International Museum Attendance Back to “Natural Level”
173April 2, 2025
International museums in 2024 collectively experienced a slight dip in attendance that marks a return to normalcy in the wake of the Covid-19 crisis, theArt Newspaperreports. According to the publication’s annual study, the decline suggests the post-pandemic build-back has ended, and institutions can expect to see visitor numbers rise or fall based on typical factors including the popularity of exhibitions, the presence of amenities, tourism patterns, weather, and space constraints.
Among those seeing a minimal decrease in attendance was the world’s most visited museum, the Louvre in Paris, which experienced a 1 percent dip from 2023 visitor levels. The second-most-visited institution, the Vatican Museums in Rome, saw a slight uptick of nearly a percentage point. Many London museums had a thornier time of it, with no clear pattern emerging: Several were down year-over-year, others were up but still below pre-pandemic numbers, while still others had their best years since 2018. TheArt Newspaperpointed out that British museums’ general reliance on superb branding and commercial acuity, rather than on government and donor funding, stands them in comparatively poor stead when tourism is down thanks to Brexit and other world events, which also seemed to have evinced a shift away from contemporary art and toward more traditional fare.
In Asia, at least two Hong Kong museums saw moderate to sharp declines. WhileTANnoted that it is “still early days there,” it’s also worth mentioning that Hong Kong implemented a new security law last year thatappears to have had a chilling effect on the arts. The Shanghai Museum’s new branch in Pudong opened last year to great excitement, however, with the result that the institution entered the world’s-most-visited list at number 6.
The various conflicts playing out around the globe dampened museumgoers’ ardor in the expected regions, with both Israeli and Palestinian museums negatively impacted by a lack of international visitors. Russian institutions, however, saw a comparative return to health over 2023.
In the Americas, several Mexican museums saw substantial surges in attendance tied to popular exhibitions, while the fortunes of Brazilian institutions variously rose (owing to large, immersive installations) or fell (in some instances thanks to flooding and in others for unknown reasons). US institutions also saw mixed results in an arts landscape that is likely to shift profoundly under the Trump administration, which is working to erase diversity initiatives from institutions receiving government funding, among them Washington, DC’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, the country’s fourth-most-popular art museum.
The world’s ten most visited museums and their 2024 attendance figures are below.
Louvre, Paris (8,737,050)
Vatican Museums, Rome (6,825,436)
British Museum, London (6,479,952)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (5,727,258)
Tate Modern, London (4,603,025)
Shanghai Museum East (4,234,046)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (3,936,543)
National Museum of Korea, Seoul (3,788,785)
Musée d’Orsay, Paris (3,751,141)
Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City (3,700,000)