# Museum closure data (UK, 2000-2025)

This repository contains data collected as part of the AHRC-funded [**Museum closure in the UK 2000-2025**](https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FX012816%2F1) research project, covering museum closure in the UK between 2000 and 2025 and the flows of objects away from those museums. 

The Principal Investigator is Prof Fiona Candlin (Birkbeck, University of London). The project was conducted at the [Mapping Museums Lab](https://mapping-museums.bbk.ac.uk/) (Birkbeck, University of London) and at the [Cultural Geo-Analytics Lab](https://www.kcl.ac.uk/research/cultural-geo-analytics-lab) (King's College London). 

Software and data used in the research project can be found on [the project's GitHub repository](https://github.com/Birkbeck/museum-object-flows).

The dataset details the **closures of 479 museums**, recording the reasons why they closed, what happened to their collections, and the actors involved. Events, actors and reasons are typed according to taxonomies also included in the repository; the objects are typed using Wikidata items; and each museum is linked to its entry in the Mapping Museums database.

A detailed analysis of this dataset was published in the following report:

> Candlin, Fiona and Ballatore, Andrea and Liebenrood, Mark and Poulovassilis, Alex and Wood, Peter and Wright, George and Golovteeva, M. and Bonett, H. (2025) [Closed museums and their collections 2000-25](https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/56500/1/Closed%20museums%20and%20their%20collections%202000-25_a%20summary%20of%20the%20data.pdf). Birkbeck, University of London, London, UK.

Cite this dataset as:
> Mark Liebenrood, George A. Wright, Fiona Candlin, Alexandra Poulovassilis, Andrea Ballatore, Peter T. Wood (2026) A Dataset of Collections Dispersal following Museum Closures in the UK during 2000–2025. _Journal of Open Humanities Data_.


## Data Dictionary

This repository contains the following files with the following field names:

### Dispersal Events (dispersal_events.csv)

| **Column**           | **Description**                                                |
|----------------------|----------------------------------------------------------------|
| initial_museum_id | The Mapping Museums ID of the museum where the object(s) involved in the event originate(s). | 
| initial_museum_name | The name of the initial museum. | 
| initial_museum_size | The Mapping Museums size category of the initial museum, estimated from its yearly visitor numbers (huge, large, medium, small, unknown). | 
| initial_museum_governance | The governance category of the initial museum (national, local authority, other government, university, independent, private, unknown). | 
| initial_museum_accreditation | The accreditation status of the initial museum (accredited, unaccredited). | 
| initial_museum_subject | The subject matter category of the initial museum. | 
| initial_museum_town | The town where the initial museum was located. | 
| initial_museum_region | The country or English region where the initial museum was located. | 
| initial_museum_postcode | The postcode of the initial museum. | 
| super_event_id | Unique identifier assigned to each super-event (i.e. each museum closure). | 
| super_event_date | The year of the museum closure. | 
| super_event_reasons | A list of reasons why the museum closed (drawn from a controlled vocabulary structured into a bespoke type hierarchy – see Table 4). | 
| event_stage_in_path | The stage in the sequence of events involving the same object(s) (1 if the event is the first recorded event, 2 if it is the second, etc.). | 
| event_type | The type of event (e.g. sold-at-auction, sank). | 
| event_core_type | A more general type that the event is an instance of (e.g. sold, damaged/destroyed). | 
| event_is_end_of_existence | True if the event entailed the end of the object(s)’s existence. | 
| event_is_change_of_ownership | True if the sender gave ownership of the object(s) to the recipient. | 
| event_is_change_of_custody | True if the sender gave physical custody of the object(s) to the recipient. | 
| event_date | The date of the event (in extended date/time format) if the event happened at a point in time. | 
| event_date_from | The start date of the event (in extended date/time format) if the event took place over a period of time. | 
| event_date_to | The end date of the event (in extended date/time format) if the event took place over a period of time. | 
| previous_event_id | The ID of the immediately preceding event involving the same object(s). | 
| sender_id | The unique identifier of the actor playing the sender role in the event. | 
| sender_mm_id | The Mapping Museums ID of the sender if the sender is a known UK museum. | 
| sender_name | The name of the sender. |
| sender_type | The type of the sender. | 
| sender_core_type | A more general type that the sender is an instance of. | 
| sender_sector | The economic sector that the sender belongs to (public, private, third, university, hybrid, unknown). | 
| recipient_id | The unique identifier of the actor playing the recipient role in the event. | 
| recipient_mm_id | The Mapping Museums ID of the recipient if the recipient is a known UK museum. | 
| recipient_name | The name of the recipient. | 
| recipient_quantity | The quantity of people or organisations this actor represents (a specific number, or ‘many’) | 
| recipient_type | The type of the recipient. | 
| recipient_core_type | A more general type that the recipient is an instance of. | 
| recipient_sector | The economic sector that the recipient belongs to (public, private, third, university, hybrid, unknown). | 
| recipient_size | If the recipient is a museum in the Mapping Museums database, its size category (huge, large, medium, small, unknown) | 
| recipient_governance | If the recipient is a museum in the Mapping Museums database, its governance category (national, local authority, other government, university, independent, private, unknown) | 
| recipient_accreditation | If the recipient is a museum in the Mapping Museums database, its accreditation status (accredited, unaccredited). | 
| recipient_subject | If the recipient is a museum in the Mapping Museums database, its subject matter category | 
| recipient_town | The town where the recipient is located | 
| recipient_region | The country or English region where the recipient is located | 
| recipient_postcode | The postcode of the recipient | 
| object_id | A unique identifier assigned to the object(s) that the event involves. Unique identifiers are usually constructed by concatenating the super event id and an abbreviation of the museum's name with a short description of the object(s). Object IDs are not official identifiers. | 
| parent_object_id | The ID of the object(s) that the object(s) was/were previously part of. | 
| object_size | A description of the proportion of the museum’s original collection that the object(s) made up (all, most, half, some, few). | 
| object_quantity | The precise number of object(s) when known. | 
| object_status | The status of the object(s), either: collection (objects from a museum’s collection), loan (objects on loan to the museum when it closed); handling (handling objects), museum-stuff (other items such as display cases). | 
| object_types | A list of Wikidata items describing the types of object(s). | 
| object_description | An English description of the object(s). |

### Actor Types (actor_types.csv)

Actors invovled in the dispersal of museum objects.

| **Field name**         | **Description**                                                                   |
|------------------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| type_name              | A descriptive name for the type.                                                  |
| sub_type_of            | The name of this type's super-type.                                               |
| is_core_category       | True if this type should be treated as a core category (neither highly specific nor highly generic) |

### Event Types (event_types.csv)

Events involving objects from closed museums.

| **Field name**         | **Description**                                                                   |
|------------------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| type_name              | A descriptive name for the type.                                                  |
| sub_type_of            | The name of this type's super-type.                                               |
| definition             | The defition of this type.                                                        |
| is_core_category       | True if this type should be treated as a core category (neither highly specific nor highly generic) |
| change_of_ownership    | True if this type involves a transfer of legal ownership, false otherwise.        |
| change_of_custody      | True if this type involves a change of location, false otherwise.                 |
| end_of_existence       | True if this type results in an object no longer existing, false otherwise.       |

### Reason Types (closure_reasons.csv)

Reasons why a museum closed.

| **Field name**         | **Description**                                                                   |
|------------------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| type_name              | A descriptive name for the type.                                                  |
| sub_type_of            | The name of this type's super-type.                                               |
| is_core_category       | True if this type should be treated as a core category (neither highly specific nor highly generic) |

## License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The license file is included in this repository.