I can answer that from personal experience. I grew up in Toronto. Living in downtown Toronto, at the age of eight, I used to walk in the front doors of the Royal Ontario Museum to look at the mummies and all their treasures. I had amazing experiences as a child and a young teenager in seeing major retrospectives of the work of Picasso, Van Gogh, and Mondrian, all at the Art Gallery of Ontario. They were life-changing experiences and set me on my path to being an artist.
Today, at the Vancouver Art Gallery, we welcome record numbers of art students and public school students. Many of the students come from schools that no longer have very robust art programs within the schools and depend very much on the Vancouver Art Gallery for that aspect of their education. Education is one of the major roles played by the museum.