*Follow the wealth.
http://hyperallergic.com/269548/crunching-the-numbers-behind-the-boom-in-private-art-museums/
"What kind of person opens a private contemporary art museum? According to a new report by the art collector database Larry’s List and the Chinese art market site Artron, he’s probably in his 60s or his 70s; he’s probably from South Korea, the US, or Germany; he probably founded his museum in the last 15 years; and he’s most likely a “he” — women account for just 18% of private contemporary art museum founders.
"The “Private Art Museum Report” is based on data from 317 museums in 45 countries. It defines a private contemporary art museum as an institution that meets these five requirements: it must be owned by a private individual; that person must be known as an art collector and display some of her collection in the institution; the museum must have a physical space; the museum must be publicly accessible (either through regular opening hours or by appointment); the collection must be focused on contemporary art; and the collector must still be alive. The report touches on everything from attendance and admission fees (55% of them don’t charge any) to the number of employees and social media followers — British collector Charles Saatchi’s namesake gallery is, far and away, the leader in the latter category — to the number of exhibitions the museums organize every year, how much of the work shown is from the collector’s holdings, and who the best represented artists are — no surprises there, the most collected are, in order, Andy Warhol, Anselm Kiefer, Gerhard Richter, Damien Hirst, and Pablo Picasso.
"However, the report does hold a few surprises, like that South Korea has the world’s greatest concentration of private art museums with 45, slightly surpassing the US (43) and Germany (42)…."
