Last week we dove into gender representation in arts institutions, and this week we’re concerning ourselves with age representation in arts institutions- an equally fascinating aspect of the data we work so hard to collect for you.

It answers the question: Is the museum (or gallery) exhibiting a broad spectrum of artists from different time periods?

It’s important to understand how we calculate the average age of artists; It’s not based on their current age, but the age at the time of the exhibition. If they are now deceased, it doesn’t affect our results; for our purposes, age is simply the time between birth and the date of the exhibition. We average this for all participants in all exhibitions for the venue. It gives you an interesting “fingerprint” of the museum (or gallery).

We’ve chosen two museums to give you a taste:
New Museum, New York City / United States and
National Art Museum of China, Beijing / China

Have a look for yourself, check out your favourite galleries and museums and see where they stand. You may be surprised. 

It’s true: Age is just a number, but when data happens to be your daily bread and butter, the number is everything.

Enjoying exploring and comparing