London’s British Museum was founded in 1753, more than a century before the Met
The year each city’s leading art museums count themselves from
- New York6 museumsThe Met
- London8 museumsBritish Museum
- Paris8 museumsLouvre
- Los Angeles7 museumsLACMA
- Berlin8 museumsGemäldegalerie
The numbers
| City | Museum | Founded |
|---|---|---|
| New York | The Met | 1870 |
| New York | MoMA | 1929 |
| New York | Whitney Museum | 1930 |
| New York | Guggenheim Museum | 1937 |
| New York | Frick Collection | 1919 |
| New York | New Museum | 1977 |
| London | British Museum | 1753 |
| London | National Gallery | 1824 |
| London | Tate Modern | 2000 |
| London | Tate Britain | 1897 |
| London | V&A | 1852 |
| London | National Portrait Gallery | 1856 |
| London | Royal Academy of Arts | 1768 |
| London | Serpentine | 1970 |
| Paris | Louvre | 1793 |
| Paris | Musée d’Orsay | 1977 |
| Paris | Centre Pompidou | 1947 |
| Paris | Musée de l’Orangerie | 1921 |
| Paris | Fondation Louis Vuitton | 2006 |
| Paris | Bourse de Commerce | 2021 |
| Paris | Petit Palais | 1902 |
| Paris | Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris | 1953 |
| Los Angeles | Getty Center | 1953 |
| Los Angeles | LACMA | 1910 |
| Los Angeles | The Broad | 2015 |
| Los Angeles | Hammer Museum | 1990 |
| Los Angeles | MOCA | 1979 |
| Los Angeles | Lucas Museum | 2026 |
| Los Angeles | Norton Simon Museum | 1922 |
| Berlin | Neues Museum | 1843 |
| Berlin | Alte Nationalgalerie | 1861 |
| Berlin | Neue Nationalgalerie | 1962 |
| Berlin | Hamburger Bahnhof | 1996 |
| Berlin | Gemäldegalerie | 1830 |
| Berlin | Pergamonmuseum | 1910 |
| Berlin | Altes Museum | 1830 |
| Berlin | Berlinische Galerie | 1975 |
Some opened their doors later: the British Museum in 1759, the Musée d’Orsay in 1986, LACMA on Wilshire Boulevard in 1965. Tate Modern counts from its opening in 2000; Tate was founded in 1897. In grey: closed for works. Sources: the museums’ own histories (see How we counted).
From the report
Five art cities, compared in charts
New York, London, Paris, Los Angeles and Berlin, measured against each other: how many galleries and how far apart, which night they open, what a museum ticket costs and how many people buy one, the fairs, the auction rooms, and the galleries and artists the cities share.
More from this report23
- Five art cities in numbers, October 2026
- The leading galleries of Los Angeles opened there a generation after New York’s
- Seventeen galleries have a space in both New York and Los Angeles, more than link any other two cities
- No gallery is in all five cities. Seven are in four, and 25 more in two or three
- The four largest galleries keep 14 spaces in New York, and five each in Los Angeles, London and Paris
- Half of London’s galleries stand within 1.2 km of one point. In Los Angeles it takes 7.6 km
- In Manhattan the next gallery is 20 metres away. In Los Angeles, 256
- Chelsea has 71 galleries and Tribeca 64. Outside New York, London’s Mayfair has the most, 52
- New York opens its shows on Thursday, Berlin on Friday, Los Angeles on Saturday
- On one Thursday in September, 85 gallery shows opened in Manhattan
- In New York, 95% of the gallery shows on view opened in September
- A gallery show runs about six weeks. Berlin gives it seven
- Four in five London and New York gallery shows are solo shows. In Berlin, two in three
- Paris’s galleries are showing 23 of the world’s top-selling modern artists this autumn, London’s 20. New York’s are showing 13
- Fifteen artists are in gallery shows in both New York and Paris this autumn
- The Louvre drew 9.0 million visitors in 2025, half as many again as the Met
- Paris and London have seven each of the world’s 100 most visited art museums. Berlin has none
- The museums of Los Angeles and London are still short of their 2019 crowds. Most of Paris’s are ahead
- A New York museum ticket costs $30. In London, all eight leading museums are free
- New York, Paris and London each hold more than a dozen art fairs a year. Berlin holds three
- Paris’s three largest fairs, all held under one roof, the Grand Palais, each drew more than 70,000 visitors
- The United States sells three times as much art at auction as the United Kingdom, and five times as much as France
- Of the 100 highest auction prices of 2025, 68 were paid in New York, 15 in London and six in Paris. Los Angeles and Berlin had none