The National Palace Museum in Taipei and the National Museum of Natural Science in Taichung have been ranked among the world’s 20 most popular museums of last year by a US business association.
The California-based Themed Entertainment Association (TEA) released the rankings of global museums and theme parks by attendance last week.
The National Palace Museum, home to one of the world’s largest collections of Chinese artwork and artifacts, came in 13th for attendance last year with 4.41 million visits, an increase of 1.2 percent from 2012. It ranked second in Asia, behind only the National Museum of China in Beijing.
The National Museum of Natural Science in Taichung came in 18th with just short of 3.4 million visits, a 15 percent increase from 2012.
Unsurprisingly, the Louvre in Paris was the world’s most popular museum, attracting more than 9.3 million visits. It was followed by the National Museum of Natural History in Washington in second place with 8 million visits and the National Museum of China in third place.
The Beijing museum, which welcomed 7.45 million visitors, recorded the highest growth of any museum on the list at 38.7 percent.
Rounding out the top five were the National Air and Space Museum in Washington with nearly 7 million visits and the British Museum in London with 6.7 million visits.
The largest decline on the list was seen at the Tate Modern art gallery in London (ranked 12th), where attendance dropped 8.2 percent from the previous year.
Despite the fall, the report concluded that museums had a strong year last year, with overall attendance growing over 7 percent annually.
“The UK again performed well with a number of museums up 15 to 20 percent [in attendance] … The Asian museums were notably up also,” the report said.
As for theme park attendance, nine of the top 10 spots went to Disney parks in the US, Japan and France. Universal Studios Japan, in Osaka, came in ninth.
The TEA brings together creative and entertainment-focused professionals and boasts 8,000 members from about 1,000 firms in 40 countries.
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