Two years after the beginning of Covid measures and lockdowns, The Art Newspaper’s ‘Visitor Figures 2022’ reported that 141 million visits were paid to the top 100 museums in 2022, double the number recorded in 2021 and triple the number in 2020. Though far from the pre-pandemic levels of 2019, when an impressive 230 million visits were reported, cultural institutions throughout the world seem on track to recover – hopefully in the near future.
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Unsurprisingly, the 2022 numbers have been affected unevenly. European museums reported good numbers overall, drawing in almost 17 million visitors between just the top three museums. Chinese and Russian museum numbers, on the other hand, have been significantly affected – in the case of China, by zero-covid strategies implemented by the Chinese government; and for Russia, by restricted tourism following the invasion of Ukraine.
Paris, London, Rome and New York proved the most popular with visitors: the Musée du Louvre retained its first place with 7.7 million visits; the Vatican Museums came second with 5 million visits; and in third place was the British Museum with 4 million.
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The UK is further represented in the top 20 with Tate Modern, The National Gallery, The Victoria and Albert Museum, Somerset House and the National Museum of Scotland. Paris, another popular destination, also saw the Musée d’Orsay and Centre Pompidou in the top 20.
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Year-on-year, UK Museums grew – some tripling last year’s attendance – but full recovery is still far away. For instance, though placing 11th worldwide, the National Gallery was down 3.3 million visitors compared to 2019. This meant that it lost more visitors than any other museum in the world.
British museums which fared quite well can thank particularly successful paid exhibitions. The most popular exhibition across the country in 2022 was the V&A’s Fashioning Masculinities: The Art of Menswear, followed by Tate Modern's Surrealism Beyond Borders and the Royal Academy of Arts' Francis Bacon: Man and Beast. Outside of London, Hockney’s Eye: The Art and Technology of Depiction at the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge was a notable success. As for overall visitor numbers, the growth of museums in the North was a welcome surprise, with the Burrell Collection in Glasgow, the National Museum of Scotland and the Scottish National Gallery attracting more crowds than seen before.
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Though New York is featured in the top 20 most visited museums with the Metropolitan Museum of Art (placing 8th with 3.2 million visits) and the Museum of Modern Art (17th, with 2.1 million visits), the recovery has been slow. Of the major New York institutions, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum had the biggest percentage drop, while the Met saw the biggest fall in actual numbers: down 1.7 million visitors compared to pre-pandemic levels. The most visited museum in the US was the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, which, however, only returned to its full opening schedule in May, and thus saw a 44% decrease in figures from 2019.
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A few major museums across Europe also had slow recoveries, with the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique in Brussels, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Albertina in Vienna and the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples reporting fewer visitors. There were still some increases in attendance for several museums, including the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, the National Gallery of Denmark in Copenhagen, the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest, The Kunsthaus Zürich and the Munchmuseet in Oslo.
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Zero-Covid policies in Asia meant that museums in China took a heavy toll, as did Australia and New Zealand, which also maintained strict isolation rules throughout 2022. A notable exception in Asia was South Korea, whose National Museum in Seoul earned the country a fifth spot among the most visited museums worldwide. The first Frieze art fair held in the capital was cited as a contributing factor to the positive boost.
All in all, while 2022 should have been the year when most people could travel freely and pay a visit to their favourite museum, things are not quite yet back to normal. London, for instance, was one of the first major art capitals to let go of Covid restrictions, but its major museums have been slower than others to recover.
The full report of visitor figures can be found online on The Art Newspaper's website.
