List of most-visited museums in the United States
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/Metropolitan_Museum_of_Art_%28The_Met%29_-_Central_Park%2C_NYC.jpg/150px-Metropolitan_Museum_of_Art_%28The_Met%29_-_Central_Park%2C_NYC.jpg)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ec/East_Building_of_the_National_Gallery_of_Art%2C_2019.jpg/150px-East_Building_of_the_National_Gallery_of_Art%2C_2019.jpg)
National Gallery of Art, East Building, Washington DC
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8b/MoMa_NY_USA_1.jpg/150px-MoMa_NY_USA_1.jpg)
Museum of Modern Art, New York City
This is a list of the most-visited museums in the United States in 2020. It is based upon the annual survey of museum attendance by the Art Newspaper published in March 2021, the TEA-AECOM Museum survey, published in September 2021, and some annual reports from the museums themselves.
The figures in this survey show the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused all of the museums on the list to be closed for long periods of time, and which greatly reduced tourism to the United States. Attendance at the twenty most-visited museums in The United States dropped by 80.1 percent, from 49,763,000 visitors in 2019 to 7,884,000 visitors in 2020.[1]
number of visitors in 2020 | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Metropolitan Museum of Art | New York City | 1,125,000 (2020) (down 83 percent from 2019) | 2020[1] | ||||
Denver Museum of Nature and Science | Denver | 991,000 (2020) (down 39.4 percent from 2019) | 2020[1] | ||||
National Gallery of Art | Washington, D.C. | 730,000 (2020) (down 82 percent from 2019) | 2020[1] | ||||
Museum of Modern Art | New York City | 706,000 (2020) (down 65 percent from 2019) | 2020[1] | ||||
National Museum of Natural History | Washington, D.C. | 572,638 (2020) (down 86.4 percent from 2019) | 2020[1] | ||||
Huntington Library | San Marino, California | 547,000 (2020) (down 34 percent from 2019) | 2020[2] | ||||
Houston Museum of Fine Arts | Houston, Texas | 401,935 (2020) (down 68 percent from 2019) | 2020[2] | ||||
Smithsonian American Art Museum | Washington,D.C. | 387,403 (2020) (down 80 percent from 2019} | 2020[3] | ||||
Art Institute of Chicago | Chicago | 375,000 (2020) (down 78 percent from 2019) | 2020[1] | ||||
National Museum of African American History and Culture | Washington, D.C. | 368,000 (2020) (down 81.6 percent from 2019) | 2020[1] | ||||
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art | Bentonville, Arkansas | 353,123 (2020) {down 50 percent from 2019) | 2020[2] | ||||
National Portrait Gallery and National Museum of American Art | Washington, D.C. | 321,266 (2020) (down 81 percent from 2019) | 2020[2] | ||||
Field Museum of Natural History | Chicago | 316,000 (2020) (down 78.8 percent from 2019) | 2020[1] | ||||
Udvar-Hazy Center[ii] | Chantilly, VA | 311,548 (2020) (down 75 percent from 2019) | 2020[4] | ||||
National Museum of American History | Washington, D.C. | 311,000 (2020) (down 88.8 percent from 2019 | 2020[1] | ||||
Getty Center | Los Angeles | 267,035 (2020) (down 81 percent from 2019) | 2020[2] | ||||
National Air and Space Museum | Washington, D.C. | 267,000 (2020) (down 91.7 percent from 2019) | 2020[1] | ||||
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts | Richmond, Virginia | 260,350 (2020) (down 49 percent from 2019 | 2020[2] | ||||
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston | Boston | 249,881 (2020) (down 80 percent from 2019) | 2020[1] | ||||
California Science Center | Los Angeles | 240,000 (2020) (down 81.4 percent from 2019) | 2020[1] | ||||
Whitney Museum of American Art | New York City | 233,180 (2020) (down 78 percent from 2019) | 2020[5] | ||||
Solomon Guggenheim Museum | New York City | 154,495 (2020) (down 88 percent from 2019) | 2020[5] |
Notes and Citations[]
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m TEA-AECOM Museum Index 2020, published September 2021
- ^ a b c d e f The Art Newspaper, "Most visited art museums in 2020", published March 2021
- ^ Smithsonian Institution Newsdesk, retrieved November 4, 2021
- ^ Smithsonian Institution News Desk, September 27, 2021 for 2020, published September 2021
- ^ a b The Art Newspaper, 2 April 2021
See also[]
Categories:
- Lists of art museums and galleries
- Tourism-related lists of superlatives