Banksy and Saatchi Gallery top list of 2009's most visited UK exhibitions

Banksy and Saatchi Gallery top list of 2009's most visited UK exhibitions

31 March, 2010
by: Spoonfed Arts Team

Banksy and the Saatchi Gallery prove the most popular UK art attractions of 2009.

Cracking results for the Saatchi Gallery and Bristol-based street artist Banksy, as The Art Newspaper today published its list of the UK's most visited exhibitions of 2009. In first place is the Saatchi Gallery's opening exhibition, The Revolution Continues, with on average 4,139 visitors per day. Second is Banksy's reinterpretation of the City and Museum and Art Gallery, Bristol, which received 3,859 visitors per day. And in third place is the Satachi Gallery again whose second exhibition, Unveiled – New Art from the Middle East received 3,828 visitors per day.

The results cap a good year for the galleries and museums in the UK, but particularly for London's larger institutions. Out of the top five most visited art museums across the world, three of them are in London. The British Museum comes in second with over 5½ million visitors over the course of the year, while the National Gallery and Tate Modern also finish in the top five. The world's most popular art museum was The Louvre in Paris, way out in front with 8½ million visitors, whilst New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art came in third.

At a time when many are worried about continued investment in the arts, the results come as good news for the London art establishment. One reason perhaps why London's galleries and museums continue to remain popular is that many of them are free. A trip for two round somewhere like the Wellcome Collection, for example, is about £20 cheaper (and infinitely more interesting) than the same length of time spent at a central London cinema.

Other London winners include the Royal Academy of Arts, whose Byzantium exhibition was the world's most visited medieval exhibition of 2009; the Serpentine, whose Pavilion was the world's third most visited architecture and design exhibition; and the National Portrait Gallery, where the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize was seventh on the list of world's most visited photography exhibitions

For the full results, visit The Art Newspaper.

Click here to see all London exhibitions.
Click here for things to do in London.

Return to Spoonfed's London Art homepage.

Spoonfed Arts Team