Museum Visitors: The Facts

monalisaexh.jpgArt 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:

  1. 8,300,000 – Louvre, Paris
  2. 5,509,425 – Centre Pompidou, Paris
  3. 5,191,840 – Tate Modern, London
  4. 4,837,878 – British Museum, London
  5. 4,547,353 – Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
  6. 4,518,413 – National Gallery of Art, Washington
  7. 4,310,083 – Vatican Museums, Vatican City
  8. 4,159,485 – National Gallery, London
  9. 3,166,509 – Musée d’Orsay, Paris
  10. 2,652,924 – Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
  11. 2,650,551 – National Palace Museum, Taipei
  12. 2,435,300 – Victoria and Albert Museum, London
  13. 2,395,075 – State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
  14. 2,232,475 – Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow
  15. 2,219,554 – Museum of Modern Art, New York
  16. 2,133,149 – Field Museum, Chicago
  17. 1,772,255 – Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo
  18. 1,674,607 – CaxiaForum Barcelona, Barcelona
  19. 1,650,000 – Moscow Kremlin Museums, Moscow
  20. 1,649,969 – Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
  21. 1,615,939 – Uffizi, Florence
  22. 1,607,767 – National Portrait Gallery, London
  23. 1,596,071 – Tate Britain, London
  24. 1,570,390 – Reina Sofia, Madrid
  25. 1,559,783 – Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
  26. 1,363,258 – Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
  27. 1,362,188 – Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
  28. 1,300,000 – Art Gallery New South Wales, Sydney
  29. 1,298,572 – Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
  30. 1,265,000 – Getty Museum, Los Angeles
  31. 1,137,306 – Museu Picasso, Barcelona
  32. 1,137,217 – De Young Museum, San Francisco
  33. 1,134,567 – Pergamonmuseum, Berlin
  34. 1,047,012 – Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
  35. 1,002,963 – Museo Guggenheim, Bilbao
  36. 978,064 – Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
  37. 955,748 – Royal Academy, London
  38. 937,770 – National Gallery, Edinburgh
  39. 899,535 – National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
  40. 898,576 – Freer and Sackler Galleries, Washington
  41. 889,434 – Guggenheim Museum, New York
  42. 825,990 – Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto
  43. 792,042 – Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin
  44. 786,056 – National Portrait Gallery, Washington
  45. 779,995 – Green Vault, Dresden
  46. 764,000 – Museum of Fine Arts Budapest, Budapest
  47. 754,654 – Ian Potter Centre, Melbourne
  48. 740,407 – National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin
  49. 739,830 – Hirshhorn Museum, Washington
  50. 727,842 – Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
  51. 718,600 – National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo
  52. 706,174 – SFMOMA, San Francisco
  53. 691,997 – Musée Rodin, Paris
  54. 667,200 – LACMA, Los Angeles
  55. 652,599 – Tate Liverpool, Liverpool
  56. 594,678 – Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna
  57. 580,050 – Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane
  58. 578,914 – Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal
  59. 569,512 – Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane
  60. 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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