The missing museums: accreditation, surveys, and an alternative account of the UK sector

Surveys of the UK museum sector have all had subtly different remits and so represent the sector in a variety of ways. In the last three decades, surveys have almost invariably focused on accredited institutions, thereby omitting almost half of the museums in the UK. In this article we examine how data collection became tied to the accreditation scheme, and its effects on how the museum sector was and is represented as a professionalised sphere. Yet, while is important to understand the role of surveys in constructing the museum sector, this article goes beyond critique to show how the inclusion of unaccredited museums drastically changes the profile of the museum sector. We outline the inclusive approach that the Mapping Museums project team has taken with regards to data collection, and compare our findings with those that are produced when a survey is limited to accredited museums. In so doing, we sketch out an alternative, heterogeneous version of the UK museum sector and make recommendations based on that evidenc