The chart gives information about how many travellers visited five distinct types of museums in the UK between 1999 and 2019, measured in thousands.
Overall, what immediately stands out from the chart is that art museums emerged as the most popular choice among visitors throughout the period. Another noteworthy feature is that culture and science museums experienced declines in attendance, contrasting with the growth noted in the remaining types of museums.
Regarding kinds of museums with increases in visitor figures, art museums attracted the highest number of travellers at around 100 thousand, before rising progressively to 150 thousand, maintaining their top position throughout the period. It is notable that 70 thousand tourists chose science museums as the most favoured option in the first year, after which it overtook the figure for natural history museums and increased gradually to precisely 130 thousand in the following 16 years, making this museum becoming the second most preferred from 1993 onwards. Meanwhile, the attendance/ participation rate of history museums was much lower compared to two aforementioned destinations, with merely 50 thousands of visitors showing a preference for history museums in 1991, before ending at roughly 64 thousand by the end of the period.
With respect to remaining types of museums specifically, natural history museums welcomed approximately 80 thousand tourists in the first year. Afterwards, this figure witnessed steady declines to just under 70 thousand by 2007. Similar changes can be seen in the data for culture museums. Roughly 60 thousand travellers paid a visit to these museums in 1991, before being surpassed by the data for history museums to have the lowest number of tourists from 1996 onwards. It is notable that history and culture museums witnessed contrasting trends in both years and eventually switched their positions, with culture ones becoming the least common museums from 1996 onwards.