Da Vinci tops US museum visitors

The Metropolitan Museum of Art boasted four of the top 10 most popular exhibitions

An exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci sketches at New York's Metropolitan Museum has drawn 2003's biggest crowds.

The collection of 120 drawings attracted an average 6,863 people a day, according to a survey of visitor numbers in The Art Newspaper.

The Met also boasted the second-biggest exhibition with German photographer Thomas Struth attracting 5,790 a day.

The most popular in the UK was the Art Deco exhibition at London's Victoria and Albert Museum.

The V&A exhibition attracted 3,103 people a day during its run.

The second most popular was the Titian show at the National Gallery, which reunited many of the artist's masterpieces for the first time in centuries.

'Slump'

But the annual survey found visitor numbers had dropped overall in the UK and US.

Of the 286 exhibitions listed, only 190 attracted more than 1,000 visitors a day, compared with 215 the previous year.

The Art Newspaper said the fall could be contributed to a "global economic slump and the decline in international tourism which followed the war in Iraq".

The survey is compiled by the size of the daily attendance, not overall numbers, for exhibitions which ended in 2003.

The Peter the Great exhibition at the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg was the third most attended of the survey (5,759), followed by the Da Vinci show at the Louvre in Paris (5,511).

The Metropolitan boasted four exhibitions in the top 10, while New York's Museum of Modern Art was also featured.