who said museums are meant to be enjoyable?

Museums do not depend on "customers" or ticket buyers. For a typical art museum, ticket receipts do not cover one-tenth of the cost of their operations. Museums are far more dependent on donors and sometimes on government subsidies. Direct subsidies are a more important source of museum income in Western Europe, not the United States, so let us focus on donors. For most American art museums, donors account for well over half of the yearly budget. The real influence of donors is much stronger, since donors are also the most important source of donated or lent paintings and sculptures. Donors may also volunteer, help museums organize exhibits, or use their contacts to borrow artworks from other museums. After all, most important museum donors are wealthy and influential people. A museum that does not make its donors happy will shrink in importance, relative to museums that are more donor-oriented. The incentive for a museum is to please donors.

Donors do not want exactly what visitors want. Visitors want that the museum be fun and easy to use. Donors are more concerned that the museum confers status upon them in the arenas of high culture, high society, and perhaps high finance. Donors like fancy receptions, which is why museums hold them.

In part, museums care about visitors for indirect reasons, so that then donors do not feel they are supporting an empty house. But the interest of viewers and donors do not in general coincide, and we should not expect the viewers to win out. (Note that zoos, which typically rely more on admissions and less on donations than do museums, tend to be designed for fun.) Consequently not every museum is easy to use. Don’t expect it to be. Get used to that. Work around it. Use mental reaming to make the museum more like institutions that are geared to satisfy us.

- Tyler Cowen