Until 2020 arrived, the last month of the year served for museums to blow up millionaire numbers of visitors with which they competed between institutions, making the largest number a reason for anxiety.
Up to four million visits counted in 2019 at the Reina Sofía Museum.
And the forecast was to grow, of this museum and of everyone.
But the pandemic forced them to break that
magic
vice
and focus on surviving with more of an art venue than a convention center.
And in those they are.
The year, after several months of closure of spaces and the fluctuation of restrictions, which has ended (for now) with mass tourism (national and foreign),
closes with numbers that are far below the usual
.
But it is that at this moment of the XXI century everything is very crazy with respect to what we knew.
That is to say: regarding museums too.
The Reina Sofía reaches 1.2 million visitors (between its three venues, the central one and the two extensions of the Retreat), which represents a drop of 71.8% compared to 2019
.
The influx to the venues is divided from the following in 448,211 to the main one (where
Guernica
is located
), 608,603 to the Palacio de Cristal and 191,672 to that of Velázquez.
Still, the end result is a spectacular number for a year slimmed down in everything.
Despite the drastic drop in visitors, the trend of the last months of the year has experienced a slight and progressive increase.
The last exhibition opened on Piet Mondrian, with reduced capacity, usually sells out every weekend.
The museum has experienced a boom in its activity on the internet and during the confinement it experienced record numbers.
The
hashtag
#ElReinaEnCasa reached two million people, and
user
interactions
have quadrupled on Facebook and doubled on Twitter and Instagram
, a trend that has been consolidated in recent months.
The collapse of the Prado Museum has been significantly greater, with a 73% drop in visitors.
Of the 3.2 million influx in 2019, it has increased to 852,161 people in the last year.
It must be taken into account that the gallery does not have 100% of its exhibition area open yet.
The groups, in addition, have given way to solo or couple visits
.
What has increased in recent months has been the Prado's internet presence, with more than seven million web users and three million followers on social networks.
The Guggenheim Bilbao is another of the centers that each year maintained the upward trend in visits.
In 2020, with all the usual trends reversed, it welcomed 315,908 people in its rooms compared to 1,170,669 in 2019. Unlike previous years with a majority presence of foreigners, in 2020 61% of visitors came from Spain and 39% from other countries such as France (18%), Great Britain (3%), Germany (3%), Italy (2%), Portugal (1%) and the United States (1%).
The networking carried out by the Guggenheim Bilbao places it as one of the most active art centers with the greatest capacity for exploration in the field of digital tools with videos, workshops, talks and
online
visits
.
As some of the directors of seven of the great Spanish art museums have already announced,
the pandemic will force us to rethink the role of cultural institutions in the 21st century
and to modulate some of the assumptions that until now were driving museum plans.
The world is changing and museums are the world too.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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