Art New Blog has a fascinating post on museum attendance around the world. Citing Art Newspaper figures (click here to download the full PDF of facts & figures), here are the top 60 museums (by attendance) in the world:
- 8,300,000 – Louvre, Paris
- 5,509,425 – Centre Pompidou, Paris
- 5,191,840 – Tate Modern, London
- 4,837,878 – British Museum, London
- 4,547,353 – Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
- 4,518,413 – National Gallery of Art, Washington
- 4,310,083 – Vatican Museums, Vatican City
- 4,159,485 – National Gallery, London
- 3,166,509 – Musée d’Orsay, Paris
- 2,652,924 – Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
- 2,650,551 – National Palace Museum, Taipei
- 2,435,300 – Victoria and Albert Museum, London
- 2,395,075 – State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
- 2,232,475 – Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow
- 2,219,554 – Museum of Modern Art, New York
- 2,133,149 – Field Museum, Chicago
- 1,772,255 – Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo
- 1,674,607 – CaxiaForum Barcelona, Barcelona
- 1,650,000 – Moscow Kremlin Museums, Moscow
- 1,649,969 – Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
- 1,615,939 – Uffizi, Florence
- 1,607,767 – National Portrait Gallery, London
- 1,596,071 – Tate Britain, London
- 1,570,390 – Reina Sofia, Madrid
- 1,559,783 – Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
- 1,363,258 – Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
- 1,362,188 – Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
- 1,300,000 – Art Gallery New South Wales, Sydney
- 1,298,572 – Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
- 1,265,000 – Getty Museum, Los Angeles
- 1,137,306 – Museu Picasso, Barcelona
- 1,137,217 – De Young Museum, San Francisco
- 1,134,567 – Pergamonmuseum, Berlin
- 1,047,012 – Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
- 1,002,963 – Museo Guggenheim, Bilbao
- 978,064 – Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
- 955,748 – Royal Academy, London
- 937,770 – National Gallery, Edinburgh
- 899,535 – National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
- 898,576 – Freer and Sackler Galleries, Washington
- 889,434 – Guggenheim Museum, New York
- 825,990 – Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto
- 792,042 – Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin
- 786,056 – National Portrait Gallery, Washington
- 779,995 – Green Vault, Dresden
- 764,000 – Museum of Fine Arts Budapest, Budapest
- 754,654 – Ian Potter Centre, Melbourne
- 740,407 – National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin
- 739,830 – Hirshhorn Museum, Washington
- 727,842 – Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
- 718,600 – National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo
- 706,174 – SFMOMA, San Francisco
- 691,997 – Musée Rodin, Paris
- 667,200 – LACMA, Los Angeles
- 652,599 – Tate Liverpool, Liverpool
- 594,678 – Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna
- 580,050 – Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane
- 578,914 – Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal
- 569,512 – Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane
- 550,000 – Albertina, Vienna
Here is the continental breakdown:
3 – Asia5 – Australia34 – Europe18 – N. America0 – S. America0 – Africa
Some questions:
- Why does Australia have 5 museums on this list while South America (which includes Sao Paolo & Buenos Aires) and Africa (which includes the Egyptian Museum in Cairo & the museums in South Africa) have none?;
- Why are LA’s museums so low on the list? LACMA only has 667,000 visitors? Wouldn’t the budget for the Broad Art Museum (aka McBroad) have been better spent on marketing and publicity?;
- Why are there no Asian museums in the top 10?;
- Where are the Chinese museums on the list?;
- Why are there only three German museums on the list and 10 in the UK (seven of which are in London!!)?;
- Where is India?; and
- Where will the museums in Abu Dhabi be on this list when they finally open?
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