Hasta La Ideas

Back in early January, and to no one’s surprise, it was announced that the Louvre had once again bested the competition and retained its title as “World’s Most Popular Museum.” Now the rest of the figures have come out, thanks to the just-released annual breakdown of visitor numbers by The Art Newspaper (pdf). The Louvre, it turns out, was ahead of the British Museum by nearly three million visitors, which isn’t very surprising at all, as that’s now been happening for years, but it’s always interesting none the less. Besides the total visitor count, the Newspaper includes a bevy of other categories, from the Top 30 Exhibitions (Japan won four of the top five slots) and the Contemporary Top Ten (Maria Abramovic‘s run at the MoMA took the prize, despite having much fewer than that same museum’s Tim Burton retrospective, but had a higher daily visitor count). In short, reading through the rankings is an annual treat, definitely one of the best ways to kill an hour or so early on a Wednesday morning. Here’s the top ten, with their total visitors numbers:

1. Louvre 8,500,000

2. British Museum 5,842,138

3. Metropolitan Museum of Art 5,216,988

4. Tate Modern 5,061,172

5. National Gallery (London) 4,954,914

6. National Gallery of Art 4,775,114

7. Museum of Modern Art 3,131,238

8. Centre Pompidou 3,130,000

9. National Museum of Korea 3,067,909

10. Musee d’Orsay 2,985,510

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