| 2010 Top Art Museum Attendance – Worldwide | ||
| Attendance | Museum, Location | |
| 1. | 8,500,000 | Louvre, Paris |
| 2. | 5,842,138 | British Museum, London |
| 3. | 5,216,988 | Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
| 4. | 5,061,172 | Tate Modern, London |
| 5. | 4,954,914 | National Gallery, London |
| 6. | 4,775,114 | National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. |
| 7. | 3,131,238 | Museum of Modern Art, New York |
| 8. | 3,130,000 | Centre Pompidou, Paris |
| 9. | 3,067,909 | National Museum of Korea, Seoul |
| 10. | 2,985,510 | Musée d’Orsay, Paris |
| 2010 Top Art Museum Attendance – United States | ||
| Attendance | Museum, Location | |
| 1. | 5,216,988 | Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
| 2. | 4,775,114 | National Gallery of Art, Washington |
| 3. | 3,131,238 | Museum of Modern Art, New York |
| 4. | 2,043,854 | De Young Museum, San Francisco |
| 5. | 1,612,780 | Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago |
| 6. | 1,205,685 | *Getty Center (Getty Museum), Los Angeles |
| 7. | 1,144,494 | National Portrait Gallery, Washington D.C. |
| 8. | 1,125,000 | Museum of Fine Arts, Houston |
| 9. | 1,105,352 | Guggenheim, New York |
| 10. | 1,100,000 | Smithsonian American Art Museum, D.C. |
* Getty listed as Getty Center Only (Getty Center: 1,205,685 visitors; Getty Villa: 405,710 visitors)
| Total | ||
| 1. | 881,520 | “Rising Currents: Projects for NY’s Waterfront”, Museum of Modern Art, New York |
| 2. | 837,200 | “Abstract America: New Painting and Sculpture”, Saatchi Gallery, London |
| 3. | 777,551 | “Post-Impressionism: from the Musée d’Orsay”, National Art Center Tokyo, Tokyo |
| 4. | 749,638 | “The Original Copy: Photography of Sculpture”, Museum of Modern Art, New York |
| 5. | 703,256 | “Picasso in the Metropolitan Museum of Art”, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
| 6. | 631,064 | “Doug & Mike Starn on the Roof: Big Bambú”, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
| 7. | 601,284 | “Anish Kapoor”, Guggenheim, Bilbao |
| 8. | 595,346 | “Van Gogh: the Adventure of Becoming an Artist”, National Art Center Tokyo, Tokyo |
| 9. | 586,000 | “Christo and Jeanne-Claude”, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. |
| 10. | 582,665 | “Robert Rauschenberg: Gluts”, Guggenheim, Bilbao |
I am becoming more interested in comparing “bricks and mortar” museum attendance as compared to the on line museum experience. As a first step, researched top Art Museum attendance and Art Museum exhibition attendance. As next steps I will create similar attendance information for Science Centers, Children’s Museums, Natural History Museums and Corporate Museums and compare their attendance to their online visitation.
Notes:
| Three 2010 exhibitions were not included as the exhibitions opened in 2009; | ||
| 2,926,232 | “Designing the Lincoln Memorial” National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. | Feb 12, 2009 – Apr 4, 2010 |
| 755,850 | “Harmony and Integrity: Yongzheng Emperor” National Palace Museum, Taipei | Oct 7, 2009 – Jan 10, 2010 |
| 644,975 | “Falnama: the Book of Omens” Freer and Sackler Galleries, Washington, D.C. | Oct 24, 2009 – Jan 24, 2010 |
Data used was supplied by the museums. Many museums have one ticket for the entire museum and cannot provide individual attendance for temporary exhibitions. Institutions offering a number of exhibitions for a single ticket, are shown as one entry. Institutions with more than one building included separate museum attendance figures for each venue.
Data Source:
The Art Newspaper, April 2011, “Exhibition & Museum Attendance Figures 2010”