Beyoncé and Jay-Z help boost Louvre visitors in 2018

A Beyoncé and Jay-Z music video helped the Louvre in Paris increase its visitors to a record 10.2 million in 2018. The Louvre also credited the large increase in visitors to its Delacroix show - the museum’s most popular exhibition on record. An upswing in foreign visitors to the French capital was another contributory factor to the 26% rise in admissions. Tate Modern was the most visited UK museum, according to The Art Newspaper.

The Thameside gallery knocked the British Museum off the top spot, a position it had held for the previous nine years. London’s Victoria and Albert museum also reported a record year, with 3.9 million visitors. Last year it dropped to sixth in the rankings, while UK museum and exhibition figures overall were 5% down from their highpoint in 2014.

Across the Atlantic, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York staged the two most popular exhibitions in the world in 2018. Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination, a show that mixed religious artworks with haute couture, was seen by nearly 1.7 million people. The second most popular exhibition in 2018, which attracted more than 700,000 visitors, w a s Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer.