Citi des Sciences et de l'Industrie

World’s Top 10 Science Centers, most visited Science Museums, data as of 2010 / 2011

Top 10 Science Centers – Worldwide

1. Citi des Sciences et de l’Industrie  5,000,000
2. Science Museum, London 2,700,000
3. Shanghai Science and Technology Museum, 2,500,000
2. National Science and Technology Museum, Taiwan 2,050,790
4. Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago 1,605,020
5. Pacific Science Center, Seattle 1,602,000
6. Museum of Science, Boston 1,600,000
7. Science City, Kolkata 1,522,726
8. Ontario Science Center  1,509,912
9. Deutsches Museum, Munich 1,500,000
10. California Science Center Los Angeles, Los Angeles 1,400,000

Top 10 Science Centers – USA
1. Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago 1,605,020
2. Pacific Science Center, Seattle 1,602,000
3. Museum of Science, Boston 1,600,000
4. California Science Center Los Angeles, Los Angeles 1,400,000
5. St. Louis Science Center, St. Louis 1,400,000
6. Franklin Institute 892,804
7. Liberty Science Center, Jersey City 866,000
8. Fernbank Science Center, Atlanta 865,000
9. California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco 882,000
10. Exploratorium 600,000

Working on understanding “Museum Satisfaction” in different types of museums, starting by creating lists of the world’s top museums by category.   (Art Museums, Children’s Museums, Natural History Museums, Science Centers, Corporate Museums).  Will then work on surveying the public on “Museum Satisfaction” by type of museum.  I started with the Top 10 Art Museums visitation.

Visitor attendance data for Science Centers is much more difficult to find. For Science Centers, in the USA, I am using 2010 Annual Reports when available, please do not quote the data as it is unverified. I am interested in feedback and omissions. 

I believe museum visitation starts prior to visiting the “bricks and mortar”, Interested in “museum satisfaction” for both the local museum and the global museums and understanding how local museums can compete in a new global market.  A latter step will be comparing museum visitation as compared to museum website visitation of the world’s top museums by category.

Making a distinction between Science Centers and Natural History Museums, Top 10 Natural History Museums is my next project then, corporate museums and Children’s Museums.  The definition of types of museum is not constant between countries, and the definition of what counts towards museum statistics differs between countries.  Even within countries, what counts as a “visit”  differs museum to museum , some museums count all entries through the doors, including staff, contractors, off site programs and with “sister museums”, making comparing worldwide data very difficult.

Resources:

Asia Pacific Network of Science and Technology Centres: http://www.aspacnet.org/
Association of Science-Technology Centres: http://www.astc.org/
Australasian Science and Technology Exhibitors Network: http://www.astenetwork.net/
British Interactive Group: http://www.big.uk.com/
Canadian Association of Science Centres: http://www.canadiansciencecentres.ca/
European Network of Science Centres and Museums: http://www.ecsite.eu/
North Africa and Middle East Science Centers Network: http://namesnetwork.org/
National Council of Science Museums: http://www.ncsm.org.in/
Network for the Popularisation of Science and Technology in Latin America and the Caribbean: http://www.redpop.org/
Southern African Association for Science and Technology Centres: http://www.saastec.co.za/
Cultural Policies: http://culturaincifre.istat.it/sito/musei/musei.htm
Touring Club Italiano: http://static.touring.it/store/document/19_file.pdf
UNESCO: http://www.uis.unesco.org/Culture/Pages/default.aspx
EGMUS: http://www.egmus.eu
Cultural Policies: http://www.culturalpolicies.net/web/index.php
Official Museum Directory: http://www.officialmuseumdirectory.com
American Association of Museums: http://www.aam-us.org/
International Council of Museums: http://icom.museum/

*  Getty listed as Getty Center Only (Getty Center: 1,205,685 visitors; Getty Villa: 405,710 visitors)

I am becoming more interested in comparing “bricks and mortar” museum attendance as compared to the on line museum experience.  As a first step, researched top Art Museum attendance and Art Museum exhibition attendance. As next steps I will create similar attendance information for Science Centers, Children’s Museums, Natural History Museums and Corporate Museums and compare their attendance to their online visitation.

Notes:

Data used was supplied by the museums.  Many museums have one ticket for the entire museum and cannot provide individual attendance for temporary exhibitions. Institutions offering a number of exhibitions for a single ticket, are shown as one entry. Institutions with more than one building included separate museum attendance figures for each venue.

Data Source:
The Art Newspaper, April 2011, “Exhibition & Museum Attendance Figures 2010″

List partially from New York Times, December 2, 2007, THE CONNOISSEUR; Masterpiece Planner

Runners Up

11.Boston Children’s Museum

12.Please Touch

13.Port Discovery

14. Brooklyn Children’s Museum

Runners Up
11.  California Science Center
12.  Pacific Science Center
13.  Oregon Museum of Science and Industry
14.  Detroit Science Center
15.  Discovery Science Center