Louvre Most Visited Art Museum Of 2012

The Paris’ Louvre has topped a list comprised by the Art Newspaper that examines the most visited art museums of 2012.

According to the annual survey, around 9.7 million people wandered into the French establishment, which is reportedly one million more than in 2011.

The top five saw New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art come in second whilst three London museums took the third, fourth, and fifth spots.

The publication also figured out what the most popular exhibition of the year was too, with Tokyo’s Metropolitan Art Museum’s Dutch Old Masters coming out on top.

Masterpieces such as Vermeer’s 1665 painting Girl with a Pearl Earring brought around 10,500 visitors a day to the gallery in Tokyo between June and September 2012.

These paintings had been loaned to the gallery by The Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis in the Hague, which is currently closed for refurbishment until 2014.

The Louvre’s rise in popularity is believed to have come from the museum’s new wing of Islamic art, and it is the sixth year in a row that it has come out on top.

London’s Tate Modern, which moved up to fourth spot, attracted 5.3 million visitors, up from 4.8 million in 2011.

Alex Beard, the deputy director at the Tate, remarked that its versatility brought more people to the gallery.

“It has been an extraordinary year at Tate Modern, opening the world’s first museum galleries permanently dedicated to exhibiting live art, performance, installation and film works alongside an outstanding exhibition programme which has undoubtedly fuelled the increase in visitors,” stated Beard.

None of the 20 most popular exhibitions were held at any of the top five most visited galleries.

Tokyo’s exhibition of European art at the National Museum, The Amazon: Cycles of Modernity at Rio’s Central Cultural Banco do Brasil, and an exhibition of 19th Century Italian paintings at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, each made the top five exhibitions of 2013 list.