Visitor numbers to museums are reportedly back to pre-pandemic levels with an estimated 197 million people visiting the world’s top 100 museums in 2024.

It’s more important than ever to support the art, but at what cost? Ticket prices are rising and consumers need to know that they’re getting their money’s worth.

New research by Radical Storage has discovered the most and least disappointing museums in the world, by taking into account 82,445 visitor reviews of 100 of the most visited museums (including galleries) in the world.

While London is known as a cultural capital, visitor satisfaction tells a different story. Four of London’s biggest museums – the Science Museum, Natural History Museum, British Museum and Tate Modern – are all ranked among the worst museums worldwide.

However, one London museum has stood out for all the right reasons. The National Maritime Museum, in Greenwich, is among the top ten museums worldwide. Featuring a trove of over two million maritime treasures, the cultural institution was formally opened by King George VI on 27 April 1937.

The study used 102 keyword indicators for positive and negative experiences, such as “beautiful” or “boring” to find the percentage of reviews which indicated a positive experience, and negative experience.

The percentage of positive reviews was then divided by the percentage of negative reviews in the study, to give an overall score out of 100, with 1 being the most and 100 being the least disappointing.

The World’s Most Disappointing Museums

1. The National Air and Space Museum 7.5/100

Only 35.3% of reviews for the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. were positive, and 15.7% were negative. This leaves the museum with the lowest score in the study of 7.5 out of 100 in the study..

17.7% of all negative words counted in the reviews for this museum were for the word “dull”, the highest percentage in the study per museum and far above the 1.5% average.

The museum is undergoing an extensive renovation that began in 2018 and is expected to be nearly fully completed in July 2026 (in time for the museum’s 50th anniversary). Hopefully, once finished, the visitor experience will also improve.

The world’s top 10 most disappointing museums
Rank
Museum
City
Country
Study score out of 100
Most common negative phrase
1
The National Air and Space Museum
Washington, D.C.
United States
7.5
Disappoint*
2
Science Museum
London
United Kingdom
8.2
Disappoint*
3
American Museum of Natural History
New York City
United States
8.7
Crowd*
4
Natural History Museum
London
United Kingdom
11.5
Crowd*
5
Grand Palais
Paris
France
11.7
Crowd*
6
Vatican Museums
Vatican City, Rome
Vatican City
12.2
Crowd*
7
The British Museum
London
United Kingdom
13.6
Crowd*
8
Louvre Museum
Paris
France
13.7
Crowd*
9
Museo Nacional del Prado
Madrid
Spain
14.2
Crowd*
10
Tate Modern
London
United Kingdom
14.3
Disappoint*
*Conjugations were also included (e.g. crowded or disappointing)

2. Science Museum, London: 8.2/100

The second most disappointing museum also has the greatest proportion of explicitly negative reviews (18%). Four in ten (42.8%) reviews of the London Science Museum were positive, with the museum receiving an overall score of 8.2 out of 100.

The Science Museum houses over seven million items related to science, technology, engineering, and medicine (including a piece of the moon!). The museum was built from a surplus of money from Prince Albert’s Great Exhibition in 1851, but the opening of the ‘Children’s Gallery’ in the 1930s marked a shift towards making the museum accessible to the general public, rather than science specialists.

Considering the positive reviews, the museum had the greatest mentions of being “interactive” (20.3% compared to the 2.4% study average). However, 35% of all negative keywords counted mentioned words related to “disappointment”, higher than the 25.6% study average.

3. American Museum of Natural History, New York City: 8.7/100

The American Museum of Natural History in New York is the third most disappointing museum on the list, with a score of 8.7 out of 100 (42.4% of reviews being positive, and 18% negative).

The museum was founded in 1869 by Albert Smith Bickmore, and was already an iconic New York institution when it was made even more famous by the 2006 fantasy-comedy film Night at the Museum.

But visitors expecting to recreate their own magical experience of the museum may be left disappointed. Considering the negative words in the study, the museum had double the average mentions of rudeness in the study (9% compared to 4.5%). The museum was also found to be outdated (4.7% mentions compared to 0.5%). The most common complaint to occur in reviews was related to crowds or crowding (appearing in 26.2% of all negative reviews).

4. Natural History Museum, London: 11.5/100

Continuing the trend of poorly-performing natural history museums is the Natural History Museum in London. Although over half of the reviews were positive (53.1%), the museum also had an exceptionally high number of negative reviews (17.6%). Overall, the museum scored 11.5 out of a possible 100.

Mention of “crowds” or “crowding” featured in half (52.7%) of all the negative mentions for this museum. Other words that appeared more often than average in a museum review include “noisy” (2.3% compared to 1.4%), “chaotic” (1.8% compared to 0.9%), and “unhelpful” (1.1% compared to 0.6%).

5. Grand Palais, Paris: 11.7/100

The Grand Palais in Paris, a museum and exhibition centre, received 47.8% positive reviews and 15.7% negative reviews, leaving it with a score of 11.7.

The museum is located on the corner between the Avenue Winston Churchill and the Champs-Élysées. The impressive landmark is the product of an architectural competition in 1897. When the organisers failed to decide on one winner, the four finalists joined forces to create what is now considered a masterpiece of Art Nouveau design.

The museum featured above-average results for eleven negative keywords. Over half (53.4%) of the negative words in the reviews were related to crowding, considerably higher than the study average of 39.2%. The Grand Palais also had the highest percentage of mentions for the phrase “badly managed” (0.7%) and the joint third greatest percentage of mentions for “not worth it” (2.1% compared to 0.5%).