The Metropolitan Museum in New York welcomed some 7.36 million visitors in 2018, unprecedented for the institution, which in early March introduced a fixed entrance fee for people not living in the megalopolis. Attendance is up 5.1% compared to 2017, which was already an unprecedented vintage.
It was carried by the “Heavenly Bodies” exhibition on the links between fashion and the Catholic religion, which broke all records with 1.65 million visitors.
New pricing policy
The exercise also benefited from exhibitions devoted to Michelangelo and David Hockney, both spread over late 2017 and early 2018.
The 2018 figures include visitors to the museum’s main building, located on 5e avenue bordering Central Park, but also those of its two branches in Manhattan, the Cloisters and the Met Breuer. Attendance has not suffered from the establishment of the 1is March of a new pricing policy. It broke, for the first time, with the tradition which allowed everyone to pay what they wanted to visit the museum.
From now on, all people who do not live in New York must pay $ 25. New Yorkers still benefit from the old open-ended policy.
The Chinese in the lead
Figures released by the Met on Friday show that 32% of visitors were New Yorkers, 34% were from the rest of the United States and 34% were foreign tourists. Among the latter, the most represented country is China with nearly 5% of the total.
Despite its record year, the Met remains quite far behind the Louvre, the most visited museum of fine arts and antiques in the world in 2018 with its 10.2 million visitors, a record also.
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