Visitor figures criteria for inclusion and guidance

Every year The Art Newspaper publishes the most comprehensive worldwide survey of visitor numbers to museums of art.

We cover hundreds of institutions—no two are exactly alike. This page summarises the rules and criteria we use to determine which institutions are included on the list, and how we expect institutions to count their visitor numbers.

General

  • We appreciate that collecting visitor numbers is a significantly complex task.
  • Therefore in general we are happy for institutions to report the data that they normally collect in the course of their ordinary business, unless it significantly breaches one of the criteria below.
  • The number institutions report to us will usually be the same as that reported to government, other bodies such as Alva in the UK, or in their annual report.
  • To conduct the research we endeavor to contact every art museum we are aware of , via email and telephone. Institutions who do not reply, or who we are unable to contact, will not be included on the list. Institutions who believe they should be included on the list should email attendancefigures@theartnewspaper.com

Period covered

  • We collect data for full calendar years. Ie from 1 January to 31 December, inclusive.
  • We do not accept data for a financial year, or include numbers from a wider period.

Who counts as a visitor?

  • We define a visitor as a person entering the institution’s physical site for any purpose. Only visits to the "front of house" should be counted – ie the main exhibition spaces open to the public.
  • For ticketed venues, we would expect that this number would exclude people entering multiple times on the same day, staff members etc. For non-ticketed venues, we accept that it might not possible to exclude these groups.
  • People entering for the purposes of visiting an on-site shop, café, bar or toilet can be included, unless the shop, café or bar in question is a functionally separate venue (ie. No direct entrance to museum.)
  • People attending events organised by the institution should be included. Visitors to private hire events should ideally not be included, but can be if it is not possible to split them out.
  • Children should be included, including those on school visits to the museum.
  • Attendees to off-site events and programmes should NOT be included. Eg. a public art programme or visits to a school.
  • Visitors to public spaces owned by the institution which are not enclosed or controlled—eg a plaza or garden—should NOT be included.
  • If it is possible to buy a ticket for a park or garden separately to the main building(s), then those visitors should NOT be counted (but see note about sculpture parks, below).
  • Digital or “virtual” visitors should NOT be included.

Counting

  • We ask institutions to specify the method used to count visitors: e.g. via ticket sales, an automatic door counter, a manual count, or a combination of these.
  • The overall number should not be an estimate, although we accept some methods of counting might include a small amount of estimation.
  • Numbers should not be rounded.

What counts as a site?

  • To ensure fairness and avoid double-counting, we list museums by physical site. If an institution has multiple sites then they are listed separately, with a footnote providing the combined number. We disregard internal organisational structure, ownership and branding.
  • We consider a “physical site” to be a discrete building or estate to which the institution controls access.
  • Usually, a visitor is required to show or buy a ticket or pass a security check to enter the site. The institution must be able to count the number of people entering.
  • If multiple buildings are connected by underground passages (eg. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC) or contained within a wall (eg. Getty Center) then we consider them a single site.
  • If multiple buildings are immediately adjacent to each other and a normal ticket provides access to all of them (eg. Lacma), then we consider them to be a single site. If adjacent buildings are not ticketed, and therefore there is no way to avoid double counting, then we consider them to be separate sites. If visitors require a “joint ticket” or if some buildings are free and others have paid entry, then we consider them to be separate sites (eg. the museums in Greenwich, London).
  • When more than one qualifying institution shares a single site and there is no reliable way to differentiate their visitors, then we list them together with a footnote.

What counts as an “art museum”?

For the purposes of our visitor figures list, we define art museums as:

  • Publicly owned or run by a not-for-profit foundation or similar
  • Open to the general public
  • Primarily devoted to the display of art
  • Showing art from any period, including newly made
  • Showing collection displays and/or temporary exhibitions (including “kunsthalles”)
  • The works on display should not be for sale.

The decision of the editors on whether an institution is included or not is final.

Historical buildings

  • There is significant overlap between art museums and historic buildings and palaces. For inclusion in our list, the institution should be primarily devoted to the displays of works of art, rather than to the history of the building. The majority of works on display should not be directly connected to the building or its previous inhabitants. If the works on display were mostly collected by a previous inhabitant, then the collection should be primarily of interest for its artistic merit, not the historical connection.
  • For example, we include the Musée du Louvre and the State Hermitage Museum, but not the Palace of Versailles or Hampton Court. We include the Queen’s Gallery but not Buckingham Palace.

Other types of museums

  • We include museums of applied arts—eg the Victoria and Albert Museum.
  • We include “universal museums” such as the British Museum, the Louvre and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as long as the majority of their displays are works of art.
  • We include museums of antiquities, but the majority of the displays should be of works of art, rather than eg. weapons and armour, ordinary household objects, books, human remains, etc.
  • We generally do not include museums of science, natural history or general history. We generally do not include mixed museums where art comprises less than two-thirds of the displays.
  • We make some exceptions where an institution has a significant art collection.

Multi-arts centres, cinemas and libraries

  • In multi-arts centres where there is a discrete art gallery (eg. the Hayward Gallery in the Southbank Centre) then only the visitors to the art gallery should be included.
  • If a site includes eg. a mainstream cinema or a general purpose library, then visitors to those facilities should be excluded. If it is not possible, then the institution will not be listed.
  • Institutions primarily devoted to another medium—eg a concert hall—will generally not be included on the list, even if they regularly hold small displays of art.
  • Larger art museums often have a cinema, library, lecture hall etc, to support their primary activity. Visitors to these can be included in the overall visitor number.

Sculpture parks

  • Institutions which primarily consist of a park or garden devoted to the display of sculpture—eg Yorkshire Sculpture Park - are included on the list, as long as the institution is capable of controlling and counting entry to the site. We would expect such an institution to have a regularly changing programme of sculpture or exhibitions, and to show sculpture which isn’t historically connected to the site.
  • Visits to galleries and buildings while visitors are on site should not be counted separately.