VENICE — A year after the European Union declared an end to the emergency phase of COVID-19, major European museums are seeing an increase in visitor numbers as art lovers flock to exhibitions. The Vermeer exhibition which has just ended at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam attracted a record 650,000 visitors, perhaps an accurate measure of pent-up demand after two years of lockdown and travel restrictions. But while the show made global headlines, the Rijksmuseum was far from the only European institution to set attendance and special exhibition records in recent months.
In 2019, the year before the pandemic, the Amsterdam museum welcomed 2.7 million visitors. It dropped dramatically to 675,000 in 2020, then to 625,000 the following year. In 2022, it has increased by more than 180% to 1.7 million – still a million visitors below its pre-pandemic highs.
“The Rijksmuseum was well aware of Vermeer’s popularity,” said spokesman Casper van der Kruit. Hyperallergic. “For the Rijksmuseum it was never about numbers.” Audiences were assigned tours with start times to provide a high-quality experience, and yet Vermeer was still the most-visited exhibit in the museum’s history – even leading to a booming resale market for coveted sold-out tickets.
Across Europe, many major museums hit attendance records in 2019, the year immediately before the pandemic. The Louvre in Paris, the Acropolis Museum in Athens and the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid have attracted unprecedented foot traffic, a phenomenon largely due to what is called “once in a lifetime“exhibitions – a trend that started long before COVID.
The Louvre, the European leader in terms of attendance, attracted 7.8 million visitors in 2022, 170% more than in 2021, but 19% less than in 2019. Its most popular exhibition of all time , Leonardo DeVinci, also took place just before the long period of confinement. By closing on the evening of Monday February 24, 2020, Leonardo had attracted some 1,071,840 visitors, breaking a record for the museum previously set by the 540,000 visitors to its Delacroix Retrospective in 2018.
London’s National Gallery still hasn’t surpassed its set record more than two decades ago with the exhibition see salvation (2000)even though he got closer to his Picasso and Ingres exhibition which closed last fall. Its most visited paid exhibition also took place ten years ago: Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milanwhich opened in 2011, attracted nearly 324,000 visitors.
“Our national figures are close to recovery; however, our international numbers are not,” said National Gallery spokesperson Neil Evans. Hyperallergic. During the 2019-2020 financial year, the museum welcomed 5.4 million visitors, 64% of whom came from abroad and the rest from the country. In the 2022-2023 fiscal year, which is how the institution measures its data, the numbers had dropped by almost half, to 2.8 million, and the ratio of domestic visitors to international visitors had almost fallen. reversed, with 57% of all visitors coming from the UK. .
“There are multiple factors that influence visitor numbers, which vary from institution to institution,” Evans said. “However, the National Gallery has seen a 274% increase in the number of visitors in the calendar year 2022, taking it from the 15th to the sixth most visited UK attraction,” he added, citing the figures. of Major Tourist Attractions Association, made up of museums, parks and other UK attractions. (The list is topped by the Crown Estate, Windsor Great Park; the Tate Gallery was fourth on the list.)
Evans also cites the “pay what you want” program in place until August 13, which offers tickets for a minimum of £1 (~$1.27) to see After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art Friday night. The modality was originally introduced for the Lucian Freud: new perspectives show which closed earlier this year.
The Uffizi Gallery in Florence saw record attendance of 4.4 million visitors in 2019. However, during the pandemic closures in 2020 and 2021 – when Italy was among nations hardest hit by COVID – the numbers dropped to 1.2 million and 1.7 million, respectively. Nonetheless, in 2022 the museum has seen a strong resurgence, attracting over 4 million visitors. The Uffizi Gallery plans to cross the 5 million visitor mark in 2023. Its most popular exhibition to date, The colors of Judaism in Italy in 2019, attracted more than 923,000 visitors.
Like the Louvre and the Uffizi, Madrid’s Reina Sofía set a record the year before the pandemic. In 2019, the museum welcomed 4.4 million visitors; during the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, the numbers fell by nearly three-quarters and more than 60%, respectively. But the museum appeared to be back on its feet in 2022, reaching 3.1 million visitors. And yet, the museum’s most popular exhibit to date is still Dalí: All the poetic suggestions and all the plastic possibilitiesin 2013. The retrospective of more than 200 works by the surrealist painter – including loans from the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, and 30 paintings never before exhibited in Spain – drew more than 732,000 visitors.
The same pattern of attendance is observed at the Museumsinsel in Berlin. In 2019, the museum welcomed over 3 million visitors, but the numbers fell to around 740,000 in 2020 and 832,000 in 2021. Like other institutions, the museum experienced a rebound in 2022, attracting 2.2 millions of people.
At the Acropolis Museum in Athens, which just celebrated its 14th anniversary, 2019 saw a record 1.76 million visitors. Numbers fell more than 80% in 2020, and in 2022 the museum was still below its pre-COVID levels, with 1.45 million visitors brimming with activity and creative new programs – including the August Full Moon Evening, offering stunning views of the Parthenon on a clear night.
In the UK last year, the four Tate galleries in London, Liverpool and Cornwall (known as Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives) collectively welcomed more than 6.3 million of visitors. The four galleries currently account for around 80% of pre-COVID visitor numbers, reaching over 90% on peak days, a Tate spokesperson said. In the decade before the pandemic, they averaged 7.6 million visitors a year. Unsurprisingly, the most popular paid exhibition in Tate history was Matisse: the cutouts at the Tate Modern in 2014, with over 560,000 visitors.
The Tate is adopting a new philosophy in the post-pandemic era, which somehow echoes the approach of the National Gallery and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
“Instead of returning to business as usual, Tate is developing more environmentally and financially sustainable ways of working – from extending the duration of our main trade shows to showcasing more of our world-class collection – while making the most of this opportunity to deepen visitor engagement,” said a representative from the museums.
As for the most popular exhibitions, such as the GuardianArt critic Maev Kennedy wrote at the time, “People may not know much about art, but they know what they love: old photos.”
His sighting came right after the 2001 exposure see salvation at the National Gallery. “The exhibits that people lined up around the block to see were of old masters or craftsmen long dead,” Kennedy observed. In the critic’s immortal words, a cheeky rebuke to the infamous formaldehyde sculpture of a certain contemporary artist“That’s enough to make a pickled shark cry.”
