Museum visits are picking up cautiously, according to the official figures from the Museum Association on the Museum Card on Wednesday. Last year, when the museums were still closed for a few weeks in January, 7.13 million ticket holders visited a museum – about 1.4 million people have a Museum Card.
That is almost 78 percent of the number of museum card visitors in 2019, the last ‘normal’ year. It’s also a huge increase from 2021, when the museums were closed for a long time; 83 percent more.
Foreign visit
The total number of museum visits in 2022 (card holders and ticket buyers) was between 21 and 23.8 million, estimates the Museum Association, to which the vast majority of museums (471) are affiliated. The association arrives at this estimate by looking at what share the museum card holders have in the total museum visit. In 2019, 29 percent of visitors had a museum card. In the corona years, that share was higher because foreign visitors stayed away; 37 percent in 2020 and 34 percent in 2021. For the estimate for 2022, the Museum Association has assumed that cardholders accounted for between 30 and 35 percent of the total number of visitors.
The final visitor figures will be announced by Statistics Netherlands at the end of the year. In 2021, the total number of visitors was approximately 12.3 million.
There were museums that attracted more visitors last year than in 2019, such as the Drents Museum and Singer Laren. According to Vera Carasso, director of the Museum Association and the Museum Card Foundation, this proves that it pays off for museums to invest in high-profile exhibitions. “At the same time, we see that there are also institutions that are working very hard, but where the reserves are exhausted and which hardly see a chance to develop new offerings. Now that museums are also confronted with rising costs, it remains very important that governments and funds continue to support these institutions,” says Carasso in response.
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