The success of a museum is measured by the attendance.
While the Toledo Museum of Art, as of June 2026, is closed for renovations, it is important to remember that it was entirely open for visitors through fiscal year 2024, which ended June 30, 2025, 13 months ago.
What’s up with the low attendance?
This chart reflects the annual visitors through June 30, 2025. The numbers are taken from the annual reports. See, here, for the actual pages of annual reports for your own comparison: 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025.
What does Adam Levine have to say about it? Here is a bullet point in an email to me, cc’d to the City Council, Mayor and State Representatives, who I had originally cc’d on my email to the museum (the second time I asked for a list of board members, and the list still wasn’t provided, BTW) ––
Comparisons can be misleading between current attendance and pre-pandemic attendance.
“The Museum changed how it measures success since COVID.”
Meaning?
To explain, Levine tells us that prior to the pandemic, the previous directors reported overall attendance, including those who visited for any purpose — in other words, before COVID, the museum fudged the numbers by adding anyone who ever stepped foot into the museum buildings for any reason, including employees, university students in the Gehry building Center for the Visual Arts, wedding rental attendants, business event attendees, contractors, repairmen, construction workers, and not just people coming to see the art.
– Museum visitors (to see the art): 133,000
– Community classes & Family Center: 25,000
and to pad the numbers, perhaps they added:
– Employees: 50,000
– Students at CVA: 125,000
– Peristyle attendees: 40,000
– Users of the library: 5,000
– Private venue rental attendees and caterers: 20,000
– Contractors, construction workers & free-lancers: 15,000
– Dog walkers, strollers, joggers, block party: 17,000
–– or something like that. Total: 430,000
Comparatively, in the most recent fiscal year, Levine reports “welcoming” just as many campus visits as the previous directors would report as museum visits (but were really campus visits, and they are now coming clean.)
So to measure success, Adam Levine counts only visitors who come to see the art, unlike his predecessors. And for 2025, only 133,000 came to see the art, one-third of what it was pre-pandemic, before he became director.
We are to believe that the 350,000 to 400,000 historical visitor attendance was all a lie?
This document alone, from the 1991 annual report, debunks Levine’s statement, because it shows that a popular temporary exhibition, Impressionism, brought in 146,237 visitors alone, in only eight weeks. 393,418 people visited the museum that year, according to the 1991 annual report, an increase of about 98,000 from the previous year, due to the Impressionism show.
In 2001, the museum reported that from July 1, 2000 through June 30, 2001, presenting 16 exhibitions that year, 397,349 visitors took pleasure in the Museum’s renowned collections, exhibitions, and special events.
It takes some effort to bring in the people. In 2025, the museum had only five exhibitions, with only two shows in their major temporary exhibition spaces:
– Rachel Ruysch: Nature into Art (Levis)
– Infinite Images: The Art of Algorithms (Canaday)
In 2015 the museum set an attendance record — over 440,000. Toledo Museum of Art sets attendance mark, The Blade January 17, 2016. Director Brian Kennedy said,
While the increased attendance numbers are “great,” they don’t necessarily measure the museum’s success, says TMA director Brian Kennedy. Rather, it’s the programming chosen and a measure of the relevancy of the museum itself that drives the institution.
“Attendance numbers are not the most important thing for us. The most important thing for us is visitor satisfaction,” Kennedy said. “We want to be the best in other people’s opinions.”
Now, faced with pathetic numbers, Adam Levine tells us that the past has been a lie – the museum has been dishonest with the public. We are to understand that The Blade has been complicit by feeding the public lies all these years.
Then in 2019, The Blade reported a 3% attendance drop in the article, Attendance falls at Toledo Museum of Art, January 15, 2019.
“While attendance is something we do track and report on, how the museum really benchmarks its success is two-fold: the quality of what we offer the public and in return, what visitors say about the museum,” Ms. Elton said.
(I wonder what the museum thinks about what I am saying about them.)
Attendance of special exhibitions is reported:
The Mummies: From Egypt to Toledo, 2018, 33,228
Fired Up: Contemporary Glass by Women Artists, 2018, 34,849
Rebecca Louise Law: Community, 2018, 44,817
Kehinde Wiley, 2017, 69,000
Play Time including the Red Ball project, 2016, 135,000
