Art World
Cultural Institutions Spent a Whopping $7.9 Billion on New Buildings Last Year. Things Will Look Very Different in 2020
The Shed and the National Museum of Qatar were among the highest-priced projects.
![MORI Building Digital Art Museum – teamLab Borderless, Tokyo, Japan – © teamLAB MORI Building Digital Art Museum – teamLab Borderless, Tokyo, Japan – © teamLAB](https://news.artnet.com/app/news-upload/2020/08/AEA-Mori-Building-Digital-Art-Museum-teamLab-Borderless-Tokyo-Japan-©teamLab.jpg)
The Shed and the National Museum of Qatar were among the highest-priced projects.
Eileen Kinsella
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A total of $7.9 billion was spent on new cultural buildings in 2019—about the same as the $8 billion spent in 2018—according to AEA Consulting, which has released the results of its annual Cultural Infrastructure Index.
In addition, another $4.8 billion of investment in 101 forthcoming building projects was announced, which is down from the $8.7 billion planned for 122 projects in 2018. In terms of investment, the value of completed projects in 2019 is the same as the previous year, but the value of announced projects was nearly half. The index focuses on cultural projects with a budget of $10 million or more.
Maison de l’Economie Créative et de la Culture, Bordeaux, France. © Laurian Ghinitoiu.
Even before the lockdown hit, AEA Consulting predicted that spending and projects had reached their peak last year. The latest figures for 2019 represent a slowdown in the growth of the number of completed projects seen each year since 2016, as well as the fourth consecutive drop in the number of announced projects, which hit a peak of 135 in 2016.
The lasting effects that lockdown will have on the design of arts buildings remain unclear, as will the changing social expectations of public spaces, AEA writes in the report.
“Projects currently on the drawing board will be reexamined and tested rigorously against new expectations,” AEA reports. As public health “redefines how we gather physically, many existing arts spaces will end up adapted for new patterns of use.”
National Maritime Museum of China, Tianjin, China – Courtesy of Terrance Zhang
Here are some of the key findings of the 2019 report:
The Shed. Photo: ajay_suresh. Creative Commons license.