Museum Sunday in Berlin

There are many reasons why people do not go to museums. To at least eliminate the admission fee as a barrier, Berlin launched admission-free Museum Sundays on the first Sunday of every month in July 2021. The aim of the model project, which was unique in Germany, was to strengthen Berlin’s museum landscape and to inspire even more and different people than before to visit museums.

Museum Sunday was a model project organised by the Senate Department of Culture and Europe in cooperation with the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media and the Berlin State Association of Museums. In particular, the project was aiming to address families and young visitors. Many of the participating institutions created a welcoming culture with easily accessible offerings and a special supporting programme to attract in particular non-regular visitors to museums.

More than 50 institutions were taking part in Museum Sunday and represented the great thematic diversity of Berlin’s museum landscape – including art, design, religion, everyday culture, history, nature and technology. Some private museums were joining the initiative as well.

Accompanying research by the IKTf

The expectations for the impact of Museum Sunday were high at Berlin museums. On every admission-free Sunday, visitor surveys were conducted at Berlin’s state-funded museums, organised by the Institute for Research on Cultural Participation [Institut für Kulturelle Teilhabeforschung, IKTf]. The data obtained provided indications of the extent to which the composition of visitors on these Sundays actually differs from the composition on other days. Whether the free entry achieved the desired effects depends – apart from the effect of free entry itself – on numerous other factors (e.g. additional offerings by the museums, museum location, weather). These factors were also recorded on each of the admission-free Sundays.  Free entry and its effects have been little researched in Germany and the interplay of the different factors with a larger number of institutions has never been studied. Continuous accompanying research on Museum Sunday is therefore essential. The results can be found in the study (in German) and in the presentation below (in English).