Museum directors and members of the press frequently ask AAM “Has visitation recovered from the pandemic crash?” Their concern is understandable. In addition to contributing to museums’ income (both directly, for the approximately 60% of museums that charge for admission, and indirectly, through shop sales, food, etc.), attendance can be a proxy for relevance. The underlying anxiety behind the query is often, “Do people still care about museums?”

To address that question, this post summarizes recent data on trends in museum attendance, examines some of the forces underlying these shifts, and suggests some steps museums can take to keep visitors coming in the door.

Post-pandemic trends in attendance

The national picture is fairly rosy, despite some troubling notes for the future, but a more granular examination reveals the pain experienced by many specific museums. Attendance trends vary enormously by region, community, museum discipline, and between individual organizations. The data summarized below can provide context and fuel for an examination of your own museum’s experience.

AAM’s 2025 National Snapshot of US Museums

While the previous two years of this survey tracked a steady rebound in attendance, the 2025 Snapshot revealed troubling reversals in the sector’s post-pandemic recovery: More than half of museums (55%) had fewer visitors than in 2019, with a median of 81% of their pre-pandemic traffic. (In 2024, only 49% remained below pre-pandemic levels.) 29% of directors attributed a decrease in attendance to travel and tourism issues and/or economic uncertainty, and 48% expect this to be a challenge in 2026.

Annual Survey of Museum-Goers and Broader Population Sampling

This gold-standard survey for public engagement with museums, conducted by Wilkening Consulting in collaboration with AAM, tracks two variables related to attendance: incidence (whether people go to museums at all, tracked via broader population sampling), and frequency (how often they go, tracked via sampling of frequent museum-goers via the ASMG). While the 2026 survey is fielding now, the broader population sampling is complete, and this essay provides the first glimpse of that data, which will be published later this year.

The latest data documents ongoing recovery trends when it comes to incidence. Pre-pandemic, 25-31% of U.S. adults reported they had been to a museum in the past year. Since 2024, that figure has shifted to a consistent 32-33%, exceeding pre-pandemic norms.

However, repeat visitation seems to have leveled off at a “new normal” that is less frequent than in the past. Two percent of pre-pandemic frequent visitors are still sidelining themselves and have not returned at all. (Editor’s note: this may be related to the fact that as of 2024, 7% of U.S. adults were still suffering from long COVID, with disproportionately affected groups that are likely to be frequent museum-goers, including women, middle-aged, and white individuals.)

Some highlights from the 2025 survey of frequent museum-goers and the 2026 broader population sampling of US adults (sporadic visitors) regarding three key demographics of museum visitors:

• Education: People with a college degree are more likely to be frequent museum-goers (83% vs. 36% of the population as a whole), but for sporadic visitors that gap is 52% with a college degree, 48% without.
• Race: Frequent museum-goers are more likely to be white (84% vs. 57% of the population at large), but white people are also most likely to say they have “never” visited a museum. Sporadic visitors are much more diverse: Asians/Asian Americans are most likely to have visited a museum, and in 2026 African Americans and Native Americans were more likely to have visited a museum in the past year than white people (who showed a slight decline in incidence). Hispanic/Latine museum-goers also showed a slight decline in incidence in 2026. Historic sites still have persistent incidence and frequency gaps, with audiences skewing disproportionately white.
• Age: For art and history museums, and botanic gardens, the majority of frequent museum-goers are commonly over the age of 60. But in terms of incidence, adults over 60 are the least likely age segment of the population to visit museums. (In other words, the same small pool of older adults visit museums over and over again.)

Based on her interpretation of this data, Susie Wilkening, principal of Wilkening Consulting, says she has no concerns about the “pipeline” of future visitors at this point.

IMPACTS Experience

IMPACTS Experience, led by noted researcher Colleen Dilenschneider, collects data via The National Awareness, Attitudes, and Usage Study, the largest ongoing study of perceptions and behaviors related to visitor-serving organizations in the United States, as well as monitoring 244 visitor-serving organizations in the US, including museums.

Two recent IMPACTS reports are of particular interest:

• Five Years Later, the Pandemic Has Still Shifted the Cultural Entities People Prefer to Visit

During the pandemic, people began preferring outdoor institutions (zoos, botanic gardens, etc.) over indoor experiences. Attendance is still elevated above pre-pandemic baseline for botanic gardens, zoos, art museums, aquaria, history museums/sites, and natural history museums. However, it is slightly below pre-pandemic baseline for science centers/museums and notably down for children’s museums, both being environments that were perceived as “high-touch” during the pandemic.

• Market Potential for 2026 & 2027

IMPACTS’ analysis projects that exhibit-based organizations overall show stability or marginal growth, but not significant market potential acceleration. Using 2019 as a baseline, researchers project a 4.2% increase in 2026. Broken down by disciplines, zoos take the lead at +8.4%, art museums are strong at +4.2%, history and natural history museums tie at +3.3%, while children’s museums (-8.4%) and science centers and museums (-6.2%) fare the worst. However, researchers observe that post-pandemic recovery seems to be leveling off, and 2025 seems to have introduced a ceiling in near-term growth.

Driving forces of change

What are the major determinants of attendance trends? Researchers and museum staff identify five major drivers:

• The national economy: Several reports have noted the chilling effect of the current economy on leisure spending. According to the University of Michigan Survey of Consumers, as of January, national consumer sentiment remains more than 20% below a year ago, and consumers continue to report stress from high prices and the prospect of weakening labor markets. While the wealthiest 10% of US households are driving more than half of all consumer spending, one-third of middle-class households are struggling to afford basic necessities such as food, housing, and childcare. As people take on multiple jobs and gig labor to cope with these conditions, their free time becomes extremely constrained, making it difficult to take advantage of even free museum experiences.
• Travel/tourism: Inbound international tourism continues to decline, with double digit dips from Canada and Mexico, and a growing number of nations have issued travel warnings about the US.
• Severe weather and natural disasters: Regions across the US are experiencing increased frequency of winter storms, extreme cold or heat, hurricanes, and wildfires, with the immediate damage exacerbated by reduced federal aid for disaster relief.  
• Political uncertainty: including extreme challenges due to local circumstances (for example, cities targeted for federal immigration enforcement). The presence of federal agents or National Guard can make some members of the community feel unsafe visiting museums, protests may disrupt normal business, and some museums may choose to adjust their own operations. For example, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and other arts organizations voluntarily closed as part of the ICE boycott on January 23.
• Trends in cultural consumption: particularly what Colleen Dilenschneider has dubbed the “allure of the couch.” More than half of Americans, given weekend leisure time, now prefer to spend that time at home. The preference to stay home over the weekend has increased 60.5% for all Americans since 2011 through EOY 2025. For high-propensity visitors to cultural organizations, that preference has grown 86.7% in the same timeframe. (As a result, over half of what Wilkening Consulting calls “frequent museum-goers” now prefer to stay home!)The biggest share of this home time (nearly 90%) is spent online.
• And one more: To these top-of-mind trends, I would add a warning about the potential for local or national resurgence of infectious disease. It is worth remembering that the COVID-19 pandemic was not unique—the annual likelihood of a pandemic is 2-3%, which translates to a 47-57% change of another global pandemic in the next 25 years. The most immediate threat is measles, with the US experiencing over 50 outbreaks in the past year. The current hotspot is South Carolina, and local health officials recently warned that nearly one thousand visitors to the South Carolina State Museum may have been exposed to an infected individual.

Museums might:

• Reset their expectations: Researchers and pundits agree that museums should stop thinking in terms of a rebound to a pre-pandemic norm. The world has fundamentally changed in the past six years, and leaders need to think in terms of establishing a “new normal,” along with new practices to foster attendance.
• Prioritize the visitor experience: Dilenschneider attributes recent plateaus in visitation not to demand, but to capacity—bottlenecks created by reductions in operating hours, downsizing, reducing exhibit schedule, etc. SMU DataArts’ 2025 National Trends report documents that staffing at arts organizations is at its lowest point in six years. While staff cuts and operational retrenchment can balance the budget in the short term, this strategy can spiral into a doom loop in the long term.
• Invest in marketing and social media: IMPACTS’ data shows that cultural visitors are more likely to report having engaged with an organization online by visiting a website, following it on social media, opening an email, or liking a post. Digital engagement can play a key role in a messaging mix that ensures museums are high on people’s lists of things to do when they muster the energy to leave the house. See, for example, how the California Academy of Sciences used a diverse asset mix in multiple channels—including bus wraps, video ads, bus shelter ads, print, radio, and paid social media campaigns—to drive attendance for two recent exhibitions. While some of these approaches may not fit every museum’s budget, even the smallest organizations might follow Sarah Maiellano’s tips for scrappy ways to get your museum in the news.
• Focus on local audiences: During the 2008 financial crisis and in the years following the COVID-19 pandemic, many museums successfully focused on cultivating local audiences, and newly released data from IMPACTS shows that visitor preference for local experiences is surging once again. A recent article in The Art Newspaper profiles a number of museums around the country for which local and regional tourism has made up for or exceeded the decline in international tourism.
• Implement variable pricing (also called dynamic or plan-ahead pricing) to incentivize visitation at underused times. At the high end, museums can use commercial business analytics to crunch historical attendance data, weather, and travel forecasts and project future demand. A low-budget approach can use staff’s understanding of peaks and lulls to identify underutilized times for visitation.
• Rethink the “blockbuster”: As a driver of attendance, blockbuster exhibitions can be both addictive and unsustainable. In 2018, Tim Schneider at artnet news wrote, “A growing arsenal of evidence suggests that struggling museums relying on blockbusters to cultivate loyal visitors are like terrible husbands relying on opulent gifts to cultivate stable marriages: The people they want to keep engaged aren’t actually showing up for them, just for the perks. Even worse, every short-term ‘success’ in their scheme only makes the target audience that much harder to impress the next time around.” (He also cites data that blockbusters cost more and more over time to achieve the same effect.) Post-pandemic, the rising costs of insurance and shipping, and emerging barriers to international loans, can make blockbusters even more fraught.
• Most importantly, start with the data:
  • Enroll in the Annual Survey of Museum-Goers, which provides museums with a cost-effective way to gain insight into their visitors and compare their institution to others in your locale, of similar type, and the museum field as a whole. The deadline for standard enrollment ($1,350) is February 28. This is already an incredibly low price for high-value research, and small museums (annual operating budgets of $400,000 or less) are eligible for a discounted base fee of $1,000 if they launch their survey by March 8.
  
  
  • Subscribe to IMPACTS Experience data via Colleen Dilenshneider’s KYOB+. Subscribers get full access to high-quality, representative data twice a month, with in-depth explorations of trends for marketing, education, and more, as well as opportunities to connect directly with researchers through virtual Q&A sessions.
  
  
  • Follow reports from a variety of credible sources, including SMU DataArts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Final thoughts

It’s worth acknowledging that when it comes to attendance, there can be too much of a good thing. Some museums are suffering from levels of visitation so high it degrades the experience and strains the organization’s ability to maintain facilities. In response, some major tourist destinations, including the Louvre and the Prado, have decided to limit attendance and redirect visitors to other sites. During the pandemic, researchers speculated that visitors might develop an enduring preference for less crowded, more exclusive experiences. It is possible to create a financial model that rests on fewer visitors willing to pay a premium—Disney, notably, has pivoted from “everyone is a VIP” to a pricing and marketing strategy that targets the top 10-20 percent of American households by wealth. While that strategy may be financially viable, it runs contrary to the desire of most museums to be accessible and affordable to a much broader swath of the public.

Each organization needs to make its own assessment of what constitutes optimal attendance, and what role associated revenue plays in its income mix. You may focus on increasing attendance as a financial necessity, as part of a larger strategy of diversifying your audience, or to maximize the benefits you provide to your community. Or you may decide to concentrate on giving your current attendees a better experience. In either case, thoughtful museum planning includes a broad, cross-organizational examination of attendance’s place in your overall metrics of success, as well as strategies and budgeting to pursue those goals.

Yours from the future,

Elizabeth Merritt, Vice President, Strategic Foresight and Founding Director, Center for the Future of Museums, American Alliance of Museums