A museum in modern times is not simply the space for leisure or hobbies; instead, it has already begun its function as a cultural index of a nation and society and further plays a role of cultural resources for a nation's economic rehabilitation. The ...
A museum in modern times is not simply the space for leisure or hobbies; instead, it has already begun its function as a cultural index of a nation and society and further plays a role of cultural resources for a nation's economic rehabilitation. The number of the museums and museums of art is far less than that of the advanced countries such as the US or Great Britain, but entering upon the 2000s, the number of the museums has been steadily increasing up to 500 or so. However, according to the research on the actual condition of museums and museums of art conducted in 2002, it was found that their close-down rate is up to 15% every year and that most of them are having difficulties with their normal operation due to financial woes.
Moreover, the atmosphere of contributions to such significant cultural undertakings is considerably lower than that of the advanced countries.
Accordingly, it's about time for us to turn our attention to the contribution to a museum to solve the problem of museum's financial difficulty. Recently, the trend toward volunteering and contribution is gradually increasing with the household income growth and much freer time.
If we take a look at the situation of contribution, there expands a lot of contribution culture with the launching of CSO and NGO's aggressive fund-raiser and with the participation of industries in contributory activities, but as for the fund-raising organizations, contributors tend to favor religious community the most; the next is mass media, and the museum or other categories of art and culture are placed at the bottom.
At this point when Korean contributors' consciousness expands and contribution culture is gradually emerging as a blue signal toward its infrastructure of society, a museum should positively exercise its marketing strategy targeting at potential contributors. In other words, in keeping with the transition of social trend in general, domestic museums are required to make their efforts to revitalize the atmosphere of contribution to museums.
Next, as for the related legal system about domestic contribution, there are "Act on the collection of contributions and use" and the law on the limit of special case of taxes which stipulate tax system on contributions, income tax, and corporate law. According to the currently enforced law, the contributions such as legally designated one, the ones by special cases, and designated ones are supposed to get certain tax benefits, and contributions which don't come under these categories are not acknowledged as loss of money.
As for the contributions expended on the museum and art museum are considered to be a generally designated ones, and it is legally stipulated that within the scope of 10% of the amount of income in case of an individual, and 5% in case of a corporation, income deduction and loss of money are acknowledged by tax law. As for the situation of tax support system for the museum, the inheritance tax and gift tax on the contributed property can be exempted in case of the museums officially registered based on the law of promotion of museums and art museums and only the earnings made from profit-making undertakings relying on the people who use the proper establishment and its proper undertakings are acknowledged as loss of money. And as for the admission fees to the museums, there are value added tax law which exempts value added tax on the fees, and corporate tax law which doesn't acknowledge the paid interests on the purchase amounts of money on calligraphies, and antiques which is specified as non-business assets.
Taking a look at the contribution situation of domestic museums, there appear mainly remains and collection of art works; national, public museums cannot collect contributions and in case of private museums, most of the earnings depend on admission fees with a 8.6 % contribution rate of the whole earnings. Such aspects arise from the social atmosphere in which the general public has a perception of the museums as assets based on the market theory or they are not flexible in their concept of property right.
In case of the US whose contribution culture is the most highly established, there are hundreds of thousands of NGOs and about sixty thousand foundations are actively doing to collect contributions and most of the contributions used for their support come from an individual contributor. The size of contributed amounts of money is amounting to 248.5 billion dollars as of the year 2004, and these amounts of contributions account for 2.1% of the gross domestic product, among which, 13.9 billion dollars(5.6% of the contributions in total) were contributed to the sector of art, culture and humanities, and this data shows their contribution culture is highly refined and mature comparing to other countries.
In case of Great Britain, they are inducing corporations into supporting art work through the volunteering support foundation(CAF). In addition, they get rid of the system limiting the amounts of contribution through “contribution-supporting program”, leading to the increase in contributions by applying tax favor on it. Besides, they are employing the payroll-deductions-contribution in the form of Matching Grand to vitalize individual contribution atmosphere. In case of France, there appears lively contribution activity under the slogan of noblesse oblige; in case of Hungary, they are inducing non-profit organizations into contributing by providing the “1% support law on non-profit organizaton.”
As studied in the above, there appear some differences in the social concept of contribution between Korea and other advanced countries, among which there are still a lot of one-shot simple contributions and there is no specific way to find out how such contributions are used whereas the contribution activity in advanced countries is conceived as a kind of people's moral obligation in every social sector.
Of course, our country's atmosphere of contribution is gradually changing; at this point, I'd like to suggest four proposal to revitalize contribution to the museum like below: first, there should be an improvement in systematic aspects. The 10% limitations of expenses out of the whole collected amount of contribution stipulated in the law on the 'collection of contributions and use' should be upped to 20% of expenses.
All the proceedings from all purposive undertakings such as libraries, museums, and art museums should be categorized as reserve funds for unique purposive undertaking with expenses disposal in tax and deduction brought forward should be acknowledged for a certain period.
Further, there should be a reliable, authentic appraisal institution in order to appraise the contribtued articles into numerical amounts of money. Second, for the effective collection of contributions to national museums, there should be a method of making the museum organization into a foundation, or of setting up a culture foundation so that the foundation can collect contributions in behalf of the national museum. Besides, to revitalize the contribution-collecting activity for private museums, the policy section of the National Museum of Korea should add their policy contents of duties for revitalization of the museum contribution. Third, there should be a precedence of the improvement in the public consciousness of the museum contribution
and the museum is required to do research on contributors and develop a variety of programs for contributions as well. Lastly, it will be necessary for museums to foster online contribution culture and induce contribution in connection with portal and contribution site on the Internet.
In addition, through the working cooperation between museums and enterprises, various kinds of corporate point card and mileage should be induced to use for museums as well.