The Art Newspaper: Most Visited Museums and Exhibitions in 2016

The Art Newspaper's annual rankings covered the most-visited museums, exhibitions and Asian-art shows of 2016. The Louvre again topped world museums with 7.4 million visitors (down from 8.6m), ahead of the Met (7.0m), British Museum (6.4m), National Gallery London (6.3m), Vatican Museums (6.1m), Tate Modern (5.8m), National Palace Museum Taipei (4.7m), National Gallery of Art Washington (4.3m), State Hermitage (4.1m) and Reina Sofía (3.6m).

Top exhibitions were led by free shows at Rio's Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil ("Post-Impressionist Masterpieces," "Patricia Piccinini: Consciousness," "Castelo Rá-Tim-Bum"), followed by MoMA's "Artist's Choice: Jérôme Bel," "Renoir: Masterpieces" in Tokyo, and others. Christo's "The Floating Piers" on Lake Iseo drew the most visitors to a single artwork worldwide — 1.2 million over 16 days.

Among Asian-art exhibitions, Tokyo National Museum's "Terracotta Army of China's First Emperor" led, followed by other Tokyo, Gyeongju, Kyoto and Naju National Museum shows in Japan and Korea. Full rankings at theartnewspaper.com/reports/visitor-figures-2016/.