiances embracing similar rhetorics, in general they appear to have had little interest in reflecting on previous realities. This article focuses on attendances at three national museums, in particular the British Museum, the National Gallery and, the Victoria & Albert Museum (formerly, the South Kensington Museum) over two periods: from the early 1850s to the late 1880s, and from the late 1970s to the present. It interrogates those and other institutions’ visit data for evidence of whether they did, indeed, deliver to “the many”. It questions the commitment of state-supported museums to those target audiences, both then and now.