Experience

Antwerp’s municipal museums welcomed over 1.5 million visitors in 2023

Posted by Timothy on

In 2023, more than 1.5 million visitors found their way to the exhibitions and permanent collections of the municipal museums managed by the City of Antwerp, bringing the museums back to the numbers they were in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Despite the fact that the Rubens House, a real crowd-puller, was closed, visitor numbers have returned to 2019 levels with a total of more than 1.5 million visitors. In addition to the traditionally large crowd-pullers such as the Museum At the Stream (Museum Aan de Stroom, MAS), the Middelheim Museum, the Red Star Line Museum of migration, Museum Plantin-Moretus and fashion museum MoMu, photography museum FOMU, diamond, jewelry and silverware museum DIVA, Museum Mayer van den Bergh and Museum Vleeshuis are once again attracting a good number of visitors to their unique collections and fine exhibitions.

Successful exhibitions

The masterpieces exhibition in the MAS ‘Rare & Indispensable‘ has attracted almost 50,000 spectators to date. 

Together with the exhibitions in the Red Star Line Museum (‘Homesick‘), Museum Plantin-Moretus (‘From crabbelinge to carton‘), Museum Mayer van den Bergh (‘Conversations‘), FOMU (‘James Barnor – Studio of Life‘ and ‘Melanie Bonajo – When the Body Says Yes‘), MoMu (‘Man Ray‘ and ‘ECHO‘) and the Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library (‘From waffle to cake‘) have provided an interesting mix of visitors.

Good numbers

Alderman for Culture Nabilla Ait Daoud (N-VA): “Our municipal museums have indeed scored well in the past year. In the DIVA, Museum Plantin Moretus and Museum Vleeshuis museums we see that almost 50% of the visitors came from abroad. Antwerp residents themselves will (re)discover the Heritage Library in 2023.”

“The Red Star Line Museum, the MAS and Museum Plantin-Moretus received the most young people and schools (40%, 36% and 28% of their visitors). And 2024 also promises a lot of great things, with the Ensor Year and four top exhibitions in Antwerp, the ‘Come Closer‘ event in the Middelheim Museum, Einstein in the Red Star Line Museum, Antarctica at the MAS and the new reception building for the Rubens House.”

The holiday periods did very well, the rainy Christmas holidays attracted a total of almost 40,000 visitors. The last week was the second busiest week of the entire year (after the week of Museum Night at the beginning of August).

During Museum Night, 10,000 people visited a museum.

High-performance discount cards

Discount cards such as the museumPASSmusées, the Antwerp City Pass and the teacher card appear to be powerful instruments as always in terms of repeat visits and broadening the audience: the museum pass has been used more than 100,300 times, the teacher card approximately 11,500 times and the Antwerp City Pass more than 12,000 time. In total, 20% of all museum lovers come with a discount card or a marketing campaign.

On tourism