New data released by the UK government shows that visitor figures for national museums in the UK rose strongly in the first half of 2023, although they are still lower than before the Covid-19 pandemic.

Figures issued by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) in September show the number of people that visited UK museums sponsored by the DCMS (15 institutions in total). The data for the first six months of 2023 shows 18.9 million visits at all national museums in the first half of the year, compared with 13.7 million in the first six months of 2022, a rise of 38%. However, the total is still 23% lower than the same period in 2019.

According to the DCMS figures, Tate Britain received 520,000 visitors from January to June 2023, up 23% from 2022, but still only half its 2019 number. Tate Modern registered 2.4 million
visitors, up 55% year on year against 2022 and now just 17% lower than in 2019.

International tourism struggles

“For most of the January-June 2023 period, large sections of Tate Britain were closed because of the rehang,” a Tate spokesperson says. “Visitor numbers in the six months since the rehang have been almost 25% higher than in the six months before it.”

The spokesperson adds: “Both Tate Modern and Tate Britain are currently receiving around 80% of pre-Covid visitor numbers, and that is largely the result of international tourism having not yet fully recovered since the pandemic. We don’t have the exact domestic/international split for the January-June 2023 period but we’re generally still seeing a much higher proportion of domestic visitors now than we did pre-Covid.”

The National Gallery saw the biggest drop in visitor figures of any museum in the world in The Art Newspaper’s 2022 visitor figures survey. It is still struggling. Despite getting 24% more visitors from January to June 2023 than in 2022, it was 51% down on 2019. (3.1 million in 2019 compared with 1.5 million in 2023.)

A spokesperson for the National Gallery noted that 2019 was an exceptionally strong year for visitorship, and that the Sainsbury Wing has been closed since January 2023, reducing capacity by 30%. The spokesperson said domestic visitors are almost back at 2019/20 levels but “international visits still lag behind as they do across the sector with the expectation that they are not due to reach pre-Covid levels again until the end of 2024 and perhaps into 2025”.

On the positive side, the National Gallery’sown figures show stronger perfomance in more recent months, with 34% and 21% more visitors than 2022 in August and September respectively.

The Victoria & Albert Museum in South Kensington welcomed 1.4 million visitors from January to June 2023, up 41% year on year, and 28% down on 2019. The British Museum fared much better—it saw a 48% rise on 2022, receiving only 14% fewer visitors than in the first half of 2019.

Some museums even saw an increase from their 2019 figures. The Natural History Museum in South Kensington went up from 2.6 million to 2.8 million over the comparable periods; Royal Armouries in Leeds jumped by 56% while Sir John Soane’s Museum in London also improved, increasing from 63,000 to 73,000. Bruce Boucher, the director of Sir John Soane’s Museum, says that “67% of our visitors are first time [attendees] and we have benefited from the revival of foreign tourists”.

A DCMS spokesperson says: “It is encouraging to see that the number of visitors to our museums and galleries continues to increase following the pandemic.”

London’s main museums have seen a slower return to their pre-Covid visitor numbers than international peers, our 2022 visitor figures survey found. Many museums in rival cities including Paris and Seoul were already equalling or exceeding their 2019 figures in 2022.

The Art Newspaper’s survey for 2023 visitor figures will be published in April 2024.