The Louvre remained the most-visited museum in the world last year, though the National Museum of China was close behind.
The National Museum of China clocked in a little over 8 million visitors in 2017 for its first appearance on The Art Newspaper’s annual museum visitor survey, released Monday. The Beijing museum’s tally was only a few thousand shy of the Louvre, which saw 8.1 million visitors in 2017. The most-trafficked exhibition in the world, in terms of daily visitor totals, was “Unkei: the Great Master of Buddhist Sculpture” at the Tokyo National Museum. The Fondation Louis Vuitton’s exhibition of Impressionist and modern art from collector Sergei Shchukin was the most visited overall, welcoming 1.2 million visitors total, and had the second-highest per-day average attendance at 8,926 visitors. Overall, the top 20 exhibitions show a “greater geographical spread” than in years past, The Art Newspaper reported, with shows in Spain, France, and Australia all making appearances.