More than 200 million visits were made to the top 100 museums in our list-still a little off the 230 million recorded in 2019, but a long way from the 54 million in 2020.
The alarm was sounded late last year by a survey conducted by the American Alliance of Museums (AAM), which showed institutions facing significant headwinds and a fragile, inconsistent recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic. It revealed some sobering news, which was that recovery from the pandemic wasn't just coming to a stall but actually reversing, says Natanya Khashan, associate vice-president of marketing and digital experience at the AAM. We're seeing declines in attendance, weaker financial performance and growing instability across the museum field thanks to some of the new economic and policy pressures that have emerged.