The Reina Sofía passed three million visits in 2022 and the Prado touched 2.5 / The Thyssen and the Guggenheim passed one million, improved and almost matched their numbers
A year with trumps for Spanish museums, which found their pulse in 2022, but could not match the visitor numbers before the pandemic. Millionaire and hopefuls who don’t match their historical records. Tourism, recovered with the exception of Asia, has been key to these institutions. The Reina Sofía once again exceeded 3 million visits. The Prado registered more than 2.4 and the Thyssen-Bornemisza remained at 1.2 million as he improves on his best mark. The Guggemheim in Bilbao closed the third best year in its history with 1.3 million.
Spectacular was the increase of the Reina Sofía, which received 3,063,092 visitors in 2022, almost one and a half million more than in 2021; an increase of 86%. It’s a remarkable recovery for the museum, which fell short of its record of 4.4 million visits in 2019 or 3.9 in 2018 following the blow of the pandemic. Ticket sales grew by 170% compared to 2021 and by 1.5% compared to 2019.
1,171,367 visitors passed through the headquarters; 1,318,823 for the Crystal Palace and 491,086 for Velázquez, both in Retiro Park. The busiest day in the ‘Guernica’ house was October 31, with 8,658 people. On April 15, it set a record in its three locations, with 17,764 visits. The French, Italians and North Americans were, in this order, the most frequent foreigners at the museum, with 40% of foreign visitors.
The Prado received 2,456,724 people in 2022, an increase of 115.43% compared to 2021, when it registered 1,126,897 visitors. But it is also a long way from the three million visitors to the art gallery in 2019. Ticket sales increased by 139.77%, 10 million euros more than in 2021, to 17.3 million. 48.42% of the public paid entry and 51.58% had free entry.
With 3,532 opening hours, the daily average number of visitors was 6,744, with December 29 as the day of the maximum influx: 12,440 visitors. In the last week of the year, the average was 10,500 visits per day. The majority of visitors were foreigners, 50.2%, compared to 26% in 2021. Spaniards accounted for 49.8%, compared to 73.9% in the still-pandemic of 2020. The recovery in international tourism is being reflected in this data where the US (11.7%), Italy (5.2%), France (4.4%) and Mexico (4.3%) stand out. The presence of Asian visitors is still virtually nil.
The Prado has a young audience, with 44% between the ages of 18 and 34. The typical visitor is mostly female (64%), with a higher education (70.5%) and a permanent job (57.5%). The museum has more than 3.7 million followers on social networks and tripled its followers on TikTok to 319,000.
The Thyssen Museum closed the year of its 30th anniversary with 1,072,003 visitors, an increase of 59.7% compared to 2021, with 671,078 visits, and 3.6% compared to 2019, when 1,034,873 were registered . Without capacity restrictions, it does recover the influx of the years before the pandemic, with 607,942 visitors to the permanent collection, 65.1% more than the previous year, when it received 368,288 people.
‘American Art in the Thyssen Collection’ was the most viewed exhibition with 242,546 visitors, followed by ‘Picasso/Chanel’, which had a total of 129,187 visits a few weeks after the closing. “Hyperreal. The art of trompe l’oeil received 101,623 people, Alex Katz 96,918, Ragnar Kjartansson. Emotional landscapes’, 59.263 and ‘In the eye of the hurricane. Vanguard in Ukraine,” opened Nov. 29, has 39,809.
The web accumulates nearly 12 million page views and online ticket sales were up nearly 52% compared to other channels. Thyssen’s digital community grew to more than 1.3 million followers in 2022.
For the Guggenheim Museum, 2022, the year of its 25th anniversary, was exceptional. With almost 1.3 million visitors (1,289,147), it was the third best in the history of the Bilbao Museum, after 2017 (20th anniversary) and 1998 (the first activity).
The increase in visitors was 43% compared to 2021, a year heavily affected by the pandemic, and 10% compared to 2019, with 118,000 more visitors than then. Half of the audience (50%) were foreigners, with France leading the way (14%), followed by Germany (5%), Great Britain (5%), the United States (4%) and Italy (3%). The audience from the Basque Country accounted for 27% of the total, three times as much as normal.
More than 7.2 million people visited the centers and exhibitions of the La Caixa Foundation in 2022, 38% more than the previous year. With a registration of 7,206,864, it surpassed the 2019 pre-pandemic numbers by 1.18%. CaixaForum and the CosmoCaixa Science Museum registered 3,564,253 visitors, while another 3,642,611 visited the traveling exhibitions in more than 70 Spanish cities .
CaixaForum Madrid reached 695,797 visitors, more than double from 2021. The most viewed exhibition was ‘Mummies of Egypt’. CaixaForum Barcelona welcomed 518,809 visitors, 33% more than in 2021 with ‘La máquina Magritte’ as the most viewed exhibition. CosmoCaixa was the most visited, with 818,940 people, 51% more than in 2021. The recently launched digital platform CaixaForum+, a catalog of cultural proposals and scientific dissemination, has already registered 18,289 downloads since its presentation on December 13.
Source: La Verdad
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