Susie Wilkening, Visitation Recovery Trends from the Pandemic: A 2025 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers Data Story, American Alliance of Museums, 3 October 2025
It’s been over five years since the COVID-19 pandemic devastated museum visitation. While increasing numbers of museums are back to pre-pandemic attendance norms, many museums are still recovering. As AAM’s Fall 2025 “National Snapshot of United States Museums” survey indicates:
- Over half (55%) of U.S. museums have not returned to pre-pandemic attendance.
- 81%: median pre-pandemic attendance levels for those 55% of museums
The good news is that incidence of museum-going is firmly back to pre-pandemic norms. Prior to the pandemic, we typically saw somewhere between 25% and 31% of U.S. adults reporting they had been to a museum in the past year.