The Galway City Museum is set to pass the 50,000 visitor mark this year, putting it ahead of most other local authority museums in the country in terms of visitor numbers.
This week the museum published the results of an independent visitor survey, carried out by the students of Lehigh University, Pennsylvania, earlier in the summer.
The Lehigh survey shows that 65 per cent of the museum’s visitors this summer were from outside Ireland, with the majority of visitors coming from the USA and Britain. Visitors from the US increased by 15 per cent from 2008 but British visitors dropped by two per cent.
However 2009 is seeing an increase in the diversity of foreign visitors, with more than 30 different countries represented.
The Lehigh survey, which has been posted in its entirety online at www.galwaycitymuseum.ie, also found that there has been a significant jump in visitors between the ages of 25 and 34, and with the 65+ age group.
According to the visitors surveyed, the museum’s most popular exhibits are the Galway hooker that hangs from the atrium, the currachs exhibition, and the statue of Pádraig Ó Conaire.
The museum and its advisory board are currently working on a development plan for 2010-2013, which will see the next phase of the museum’s development and forthcoming exhibitions. It will be announced in the coming weeks. The museum has also announced that a new exhibition on the subject of Galway and the Wars of Empire will open at the end of November.
