Met’s US Visitor Numbers Surpass Pre-Pandemic Levels

New York’sMetropolitan Museum of Arton July 24revealedthat it had welcomed 4.6 million domestic visitors and 900,000 international guests in the fiscal year ended June 30, 2024. The total 5.5 million figure reflects attendance at the Met’s flagship museum on Fifth Avenue, on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and the Cloisters, farther uptown in Fort Tryon Park, in the city’s Washington Heights neighborhood. The numbers show a postpandemic return to health for the Met, which drew 7 million visitors in 2019, at which time its museums included the Met Breuer, which occupied the Brutalist onetime home of the Whitney Museum of American Art. The Met shuttered the Breuer in 2020.

A large percentage of the US residents who flocked to the Met in the past year were from the Big Apple, with 3.3 million New Yorkers walking through the doors, their numbers standing at 102 percent of 2019 levels. The number of US attendees from outside the five-borough area held steady, at 1.3 million. New Yorkers accounted for 60 percent of museum guests, with other US visitors making up 24 percent of the total and the aforementioned 900,000 international visitors accounting for 16 percent of all attendees. The breakdown in figures can be explained in part by the museum’s policy of allowing NYC residents to pay what they wish for tickets, which as of this past January they are able to reserve online ahead of time, thus bypassing long lines of tourists. The comparatively low numbers of international visitors jibe with areportissued this past May by the New York State Comptroller, which noted that as of year-end 2023, international visitors to New York City were still 14.1 percent below 2019, or prepandemic, levels.

The Met additionally announced that a record number of its visitors in the past fiscal year were BIPOC, with 56 percent of domestic attendees identifying as such.

“The Met’s mission is to connect all people to creativity, knowledge, ideas, and one another, and we’re honored to be able welcome so many from near and far to the museum,” said Met director and CEO Max Hollein in a statement. “The Met is committed to presenting a wide array of exhibitions, collection displays, activities, and events, and we’re thrilled to see our programming resonating so strongly with increasingly diverse audiences.”