500 museums?

Okay, this is not a surprise:

bq. Higher education and upper incomes bring people to the city’s museums and cultural forums, with most of their visitors wealthy and white, a study of attendance at Chicago’s cultural institutions reveals.

but maybe this is:

bq. The study also noted that smaller ethnic and diverse cultural institutions appeared to reach groups that the major institutions did not… only 49 of the area’s _496 smaller institutions_ responded to the survey…

There are 500 small museums out there? I know that there are maybe a dozen or so small museums that I’ve always meant to visit but never have gotten around to (like, oh, the Dr. Scholl’s exhibit at the podiatric school), but doesn’t that sound a bit like overload?

[Full story by James Janega in the “Trib”:http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/chi-060315culture,1,5330379.story?coll=chi-news-hed%5D

One thought on “500 museums?

  1. “Cultural institution” means everything from museums to zoos, including performing arts centers, dance troups, historical societies, etc. The 496 probably cuts a pretty wide swath over the city’s 501c3s.

    My fave is the International Museum of Surgical Science.

Comments are closed.