Dutch museums celebrate another good year for attendance

2015 was another good year for the larger museums in the Netherlands. The number of visitors grew by an average of 7.2 percent compared to last year, according to research done by NOS and regional broadcasters. The Gemeentemuseum in The Hague showed the strongest growth this year, with 50 percent more visitors than last year. This is attributable to the exhibition of paintings by Mark Rothko. The Mauritshuis also welcomed many more visitors than in 2014, but that is mostly due to the fact that the museum was closed for the first half of last year. On the actual number of visitors, the big museums in Amsterdam fared best. The Rijksmuseum welcomed 2,350,000 visitors and the Van Gogh Museum received 1,760,934. Earlier this month, the Van Gogh Museum reported their visitor count at a slightly higher 1.9 million. Third and fourth place on the highest number of visitors are also Amsterdam museums - the Anne Frank House with 1,260,000 visitors and the Stedelijk Museum with 675 thousand visitors. While the museums saw a significant increase in the number of visitors, the increase was less significant than in previous years. According to the Museum Association, the number of visitors rose by an average of over 9.3 percent per year between 2011 and 2014.