Attendance

Whitney lays off 15 more staff members, citing ‘extremely low’ attendance

Museum’s director notes that it may take until 2025 for tourists to return in force to New York

The Musée du Louvre—the world’s most popular art museum—saw 72% drop in visitors last year

Despite kicking off 2020 with a record-breaking Leonardo exhibition, like many museums around the world, the Parisian institution was adversely affected by coronavirus lockdowns

Art Fund launches £1m crowdfunding appeal to help UK museums fighting for survival

After months without income due to coronavirus closures, new survey shows that museums are operating with just 25% of previous visitor numbers

'I am not too worried by crowd problems': Louvre director predicts visitor numbers will drop by 80%

Jean-Luc Martinez believes that capitalising on the museum's permanent collection will be key to recovery

Museumscomment

Eight ways museums could make the most of the coronavirus crisis

Failure to seize this opportunity to make changes would be a graver error than any breach of etiquette

The exceptional piece of calligraphy at the centre of one of 2019's most popular—and most controversial—exhibitions

Tokyo National Museum’s show on Chinese artist Yan Zhenqing ranks 15th in our latest visitor attendance survey despite contentious loan from Taipei museum

All eyes on Asia: normality is still a long way off as museums emerge from lockdown

Visitor numbers at some of the world’s most popular art venues have nosedived and uncertainty for the future remains

Manga beats Rembrandt and Captain Cook to be named the British Museum’s most popular show last year

The exhibition on the global phenomenon was the largest ever to be staged outside Japan

Art's Most Popular: here are 2019's most visited shows and museums

Ai Weiwei was a hit in Brazil, records were broken in London and Paris—but is this the final year of museum visitor growth?

When did just looking at art lose its appeal?

Sleep in Hopper’s motel room or dive into Monet’s pond—museums are increasingly going beyond traditional exhibition formats to attract visitors

Mo people, mo problems: when busy shows go wrong

The cost of producing crowd-pulling shows can outstrip the cash they bring in. Here are some of the downsides of being just too popular

Which museums have the biggest social media followings?

Increasingly, the digital sphere is another frontier where institutions battle it out for the attention of culture-seekers

Legoland vs the Louvre: how do museums stack up against other popular visitor attractions and public events?

They might not always draw the crowds that flock to malls and amusement parks, but museums are seen as valuable additions to communities—even by people who have never stepped foot in one

What were the most visited ticketed shows in London, Paris and New York last year?

Londoners stuck to the tried-and-tested and New Yorkers showed their patriotic sides, while Parisians were drawn in by golden treasures

Here are 2019's most visited contemporary art exhibitions

Jean-Michel Basquiat brought in big crowds in Paris—but who beat him to claim the top spot?

Here are the most visited Old Master exhibitions of 2019

The hype surrounding major anniversary celebrations saw big turnouts for Bruegel, Leonardo and Rembrandt

Here are the ten most visited photography exhibitions of 2019

Female artists dominated the top ranks of last year's photography shows

Here are the ten most popular Post-Impressionist and Modern art exhibitions of 2019

Big names such as Munch, Klimt and Van Gogh dominate the rankings, but a couple of lesser-known artists did surprisingly well

Here are the ten most visited 19th century art exhibitions of 2019

Which Impressionist made the biggest impression in this category?

Coronavirus: Russian museums hit as Chinese tourists stay away

Russia has banned Chinese citizens from entering the country, slashing attendance at cultural institutions in Moscow and St Petersburg

Louvre's Leonardo da Vinci show smashes attendance record with more than one million visitors

Previous highest figure was 540,000 people for the Eugène Delacroix show in 2018

TeamLab to open spaces in Shanghai and Macao after breaking attendance records in Tokyo

Multimedia collective's first permanent gallery in Japan was the most popular single-artist museum of 2018, beating Picasso and Van Gogh museums

Louvre defends planned switch to timed-entry tickets after Mona Lisa 'pandemonium'

Reservations will become mandatory at the world's most visited museum by the end of the year

British Museum knocks Tate Modern off top spot as UK's most popular attraction after miscalculation

Over 300,000 visitors had been missed in the financial year 2018/19 because of 'incorrect light levels caused by a broken light fitting'

Fondation Beyeler's Young Picasso exhibition is the second most popular in the museum's history

Swiss museum extended the show to accommodate visitors to Europe for Art Basel and the Venice Biennale

MOCA to offer free general admission after $10m gift from board president

The change has been a long-time wish for some leaders at the Los Angeles museum

The kids are alright: Art Gallery of Ontario offers free admission for visitors 25 and under, and reduced yearly passes for all

The Canadian institution aims to double its membership and expand its audience with one-year pilot programme

Nineteenth-century realists pull in mega-crowds as Russian museum attendance peaks

Exhibitions in Russia of homegrown artists attract proportionally greater numbers than blockbusters in other countries

Boom or bust for DC museums: how the US government shutdown affected visitor figures

In January, the 19 Smithsonian institutions had just 13% of the footfall they had experienced the year before