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Art Institute Named Top Museum in the World by TripAdvisor

 The Art Institute of Chicago at 111 S. Michigan Ave.
The Art Institute of Chicago at 111 S. Michigan Ave.
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DNAinfo/Josh McGhee

THE LOOP — Move over, Met, and look out, Louvre — the Art Institute of Chicago was just named the top museum in the world by the tourist-driven rating site TripAdvisor, according to a release issued by the company Tuesday.

The Downtown art museum located at 111 S. Michigan Ave. took top honors in the museum category of the site's annual "Traveler's Choice" awards, which tallied user reviews over a 12-month period using an algorithm that incorporated both "the quantity and quality of reviews for museums worldwide."

“TripAdvisor’s ranking reinforces what both residents and visitors to Chicago have said time and again — that our cultural institutions and the Art Institute of Chicago especially, are the best in the world," Mayor Rahm Emanuel said in a statement Tuesday.

"From its famous facade to its more than 300,000 pieces of art, the Art Institute of Chicago showcases the best of what Chicago has to offer — iconic architecture, proximity to the lakefront and a collection that is diverse as it is accessible."

With a whopping 6,512 reviews lauding the Art Institute's "more than 300,000 pieces of art," "30 rotating exhibitions and hundreds of gallery talks and performances each year," TripAdvisor said in a release that reviewers called the institution "architecturally significant and breathtaking" with "collections [that] are world-renowned."

In second place with just over half the reviews submitted for the Art Institute was the National Museum of Anthropology, located in Mexico City. Also ranked behind the Chicago museum were the State Hermitage Museum and Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia, the Getty Center in Los Angeles, and the Musee d'Orsay in Paris, which had 20,408 reviews but came in sixth place based on the quality- and quantity-crunching algorithm.

The title win for the Art Institute comes on the heels of the unveiling of a plan to transform Adams Street into an "art street" to bring more traffic to the museum.

The stretch of Adams Street between Wabash and Michigan Avenue would be lined with installations, pop-up performances and high-concept infrastructure, capitalizing on its "terminal view of the Art Institute" and driving foot traffic from the "L" station to the museum, Executive Director Michael Edwards said at a meeting of the Chicago Loop Alliance.

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