7 million *(tie)

The National Mall’s Museum of Natural History is “dedicated to understanding the natural world and our place in it.” In 2008, 7 million visitors came to gaze at the museum’s more than 125 million natural science specimens and cultural artifacts, from insects to dinosaurs to photographs of Canela Indian body adornment.

(source: News Desk)

For more information: Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History
 

7 million *(tie)

Attendance at the Air and Space Museum rocketed to 7 million in 2008 – an increase of one million compared with 2007. "People of all ages can relate to the subject matter," says Air and Space's director of communications Claire Brown. "It's the kind of material that's awe inspiring and exciting." The nation's second-most visited museum includes what Brown calls "iconic artifacts" like the original Wright brothers' 1903 Flyer, Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis, and the Apollo 11 command module. In 2005, Air and Space topped the Mall's visit list, with 6.1 million.

(source: News Desk)

For more information: Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum

4.96 million

This Smithsonian affiliate institution was created in 1937 by Congress through a gift from financier and art collector Andrew Mellon. The collection's highlights range from Leonardo da Vinci's Ginevra de' Benci to an Andrew Goldsworthy sculpture, Roof, which was designed specifically for the site.

(source: Press and Public Information office, National Gallery of Art)

For more information: National Gallery of Art

4.7 million

This New York landmark gives the Smithsonian's top destinations a run for their money in visitor numbers. Founded in 1870 (and moved to its current home in Central Park in 1880), the Met's vast stores of art include more than two million works in its two-million-square-foot building. Wear comfortable shoes as you peruse some of the world's greatest art collections, from American, to European, to Egyptian, to the private collection of Edgar Degas.

(source: Metropolitan Museum of Art)

For more information: Metropolitan Museum

4 million

The AMNH’s 45 permanent exhibit halls contain a vast record of world history, from dinosaur fossils to the human genome. The 18-acre campus, located in Theodore Roosevelt Park on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, recently opened the Anne and Bernard Spitzer Hall of Human Origins, a permanent exhibition that presents the history of human evolution. And check out the lizard exhibit, and the one on gold, and the presentation on Vietnamese culture …. More than one visit may be required.

(source: Communications department, American Museum of Natural History)

For more information: American Museum of Natural History

2.7 Million

Started in the late 1920s by a trio of philanthropists including Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the midtown museum now houses more than 150,000 paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs, architectural models and drawings, and design objects. A recent renovation by Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi nearly doubled the capacity of the former facility.

(source: Communications Department, MoMA)

For more information: Museum of Modern Art

2.31 Million

Founded in 1909, the HNMS is one of the most heavily visited attractions in Houston. Its exhibits range from astronomy to Native Americans to Texas wildlife. It's also a premier educational institution, and its two-million-plus annual visitors include more than 600,000 school children.

(source: Houston Museum of Natural Science public relations office).

For more information: Houston Museum of Natural Science
 

2 million

The Holocaust Memorial Museum explains that its mission is to "advance and disseminate knowledge about this unprecedented tragedy; to preserve the memory of those who suffered; and to encourage its visitors to reflect upon the moral and spiritual questions raised by the events of the Holocaust as well as their own responsibilities as citizens of a democracy." The building, completed in 1993, was designed by Pei Cobb Freed and Partners, who explain that the space is "organized internally around the skylit Hall of Witness, a three-story arrival, distribution and circulation center that infuses stairs, walls, layered space and shadows with suggestive disquiet."

(source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ; http://www.ushmm.org/museum/press/annualreport/2008/report.pdf)

For more information: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

1.72 million

They may not be as tired, poor or huddled, but the masses still yearn to see the Statue of Liberty and the immigration depot that served as the check-in for what the Museum calls "the greatest tide of incoming humanity in the nation's history." The exhibits and interactive displays "tell the stories of where the immigrants came from, what they brought with them, and what became of them."

(source: The Statue Of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, Inc.: http://www.ellisisland.org/EIinfo/Annual_Report_2008.pdf)

For more information: Ellis Island Immigration Museum

1.6 million*

A fixture in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park since 1895, the de Young replaced its original building two years ago-with a modern, copper-clad structure designed by the Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron and Fong & Chan Architects in San Francisco. The angular façade still houses the same formidable collection: American art from the 17th through the 20th centuries, and art of the native Americas, Africa, and the Pacific.

*2006  (source: De Young Museum)

For more information: De Young Museum

1.52 million

Founded in 1830 as the Boston Society of Natural History, this Northeast institution has undergone steady expansion since. It now features more than 400 interactive exhibits, including the Elihu Thomson Theater of Electricity, which houses the 2 1/2 million volt Van de Graaff generator.

(source: Media Relations Department, Museum of Science, Boston)

For more information: Museum of Science

1.5 million 

One and a half million guests came to the NMAI in 2008 to see a collection of objects of "aesthetic, cultural, historical, and spiritual significance" spanning more than 10,000 years of Native heritage. The building and grounds are attractions in themselves. According to the museum, "The grounds honor local Native people by featuring four environments indigenous to the Chesapeake Bay region, including hardwood forest, wetlands, cropland, and meadow."

(source: News Desk)

For more information: Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian
 

1.4 million

Housed in the only remaining building from the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, the CMSI is proclaims itself the largest science center in the Western Hemisphere. 

(source: Public relations department, Chicago Museum of Science and Industry)

For more information: Chicago Museum of Science and Industry

1.38 million

Formerly the Museum of Science of Industry, this Southern California destination reinvented itself in 1998 under the current name. Museum spokesperson Shell Amega says attendance skyrocketed in 2005 when the CSC hosted the U.S. premiere of "Body Worlds," the anatomical exhibition of real human bodies. 

(source: Development Office, CSC)

For more information: California Science Center

1.374 million 

Originally founded to house the of collection of the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, the Field Museum is now part of a downtown, lakefront Museum Campus that includes the John G. Shedd Aquarium and the Adler Planetarium. (its namesake is benefactor Marshall Field, of Chicago department-store fame).

(source: Public relations office, The Field Museum)

For more information: Field Museum

1.373 million  

The MFAH claims special status as "the largest art museum in America south of Chicago, west of Washington, D.C., and east of Los Angeles." Its 300,000 square feet of space house more than 55,000 artworks, as well as special programs like the film-exhibition program. The museum's Cullin Hall addition, opened in 1958, was designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

(source: Museum of Fine Arts Communications and Marketing Dept.)

For more information: Museum of Fine Arts

1.31 million

“Cincinnati Museum Center (CMC) at Union Terminal is very unique," says Douglass W. McDonald, president and CEO.  "We are a national historic landmark train station, home to three museums (children’s museum, history museum, natural history and science museum), an OMNIMAX movie theatre, historical library and changing exhibit hall. This provides a depth of offering that keeps visitors coming back for new and different experiences as well as long-time favorites."

(source: Cincinnati Museum Center Media Relations Dept.)

For more information: Cincinnati Museum Center

1.3 million 

The AIC's collection ranges from ancient Greek, Etruscan, Roman, and Egyptian sculpture to modernist painting and new-media work. Its "Thorne Miniature Rooms" are a series of 69 small-scale recreations of European interiors from the late 13th century to the 1930s and American furnishings from the 17th century to the 1930s.

(source: Public Affairs office, Art Institute of Chicago)

For more information: The Art Institute of Chicago

1.24 million 

The newest Getty Museum, which opened in 1997 on a hilltop in the Santa Monica Mountains, draws as much attention for its architecture as the art within. Its sleek off-white buildings, designed by Richard Meier, house European paintings, drawings, sculpture, illuminated manuscripts, decorative arts, and European and American photographs. The enameled metal and travertine structures cost about a billion dollars to construct.

(source: Communications and Special Projects Department, J. Paul Getty Trust)

For more information: The J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center

1.21 million 

Located on the Willamette River in downtown Portland, OMSI features the Northwest's largest planetarium, and the USS Blueback, “the last fast-attack, diesel-powered submarine built by the U.S. Navy.”

(source: Public relations department, OMSI)

For more information: Oregon Museum of Science and Industry

1.2 million

Founded by Academy of Science of Saint Louis (the first scientific organization west of the Mississippi River), the SLCC has continued to grow over the years, adding a Planetarium and an Exploradome (an air-supported building) along the way. 

(source: Media Relations Department at the St. Louis Science Center)

For more information: St. Louis Science Center

1.2 million

Located near Washington Dulles International Airport, this companion museum to the National Mall's Air and Space center is actually larger than the main space in D.C., and displays aircraft on three levels. Highlights include the space shuttle Enterprise and the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay.

(source: News Desk)

For more information: Smithsonian's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center

1.03 million

This 400,000-square-foot facility proclaims itself the "largest children's museum in the world." It's interactive exhibits include "Dinosphere: Now You're In Their World," a "one of the largest displays of real juvenile and family dinosaur fossils in the United States."

(source: Media Relations department, the Children's Museum of Indianapolis)

For more information: Indianapolis Children's Museum

1 million (tie)

The Reynolds Center houses both the Smithsonian American Art Museum and The National Portrait Gallery. The latter's permanent exhibitions include "American Origins, 1600-1900, "a series of 17 galleries and alcoves chronologically arranged to take the visitor from the days of contact between Native Americans and European explorers through the struggles of independence to the Gilded Age."

(source: News Desk)

For more information: Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture

1 million (tie)

Frank Lloyd Wright designed this space for Solomon Guggenheim’s art collection (then called the Museum of Non-Objective Painting). The inverted ziggurat on 5th Avenue starts visitors at the top and slopes them downward on a continuous ramp, passing Cezannes and Picassos on the gentle descent.

(source: Public Affairs office, Guggenheim Foundation)

For more information: Guggenheim Museum