Art exhibition attendance varies sharply by setting, age, education, gender, and geography. In the United States, 17.7% of adults visited an art museum or gallery during the 12 months ending in July 2022, while 14.1% attended an art exhibit. In England, DCMS-sponsored museums and galleries recorded 42.0 million visits in the 2024/25 financial year. Together, these measures show both individual participation and the scale of institutional reach.
Contents
- U.S. visual-arts attendance in 2022
- Gender differences
- Age patterns
- Education and museum attendance
- How audiences discover and access exhibitions
- Digital participation
- Museum and gallery reach in England
U.S. visual-arts attendance in 2022
The National Endowment for the Arts measured several forms of visual-arts participation in the 12 months ending in July 2022. The measures are not interchangeable: an art museum or gallery, an art exhibit, a crafts fair, and a historic site represent different experiences and may include different audiences.
- 17.7% of U.S. adults attended an art museum or gallery.
- 14.1% attended an art exhibit.
- 17.1% attended a crafts fair or visual-arts festival.
- 26.0% attended a historic park or monument for visual-arts-related purposes.
The same survey indicates that attendance was lower than in 2017 for two directly comparable categories. Art museum or gallery attendance fell from 23.7% of U.S. adults in 2017 to 17.7% in 2022, a decrease of 6.0 percentage points. Art-exhibit attendance fell from 22.7% to 14.1%, a decrease of 8.6 percentage points. These are reported changes between survey periods; they do not identify a single cause.
Gender differences
Women reported higher attendance than men across the three U.S. visual-arts categories listed in the 2022 survey. For art museums and galleries, 19.5% of women attended compared with 15.7% of men. The difference was also present for art exhibits: 15.7% of women attended compared with 12.4% of men.
Crafts fairs and visual-arts festivals showed the widest supplied gender gap. Attendance was 20.4% among women and 13.7% among men.
| U.S. participation measure | Men | Women |
|---|---|---|
| Art museum or gallery | 15.7% | 19.5% |
| Art exhibit | 12.4% | 15.7% |
| Crafts fair or visual-arts festival | 13.7% | 20.4% |
These percentages describe reported participation among U.S. adults in 2022. They do not mean that every woman or man attended the same type of venue, or that gender alone explains attendance.
Source: National Endowment for the Arts, By All Means, the Arts.
Age patterns
Age differences were not uniform across the two main exhibition measures. For art museum or gallery attendance, the highest supplied rate was 22.2% among adults aged 25–34, followed by 21.3% among those aged 35–44. Attendance was 18.5% among adults aged 18–24, 18.1% among those aged 45–54, 16.5% among those aged 65–74, and 15.0% among those aged 55–64. The rate was 7.1% among adults aged 75 and older.
Art-exhibit attendance was 16.9% among adults aged 25–34 and 16.4% among those aged 35–44. The rate was 15.1% for ages 18–24, 13.9% for ages 55–64, 12.6% for ages 65–74, and 12.5% for ages 45–54. Adults aged 75 and older recorded 8.1%.
| Age group | Art museum or gallery | Art exhibit |
|---|---|---|
| 18–24 | 18.5% | 15.1% |
| 25–34 | 22.2% | 16.9% |
| 35–44 | 21.3% | 16.4% |
| 45–54 | 18.1% | 12.5% |
| 55–64 | 15.0% | 13.9% |
| 65–74 | 16.5% | 12.6% |
| 75 and older | 7.1% | 8.1% |
The survey’s age profile therefore places the strongest museum-or-gallery participation among adults aged 25–44, while the lowest rate for both measures was among adults aged 75 and older. The two measures should still be read separately because “art museum or gallery” and “art exhibit” are distinct survey categories.
Source: National Endowment for the Arts, By All Means, the Arts.
Education and museum attendance
Education was strongly associated with reported U.S. art museum or gallery attendance in 2022. The rate rose from 2.1% among adults whose highest education level was grade school to 4.4% among those with some high school education and 8.1% among high-school graduates.
Participation reached 14.3% among adults with some college education, 28.9% among college graduates, and 38.3% among adults with graduate-school education.
This progression describes differences between education groups, not a causal estimate. The figures also concern art museum or gallery attendance specifically; they should not be extended automatically to every kind of art exhibition or to all forms of arts participation.
Source: National Endowment for the Arts, By All Means, the Arts.
How audiences discover and access exhibitions
The 2022 U.S. survey also captured settings where people attended arts events. Open-air facilities such as parks or pavilions hosted arts events attended by 17.1% of U.S. adults. Restaurants, bars, nightclubs, or coffee shops accounted for arts-event attendance among 10.3% of adults.
Discovery channels provide another view of access. Among U.S. adults who attended an arts event, 17.0% first learned about an event through social media. Friends, neighbors, or coworkers were the first source for 14.7%, while print or broadcast media accounted for 11.3%. A partner or spouse was the first source for 8.0%.
These percentages are tied to the survey’s arts-event questions and should not be interpreted as the share of all exhibition visitors acquired by each channel. They indicate how respondents first learned about an arts event they attended.
Source: National Endowment for the Arts, By All Means, the Arts.
Digital participation
Online access formed a substantial part of U.S. arts participation in 2022. One-quarter of U.S. adults, or 25%, toured an online art museum, gallery, or exhibit. The digital measure was broader than online exhibition touring: 85% of U.S. women and 80% of U.S. men reported at least one digital arts activity.
The figures come from a separate National Endowment for the Arts survey brief, so they should be kept distinct from the in-person attendance measures in the 2022 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts. “At least one digital arts activity” also covers a broader range of activity than touring an online museum, gallery, or exhibit.
Museum and gallery reach in England
The most recent supplied institutional figures concern DCMS-sponsored museums and galleries in England during April 2024–March 2025. These venues recorded 42.0 million visits. A comparable group of venues recorded 41.8 million visits, making the comparison sensitive to which locations were open in both periods.
London accounted for 36.6 million visits, while museums and galleries outside London received 5.2 million. The release also states that 13% of visits were to locations outside London. When comparing venues open in both periods, London visits decreased 1% from 2023/24 to 2024/25, while visits outside London decreased 3%.
Compared with 2018/19, visits in 2024/25 were 12% lower in London and 37% lower outside London, again using venues open in both periods. These are comparison statistics, not estimates of what attendance would have been at venues that were closed or absent from a comparison.
The online reach of the same DCMS-sponsored museum group exceeded 145 million unique website visits in 2024/25. Physical and digital reach therefore appear as separate measures: the release reports visits to venues and unique visits to museum websites, without treating them as the same audience action.
Source: DCMS-sponsored Museums and Galleries Annual Performance Indicators 2024/25: headline release.
Children, overseas visitors, and engagement
Children under 16 accounted for approximately 7.7 million visits to DCMS-sponsored museums and galleries in England in 2024/25, or 18% of visits. Approximately 1.7 million visits involved under-18s participating in onsite organised activities. A further approximately 1.8 million facilitated or self-directed visits by under-18s in formal education were recorded.
The release estimated 19.4 million visits by overseas visitors and 22.6 million by domestic visitors. Overseas visitors represented 46% of visits. These visitor-origin figures are estimates reported by DCMS, and the period is the 2024/25 financial year rather than a calendar year.
Audience response was also measured: 93.5% was the mean share of visitors who said they would recommend a DCMS-sponsored museum or gallery visit in 2024/25. Beyond individual venues, DCMS-sponsored museums and galleries loaned items to 1,078 UK venues during the same financial year. That lending measure records institutional reach across the UK, while the visit and recommendation measures describe audience activity and reported experience.
Source: DCMS-sponsored Museums and Galleries Annual Performance Indicators 2024/25: headline release.