The project aims to answer three research questions.

1. Who visits which museums?
2. Where does the interest in museums stem from?
3. What do visitors do in museums?

Question 1 has been examined relatively well in cultural and sociological studies, so that the results from this project can be compared with regard to status, age or gender and allow to underline specific features of the visitors in the Oldenburg museums. Questions 2 and 3, however, have been examined only marginally until now. For example, there are only a few empiric studies on what people do in museums when they are there. As to the question where the interest in art or museums stems from, no reliable findings have been published so far. In order to answer the research questions, various compatible empirical studies are undertaken in the two Oldenburg federal state museums as well as in the three urban museums. This includes, in addition to ethnographic research, an online and a print questionnaire. The latter is available in the museums.