Cities with the highest number of museums in the world

[ocman]

I know LA and NYC claimed 3x their numbers, so I’m assuming the researchers filtered out the nonsense like an ice cream museum. This is the 2020 release from World Cities Culture Forum but the latest data collected was from 2018. Since then, in LA at least, they’ve added The Broad Museum, are adding the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in the next couple weeks, and are currently building both George Lucas’ museum and OC’s Museum of Modern Art.

Not surprised about Paris topping the list. Having lived in central Paris, you happen upon so many discreetly placed museums while just wandering around.

Edit: This is likely a partial list of available data that seems to exclude a number of cities. But still an interesting ranking of those cities that have participating/reported data.

Total Number of Museums in Cities Worldwide

1 Paris 297
2 Moscow 261
3 Los Angeles 219
4 Seoul 201
5 London 192
6 Tokyo 173
7 Chengdu 150
8 Amsterdam 144
9 New York 140
10 Buenos Aires 132
10 San Francisco 132
12 Taipei 131
13 Shanghai 120
14 Brussels 93
15 Milan 90
16 Stockholm 86
17 Sydney 79
18 Bogotá 77
19 Helsinki 76
19 Toronto 76
21 Istanbul 71
22 Montréal 66
22 Warsaw 66
24 Dublin 62
25 Johannesburg 60
26 Madrid 59
27 Barcelona 57
28 Vienna 56
29 Singapore 54
30 Lisbon 44
30 Melbourne 44
32 Shenzhen 43
32 Zurich 43
34 Brasília 41
35 Nanjing 40
36 CapeTown 39
36 Hong Kong 39
38 Austin 38
39 Edinburgh 37
40 Rome 30
41 Oslo 21
42 Guangzhou 15
43 Lagos 12

World Cities Culture Forum
http://www.worldcitiescultureforum.c...ber-of-museums

[Crawford]

Mexico City brags it has the most museums in the world. They even have a permanent sign claiming the title. Yet according to this ranking, they don't even have a dozen museums, and are way behind freaking Austin.

It's just not a topic that leads to any definitive rankings. What's a "museum"? If I have a display of old tires, it could technically be a "museum". Is a private art gallery a museum? Does it matter if they're selling holdings?

I think, generally speaking, something is a "museum" if it's calls itself a "museum", which is obviously circular non-logic.

Also, how can Rome only have 30 museums? I think I've been to nearly 30 museums in Rome. They have all kinds of exhibitions featuring Roman ruins or reconstructed (or now VR) Roman scenes.

No Berlin? Berlin has a shit-ton of museums. No Washington DC (uh, Smithsonian?), or Chicago? Dumb list.

[galleyfox]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Mexico City brags it has the most museums in the world. They even have a permanent sign claiming the title. Yet according to this ranking, they don't even have a dozen museums, and are way behind freaking Austin.

It's just not a topic that leads to any definitive rankings. What's a "museum"? If I have a display of old tires, it could technically be a "museum". Is a private art gallery a museum? Does it matter if they're selling holdings?

I think, generally speaking, something is a "museum" if it's calls itself a "museum", which is obviously circular non-logic.

Also, how can Rome only have 30 museums? I think I've been to nearly 30 museums in Rome. They have all kinds of exhibitions featuring Roman ruins or reconstructed (or now VR) Roman scenes.

I don’t think this is an actual ranking. Seems to be a partial list of museums of select cities that are members of their forum.

Here’s at least a dozen Chicago institutions that would qualify as major museums by any criteria. Public admission, specialized buildings, high-profile collections, etc.

Chicago

1 Field Museum
2 Museum of Science and Industry
3 Art Institute
4 Museum of Contemporary Art
5 Chicago History Museum
6 Adler Planetarium
7 DuSable Museum
8 Museum of Mexican Art
9 Oriental Institute
10 National Hellenic Museum
11 Polish Museum
12 National Veterans Art Museum

[SFBruin]

This doesn't seem to be right. I'm not really a museum person, so not the best judge of this, but seems like this is a partial list?

[KevinFromTexas]

I saw the Austin list. They must have Googled this list just as I did for the same number they came up with. It's a bit dubious but mostly legit.

https://www.google.com/search?q=list...hrome&ie=UTF-8

[bilbao58]

Originally Posted by KevinFromTexas

I saw the Austin list. They must have Googled this list just as I did for the same number they came up with. It's a bit dubious but mostly legit.

https://www.google.com/search?q=list...hrome&ie=UTF-8

The list is dubious at best. If you google "Museums in Houston" you come up with 51. One more than Google's Austin list. What do you want to bet they didn't even think of Houston when they made their list. They even misspelled "museum" for their source of the Austin list (MusuemsUSA/CAMP).

[Razor]

Interesting..I'm surprised that Washington isn't on that list. You would think that they would have a fair share of national museums. Ottawa, a much smaller capital, has 7. Well 10 if the Mint, the Diefenbunker, and my Aunt's house count.

[bnk]

Originally Posted by galleyfox

I don’t think this is an actual ranking. Seems to be a partial list of museums of select cities that are members of their forum.

Here’s at least a dozen Chicago institutions that would qualify as major museums by any criteria. Public admission, specialized buildings, high-profile collections, etc.

Chicago

1 Field Museum
2 Museum of Science and Industry
3 Art Institute
4 Museum of Contemporary Art
5 Chicago History Museum
6 Adler Planetarium
7 DuSable Museum
8 Museum of Mexican Art
9 Oriental Institute
10 National Hellenic Museum
11 Polish Museum
12 National Veterans Art Museum

Those are just the major ones


It’s like 65 really or more just in the city limits

The entire Chicagoland would put it in the hundreds easy.

Hundreds depending on their criteria


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List...ons_in_Chicago

[pj3000]

If Austin, TX had 38 museums, then Philadelphia and Boston must have 150-200 each.

[dimondpark]

SF has 132 museums? I wouldnt have guessed more than 10.

There's the DeYoung, SFMOMA, California Academy of Sciences, the Legion of Honor, after that, what? Exploratorium? Alcatraz? Well, this sounds like an interesting way to spend a day, looking for museums in the city.

[iheartthed]

Having one good museum is way better than having a hundred "museums".

[Steely Dan]

Dubious listicle is dubious.

Film at 11.

[SIGSEGV]

Trip advisor lists 145 "museums" in Chicago although not all are actual museums and some are defunct/temporary and some are parts of other museums.
https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attracti..._Illinois.html

[JManc]

I think the Field Museum (Chicago) has to be the only one with its own beer:

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by dimondpark

SF has 132 museums? I wouldnt have guessed more than 10.

There's the DeYoung, SFMOMA, California Academy of Sciences, the Legion of Honor, after that, what? Exploratorium? Alcatraz? Well, this sounds like an interesting way to spend a day, looking for museums in the city.

Asian Art Museum (said to be the best collection of Asian art in the West), Mexican Museum (about to open new quarters), Museum of the African Diaspora, Jewish Museum come immediately to mind.

[SFBruin]

The Asian Art museum in SF is pretty cool. Haven't been to other Asian art museums, so can't really compare, but that one is definitely worth a visit.

[Manitopiaaa]

Horrific list. Probably the worst I've seen on SSP all year.

(1) First, is that a lot of notable cities are missing and the counts are off. Washington, D.C. is literally famous for its number of museums. Under this loose definition of "museum" then the District of Columbia alone has 83: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...shington,_D.C..

And that omits a lot of famous ones in the metro area, including:

• Glenstone Museum
• Goddard Space Flight Visitor Center
• Manassas National Battlefield Park and Museum
• Mount Vernon Estate and Museum
• National Museum of the Marine Corps
• National Museum of the United States Army
• Torpedo Factory Art Center
• Udvar-Hazy Center (the "Temple of Aviation")

Looking at the Wikipedia, I get:

• Alexandria: 18
• Arlington: 6
• Calvert: 7
• Charles: 9
• Clarke: 4
• Culpeper: 3
• Fairfax: 21
• Falls Church: 1
• Fauquier: 8
• Frederick: 20
• Fredericksburg: 9
• Jefferson: 4
• Loudoun: 10
• Madison: 3
• Manassas: 4
• Montgomery: 29
• Prince George's: 28
• Prince William: 9
• Spotsylvania: 1
• Stafford: 3
• Warren: 3
• Washington: 83

TOTAL: 283

(2) Who cares about the number of museums? I'd trade the bottom 200 museums in Washington, D.C. for the Art Institute of Chicago. Any ranking that treats the Met as equivalent to the Tollkeeper's Cottage Museum of Toronto deserves to be laughed out of the room.

(3) To the point above, there needs to be a better handle on what qualifies as a museum. Most tourists, even in a city like Paris, will gravitate to no more than 10 museums, who alone handle 95% of tourist traffic. A better benchmark is what does the public decide is quality enough to be worth 2-3 hours of their time?

Personally, I prefer the Ranker listing of museums, since it better passes the smell test even with the sample bias. Below are the Top 50 museums in the USA according to the Ranker list. I think it's more methodologically useful to create a point system where the #1 museum is worth 100 points, #2 is worth 99 points, etc, and #100 is worth 1 point. Add them all up and see which city does best. Rinse and repeat for science museums, and niche museums.

ATLANTA
High Museum of Art (#47)

BOSTON
Harvard Art Museums (#35)
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (#24)
Museum of Fine Arts (#6)
Worcester Art Museum (#44)

BUFFALO
Albright–Knox Art Gallery (#36)

CHICAGO
Art Institute of Chicago (#2)

CINCINNATI
Cincinnati Art Museum (#33)

CLEVELAND
Cleveland Museum of Art (#4)

DALLAS-FORT WORTH
Dallas Museum of Art (#42)
Kimbell Art Museum (#19) [Fort Worth]

DENVER
Denver Art Museum (#43)

DETROIT
Detroit Institute of Arts (#9)

FAYETTEVILLE
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (#20) [Bentonville]

HOUSTON
Menil Collection (#46)
Museum of Fine Arts (#18)

INDIANAPOLIS
Indianapolis Museum of Art (#27)

KANSAS CITY
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (#10)


LOS ANGELES
Getty Center (#12)
Los Angeles County Museum of Art (#16)
Norton Simon Museum (#29)

MILWAUKEE
Milwaukee Art Museum (#32)

MINNEAPOLIS
Minneapolis Institute of Arts (#14)
Walker Art Center (#28)

NEW YORK
Brooklyn Museum (#40)
The Cloisters (#23)
Frick Collection (#17)
Guggenheim Museum (#25)
Metropolitan Museum of Art (#1)
Museum of Modern Art (#5)
Whitney Museum of American Art (#34)
Yale University Art Gallery (#39) [New Haven]

PHILADELPHIA
Barnes Foundation (#15)
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (#48)
Philadelphia Museum of Art (#7)

PITTSBURGH
Carnegie Museum of Art (#26)

RALEIGH
North Carolina Museum of Art (#49)

RICHMOND
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (#21)

ROCHESTER
Memorial Art Gallery (#50)

SAINT LOUIS
Saint Louis Art Museum (#8)

SAN FRANCISCO
Legion of Honor (#37)
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (#38)

TOLEDO
Toledo Museum of Art (#11)

VIRGINIA BEACH
Chrysler Museum of Art (#45) [Norfolk]

WASHINGTON-BALTIMORE
American Art Museum (#13)
Baltimore Museum of Art (#31) [Baltimore]
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (#41)
National Gallery of Art (#3)
The Phillips Collection (#22)
Walters Art Museum (#30) [Baltimore]

(4) The source data is from museum associations, some of which are city, some are metro area, some are even provincial. So the data provided itself isn't even apples-to-apples.

Rubbish bin.

[dubu]

new york has a museum with a meteorite from oregon there. is the largest ever found in the united states and the sixth-largest in the world.

theres so many cool things in the ocean, lost cities.

[Steely Dan]

^^ two things jump out at me about that Ranker list of art museums.

1. Bos-Wash, Jesus Christ.

2. 5 of the top 10 are in the Midwest (Chicago, Cleveland, St. Louis, Detroit, and KC). And little old Toledo is #11!!! It really shows the former wealth/clout of the region back when extremely wealthy industrialists who had way more money than they knew what to do with were building the impressive collections of those institutions in the late 19th/early 20th centuries.

[KevinFromTexas]

Originally Posted by bilbao58

The list is dubious at best. If you google "Museums in Houston" you come up with 51. One more than Google's Austin list. What do you want to bet they didn't even think of Houston when they made their list. They even misspelled "museum" for their source of the Austin list (MusuemsUSA/CAMP).

Originally Posted by pj3000

If Austin, TX had 38 museums, then Philadelphia and Boston must have 150-200 each.

Austin owes a lot of its museums to the University of Texas being here. There are at least 8 or 9 museums on campus.