Picasso Museum and MNAC visitors increase in 2017

The Barcelona Picasso Museum welcomed 1,046,190 visitors this 2017, an increase in 8% compared to the 954,895 of the year before. Meanwhile, the National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC) was host to 869,262 people, a 6% increase from 2016 and its numbers of 820,516.

The CosmoCaixa and CaixaForum Barcelona museums collected more than 1.6 million visitors (1,632,776). The most-visited exhibition at the CaixaForum museum in Barcelona was the collection of AndyWarhol paintings, prints, photos and films, that became the most-attended exhibition of the last five years with 228,000 ticket holders.

These numbers contrast with the decrease in visitors in other museums, such as the Miró Foundation, with 10% fewer museumgoers, or the CCCB, which experienced a fall of 15% (from a record 2016 number of 457,000 to 385,000), and the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA), with a decrease of 20% in visitors (from 324,584 to 259,301). Additionally, the Fundació Antoni Tapies also ended the year with fewer audiences than before (falling from 62,450 in 2016 to 51,496 in 2017).

The reasons attributed to the lower number of visitors by various museums are, to varying degrees, the August attacks, the roadmap to independence, and the strike of Ciut’Art workers, which closed the cultural centres for various days at a time. The Dalí Foundation has not yet advanced data for the past year.