List of most-visited museums

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See also: List of most-visited art museums

This article lists the forty-five most-visited museums in 2020, followed by other museums with more than two million annual visitors in 2019, but no reported 2020 figures. A museum is defined as a building or institution dedicated to the acquisition, care, research, and exhibition of numerous objects that represent the legacy of humankind and its environment.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the museums listed were closed during the year for long periods of time. For example, the Louvre, the top museum on the list, was closed for 150 days in 2020, and Louvre attendance for 2020 dropped by 72 percent from 2019. Attendance at the top one hundred art museums dropped by 77 percent in 2020.[8] Natural history and science museums had a comparable drop in attendance as a result of the COVID-19 virus, which caused long closures and a global drop in tourism. For example, attendance at the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum fell by 72 percent in 2020; attendance at the Natural History Museum in London fell by 77 percent, and attendance at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington fell by 86.4 percent in 2020.[9]

Attendance at the top twenty museums of all categories in 2020 decreased by 78 percent across all regions.[10] in Europe, tourism was largely stopped, and museums were closed for an average of 112 extra days in 2020 due to the virus. Attendance at the top twenty museums in North America, where many museums were forced to close for two thirds of the year, fell by 81 percent in 2020, In the Asia-Pacific region, many museums were less dependent upon foreign visitors, and the museums generally closed for shorter periods, an average of 30 days. Still, in the Asia-Pacific region, attendance dropped by 72.4 percent from 2019.[10]

Criteria for inclusion[]

Major sources for this list are:

  • Art Newspaper's annual exhibition and museum visitor figures, which includes only art museums
  • The TEA/AECOM Museum Index, which only includes museums in East Asia, Australia, Europe, and the United States.
  • Museum statistics compiled by national agencies in countries not comprehensively covered by the first two sources, such as China's National Cultural Heritage Administration. and Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History.

These lists includes art museums, history museums, natural history museums, and science museums, but does not include archaeological sites, historical monuments, or many palace museums.[a] This article generally follows that guideline, so the Palace of Versailles, Peterhof Palace, and Forbidden City are not included, even though these sites include some museum collections. Such palace museums are found in the List of most visited palaces and monuments.

The list also includes the Mevlana Museum, a mausoleum and religious shrine which is classified by the Turkish government as a museum. It does not include Hagia Sophia, which the Turkish government stopped classifying as a museum in 2020.

Methodology[]

Due to differences in reporting across regions, there is some variation in the time periods for which figures are reported. Unless otherwise noted, figures for North America and continental Europe are calendar year figures, while most figures for Britain and Asia-Pacific are fiscal year figures, from April through March.

Musée du Louvre, Paris, France
National Museum of China, Beijing, China
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, United States
Vatican Museums, Vatican City
State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia
Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom
National Museum of Korea, Seoul, South Korea
Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain
National Palace Museum, Taipei, Taiwan

List[]

Name Country flag, city Visitors per year Year reported
Louvre France Paris 2,700,000 2020[15]
National Museum of China China Beijing 1,600,000 2020[16]
Tate Modern United Kingdom London 1,433,000 2020[16]
Shanghai Science and Technology Museum China Shanghai 1,351,000 2020[16]
Vatican Museums Vatican City Vatican City 1,300,000 2020[16]
British Museum United Kingdom London 1,275,000 2020[16]
Museo Reina Sofía Spain Madrid 1,248,000 2020[17]
Russian Museum Russia Saint Petersburg 1,203,324 2020[17]
National Gallery United Kingdom London 1,197,000 2020[16]
Natural History Museum United Kingdom London 1,197,000 2020[16]
Metropolitan Museum of Art[b] United States New York City 1,125,000 2020[16]
Hunan Museum China Changsha 1,130,000 2020[18]
Shanghai Natural History Museum China Shanghai 1,040,000 2020[19]
Zhejiang Museum China Hangzhou 1,108,000 2020[20]
National Taiwan Science Education Center Taiwan Taipei 1,082,000 2020[21]
Shaanxi History Museum China Xi'an 1,000,000 2020[21]
State Hermitage Museum Russia Saint Petersburg 969,000 2020[22]
Centre Pompidou France Paris 930,000 2020[23]
Victoria and Albert Museum United Kingdom London 872,000 2020[16]
Musée d'Orsay France Paris 867,000 2020[16]
London Science Museum United Kingdom London 862,000 2020[19]
Museo del Prado Spain Madrid 852,161 2020[16]
Shanghai Museum China Shanghai 604,090 2020[24]
National Gallery of Art United States Washington, D.C. 730,000 2020[16]
China Science and Technology Museum China Beijing 690,000 2020[16]
National Palace Museum[c] Taiwan Taipei 643,000 2020[16]
National Museum of Natural History United States Washington, D.C. 573,000 2020[16]
National Air and Space Museum United States Washington, D.C. 267,000 2020[16]
Tianjin Natural History Museum China Tianjin 550,000 2020[18]
National Museum of Anthropology Mexico Mexico City 938,937 2020[25]
National Museum of Nature and Science Japan Tokyo 580,000 2020[26]
Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum Japan Tokyo 510,000 2020[27]
Tretyakov Gallery Russia Moscow 894,000 2020[27]
National Museum of African American History and Culture United States Washington, D.C. 368,000 2020[28]
National Museum of American History United States Washington, D.C. 311,000 2020[19]
Rijksmuseum Netherlands Amsterdam 675,000 2020[21]
Tokyo National Museum Japan Tokyo 725,000 2020[27]
Hubei Provincial Museum China Wuhan 446,000 2020[29]
California Science Center United States Los Angeles 271,000 2020[30]
Van Gogh Museum Netherlands Amsterdam 517,000 2020[31]
National Museum of History Mexico Mexico City 617,365 2020[25]
Nanjing Museum China Nanjing 1,515,000 2020[30]
National Museum of Natural Science Taiwan Taichung 2,263,000 2020[32]
Galleria degli Uffizi Italy Florence 659,000 2020[33]
Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie France Paris 642,416 2020[34]
National Museum of Scotland United Kingdom Edinburgh 444,437 2020[35]
Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil Brazil Rio de Janeiro 790,357 2020[17]
National Museum of Korea South Korea Seoul 774,000 2020[30]
Royal Museums Greenwich United Kingdom London 111,263 2020[36]
Chongqing Museum of Natural History China Chongqing 2,624,700 2019[38]
Shenzhen Museum China Shenzhen 3,826,000 2019[38]
Guangdong Museum of Revolutionary History China Guangzhou 4,257,100 2019[38]
Mevlana Museum Turkey Konya 3,464,155 2019[14]
Xi'an Museum China Xi'an 3,420,000 2019[39]
Inner Mongolia Museum China Hohhot 2,361,000 2019[38]
Three Gorges Museum China Chongqing 2,301,900 2019[38]
National Folk Museum of Korea South Korea Seoul 2,286,276 2019[37]
Liaoning Provincial Museum China Shenyang 2,280,000 2019[38]
Chengdu Museum China Chengdu 2,259,000 2019[38]
Guangdong Museum China Guangzhou 2,234,800 2019[38]
Wenzhou Museum China Wenzhou 2,229,900 2019[38]
Suzhou Museum China Suzhou 2,030,000 2019[38]

See also[]

Notes[]

  1. ^ Some well-attended palace museums are not included in either the Art Newspaper or TEA/AECOM lists, although they are sometimes classified as museums by their respective national cultural agencies. These include Beijing's Forbidden City (which, with more than 19 million visitors in 2019, was ranked as the most-visited museum by the China Daily News Agency[11]); the Palace of Versailles (8,132,518 visitors in 2018);[12] Peterhof Palace (5,714,700 visitors in 2018), which is formally classified either as a "Дворцо́во-па́рковый анса́мбль, or Palace-Park Ensemble" or as a "Museum-Park Ensemble" by the Russian Ministry of Culture;[13] the Museum of King John III's Palace at Wilanów (3,151,385 visitors in 2018);[12] and Istanbul's Topkapı Palace (2,364,946 visitors in 2019).[14]
  2. ^ Includes visitors at the main Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Met Cloisters, but not the visitors recorded at the Met Breuer.
  3. ^ Includes only the visitors recorded at the main museum in Taipei, and not visitors recorded at the Southern Branch.

References[]

  1. ^ "Definition of MUSEUM". www.merriam-webster.com. Retrieved 5 June 2019.
  2. ^ "Museum Definition - ICOM". icom.museum. Retrieved 5 June 2019.
  3. ^ "MUSEUM | definition in the Cambridge English Dictionary". dictionary.cambridge.org. Retrieved 5 June 2019.
  4. ^ "museum | Definition of museum in English by Oxford Dictionaries". Oxford Dictionaries | English. Retrieved 5 June 2019.
  5. ^ "Museum definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary". www.collinsdictionary.com. Retrieved 5 June 2019.
  6. ^ "museum | Definition, History, Types, & Operation". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 5 June 2019.
  7. ^ "museum (noun) American English definition and synonyms | Macmillan Dictionary". www.macmillandictionary.com. Retrieved 5 June 2019.
  8. ^ The Art Newspaper, March 30, 2021
  9. ^ https://aecom.com/wp-content/uploads/documents/reports/AECOM-Theme-Index-2020.pdf[bare URL PDF]
  10. ^ a b Theme Index for year 2020, published September 2021
  11. ^ "Beijing's Forbidden City ranks most visited museum in the world". China Daily. 5 January 2020. Retrieved 15 August 2020.
  12. ^ a b "5 most visited museums". European Group on Museum Statistics. 2018. Retrieved 28 July 2019.
  13. ^ "Музеи. Статистическая информация". Ministry of Culture of Russia. 2019. Retrieved 5 June 2019.
  14. ^ a b "Top 10: Turkey's most-visited museums in 2019". Yeni Şafak. 12 February 2020. Retrieved 15 August 2020.
  15. ^ Tea-AECOM Museum Index, "Top 20 Museums Worldwide", published September 2021
  16. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Tea-AECOM Museum Index, "Top 20 Museums Worldwide", published September 2021
  17. ^ a b c The Art Newspaper, March 30, 2021
  18. ^ a b TEA-AECOM Musedum Index, published September 2021
  19. ^ a b c Cite error: The named reference tea-aecom-2020 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  20. ^ Tea-AECOM Museum Index,published September 2021
  21. ^ a b c TEA-AECOM Museum Index published September 2021
  22. ^ The Art Newspaper, Most visited Art Museums 2020
  23. ^ TEA-AECOM Museum Index, published Sept. 2021
  24. ^ The Art Newspaper,March 30, 2021
  25. ^ a b "Estadística de Visitantes" (in Spanish). INAH. Retrieved 26 September 2021.
  26. ^ TEA-AECOM survey, Sept, 2021
  27. ^ a b c TEA-AECOM Museum index, published September 2021
  28. ^ TEA AECOM Museum Index published September 2021
  29. ^ TEA-AECOM Survey published September 2021
  30. ^ a b c TEA-AECOM Museum Index, published September 2021
  31. ^ TEA-AECOM Museum Index, September 2021
  32. ^ TEA-AECOM Museum Index for 2020, published September 2021
  33. ^ The Art Newspaper, 30 March 2021
  34. ^ Statista, October 9, 2021
  35. ^ Association of Leading Visitor Attractions in UK, (2020)
  36. ^ {Association of Leading Visitor Attractions |accessdate=October 8, 2021}}
  37. ^ a b "Top 100 Art museum attendance". The Art Newspaper. No. 322. April 2020. p. 15.
  38. ^ a b c d e f g h i j "2019年度全国博物馆名录" (PDF) (in Chinese). National Cultural Heritage Administration. 13 May 2020.
  39. ^ TEA-AECOM Museum Index for 2019

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