Art museum statistics show how people encounter collections: through visits, exhibitions, school programs, loans, websites and social media. The figures below cover England’s 15 DCMS-sponsored museums and galleries, major institutions in London, Washington, D.C. and New York, and U.S. adult participation surveys. Because the sources count visits in many cases rather than unique people, the measures should not be treated as interchangeable.
Contents
- England: attendance and access
- Learning, digital reach and finances
- National Gallery statistics for 2024
- Smithsonian art museum visits
- The Met in fiscal year 2024
- U.S. participation and state comparisons
England: attendance and access
The DCMS-sponsored museums and galleries annual performance indicators 2023/24 recorded 40.8 million visits between April 2023 and March 2024. This was below the 49.8 million visits recorded at the 2018/19 peak. The figures cover England’s 15 DCMS-sponsored museums and galleries and count visits, not unique visitors.
Location was a major part of the attendance pattern. London-based DCMS-sponsored museums and galleries received approximately 37 million visits in 2023/24. Institutions outside London received approximately 5.5 million visits, and museums and galleries outside London accounted for 13% of all DCMS-sponsored visits during the period. These figures describe the DCMS-sponsored group, rather than every museum in England.
Children were a substantial part of the recorded audience. Children under 16 made approximately 8.5 million visits in 2023/24, representing 21% of visits to DCMS-sponsored museums and galleries. The child measure is a share of visits, so it does not establish how many individual children attended or how often any one child returned.
Visitor origin provides another view of access. Overseas visitors accounted for an estimated 17.5 million visits in 2023/24, while domestic visitors accounted for an estimated 23.3 million. Overseas visitors represented 43% of visits. These estimates use the source’s visitor-origin categories and should be read alongside the overall visit total, not added to other audience groups as if they were separate people.
| England measure | Period | Reported figure |
|---|---|---|
| DCMS-sponsored museum and gallery visits | April 2023–March 2024 | 40.8 million |
| Previous attendance peak | 2018/19 | 49.8 million |
| London-based visits | 2023/24 | Approximately 37 million |
| Visits outside London | 2023/24 | Approximately 5.5 million |
| Visits by children under 16 | 2023/24 | Approximately 8.5 million |
| Overseas visits | 2023/24 | Estimated 17.5 million |
The difference between the total and the location figures reflects the way the headline release presents rounded values and categories. Rounded figures should not be used to calculate an exact institutional or regional total.
Learning, digital reach and finances
Art museum access extends beyond the gallery floor. DCMS-sponsored museum websites recorded 165.1 million unique website visits in 2023/24, a separate digital measure from physical attendance. A website visit is not the same as an in-person visit, and the two totals should not be combined into one audience count.
Education activity also appeared in more than one form. Visitors under 18 participated in approximately 1.5 million instances of onsite organised activities in 2023/24. Visitors under 18 in formal education made approximately 1.7 million facilitated or self-directed visits. The first figure counts instances of organised activity; the second counts visits by a defined education audience, so they represent different measures.
Audience satisfaction was high in the same reporting period. The mean share of visitors who would recommend a DCMS-sponsored museum or gallery was 93.1% in 2023/24. This is a mean share across the reporting institutions, not a claim that 93.1% of all individual visits produced a recommendation.
Collections circulated beyond their home institutions. DCMS-sponsored museums and galleries loaned collection items to 1,017 UK venues in 2023/24. The figure indicates the reach of collections through loans; it does not quantify the number of objects or the audiences who saw them.
The financial measures show several distinct income streams. Self-generated income exceeded £448 million in 2023/24. Fundraising and contributed income supplied £317.1 million, or 71% of self-generated income. Admissions income was £67.4 million, while trading net profit was £63.7 million. These amounts describe the DCMS-sponsored museum and gallery group and should not be interpreted as the revenue of a typical art museum.
National Gallery statistics for 2024
The National Gallery’s 2024 visitor release reported 4,713,519 in-person visits across its London site and exhibitions, displays and programmes on tour in calendar year 2024. The National Gallery in London recorded 3,203,451 visits, while exhibitions in Trafalgar Square attracted 1,444,833 visits.
Several exhibition and program figures explain the range of activity behind those totals. Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers received 334,589 visits, and The Last Caravaggio received 286,298 visits during the relevant exhibition periods including 2024. NG Stories: Making a National Gallery received 166,052 visits in calendar year 2024.
The National Gallery also measured touring and public programming. The National Treasures tour recorded 724,812 visits from May through September 2024. The Gallery’s Asia tour exhibition recorded 662,068 visits in 2024. School children accounted for 97,172 of the 2024 Trafalgar Square visits, and the Summer on the Square festival attracted 32,743 visits from 1 August to 1 September 2024.
Online learning and media added a different scale of reach. Public online courses had 20,228 participants in 2024, and free online visitor events drew 15,261 attendees. Digital and social media activity generated just over 159 million views. Within that total, social media content generated 95.8 million video views, while the National Gallery website recorded 14.2 million visits. These are platform-specific views, participants and visits, not unique people across all channels.
Smithsonian art museum visits
The Smithsonian visitor statistics reported 16.8 million total visits to Smithsonian museums and facilities in calendar year 2024. The total covers a broad Smithsonian group, while the institution-level figures below identify art, design, portrait and related museums. Smithsonian reports are visits rather than unique visitors.
The Smithsonian American Art Museum with the Renwick Gallery recorded 1.5 million visits. The National Portrait Gallery recorded 1.3 million, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture recorded 1.6 million. The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden recorded 602,208 visits.
The more specific reported figures show the spread among Smithsonian art and design venues:
| Smithsonian venue | Calendar year 2024 visits |
|---|---|
| National Museum of African Art | 127,623 |
| Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum | 135,853 |
| Renwick Gallery | 248,414 |
| Arthur M. Sackler Gallery | 229,312 |
| Freer Gallery of Art | 332,177 |
| Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden | 602,208 |
The Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and Freer Gallery of Art are identified in the source as galleries of the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art. Their individual figures should be retained as reported rather than treated as separate institutions outside that museum. Likewise, the Renwick figure is a venue-level statistic, while the 1.5 million American Art Museum with Renwick figure is a combined report.
The Met in fiscal year 2024
The Met attendance release covers the fiscal year ending June 30, 2024. The Metropolitan Museum of Art welcomed more than 5.5 million visitors to The Met Fifth Avenue and The Met Cloisters. This fiscal-year total should not be directly compared with calendar-year totals without keeping the measurement period visible.
The Met reported that BIPOC visitors represented 56% of its U.S. attendees in FY2024. Local New York City visitor attendance reached 102% of its 2019 level during the same fiscal year. The local attendance comparison uses 2019 as the baseline and does not describe the level of all visitors or all museums.
Exhibition attendance varied across the program. Van Gogh’s Cypresses drew 495,000 visitors, Richard Avedon: MURALS drew 392,000, Manet/Degas drew 351,000, and The Roof Garden Commission: Lauren Halsey drew 334,000 in FY2024. Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism welcomed more than 437,000 visitors.
Two additional figures were reported at points within the fiscal-year reporting context. Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion had welcomed more than 177,000 visitors by FY2024 after opening on May 6. The Roof Garden Commission: Petrit Halilaj, Abetare had brought in more than 100,000 visitors by FY2024 after opening on April 30. The Lunar New Year Festival drew 26,700 visitors on February 3, 2024.
U.S. participation and state comparisons
The National Endowment for the Arts 2022 Quick Study reported that 18% of U.S. adults visited an art museum or gallery in 2022. The survey period was July 2021 to July 2022, so the figure describes adults reporting activity during those 12 months, not a calendar-year ticket count.
State and district figures were higher in several reported locations. Massachusetts had a 27% art museum or gallery visitation rate among adults in 2022. Vermont had a 32% rate, and Washington, D.C. had a 41% rate. These percentages describe adult participation in the 2022 survey period and retain each location’s reported geography.
Older state comparisons must remain separate from the 2022 results. The NEA sample findings reported a 36.5% art museum or gallery attendance rate among Oregon adults in the 2012 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts. Colorado adults reported a 35.2% rate in the 2012 SPPA. Because these are explicitly from 2012, they should not be presented as current state estimates or combined into a trend with the 2022 figures.
Taken together, the measures describe several layers of art museum participation: physical visits, audience composition, education activity, collection loans, online courses, website visits and social media views. The measurement period, geography and unit—visit, visitor, participant, view or percentage of adults—determine what each statistic can legitimately show.