With One Million Visitors in 2014

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts First Ranked in Canada

Again Confirming Its Remarkable Growth

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts was the most visited museum in Canada in 2014 for the second straight year, according to the annual ranking by the British monthly The Art Newspaper in its Top 100 Art Museum Attendance – Special Report, Visitor Figures 2014. In this global ranking, the MMFA is in 58th position (1,009,648). The only other Canadian museums on this list are the Royal Ontario Museum (63rd position, 934,384 visitors) and the Art Gallery of Ontario (80th position, 757,462 visitors).

The MMFA has repeated its previous success with more than one million visitors for the first time in its history, in 2013. “While figures aren’t enough to judge the quality of a programme, they are useful for validating the institution’s commitment to its visitors,” explains Nathalie Bondil, Director and Chief Curator. “For the MMFA, these results confirm its truly remarkable growth. The MMFA is again first in Canada and the Canadian only museum with more than one million visitors. The MMFA doubled its number of visitors from 2010 to 2014, with growth of 101%. This growth is, however, jeopardized by repeated budget cuts for the fourth consecutive year.”

Globally, the Louvre is ranked first, with more than nine million visitors, and only six museums surpassed the five million mark (in order, the British Museum and National Gallery, the Tate Modern in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Vatican Museums in Rome and the National Palace Museum in Taipei). While 25 of the 100 museums welcomed more than two million visitors, the next 35 had more than one million, the final 40 more than 600,000 but less than one million.

In 2014, the MMFA was ranked 12th in North America, compared to 10th in 2013, but it was up from 62th place in 2013 to 58th in 2014 worldwide:

  1. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (6.1 million)
  2. National Gallery of Art, Washington (3.8 million)
  3. Museum of Modern Art, New York (3 million)
  4. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (1.7 million)
  5. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (1.5 million)
  6. Museo Soumaya, Mexico City (1.5 million)
  7. Art Institute of Chicago (1.4 million)
  8. Los Angeles County Museum of Art (1.2 million)
  9. National Portrait Gallery, Washington (1.1 million)
  10. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1.1 million)
  11. Guggenheim, New York (1 million)
  12. Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (1 million)

In the area of membership, with a new record of nearly 100,000 members (98,497 in 2015), the MMFA easily surpasses all other Canadian museums coming in fifth place among North American museums for 2014. The membership grew by 173% between January 1, 2011, (36,102) and 2015 (98,497).

The Art Newspaper is a British journal specializing in the visual arts. It is the only publication that collects data on museum attendance and publishes an annual study of its findings. The data cover the period from January 1 to December 31 every year.

For information on exhibits, times and ticket prices, please visit www.mmfa.org