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Doorway to the Smithsonian 'castle,' the institution's headquarters and first building. Photo by David Bjorgen, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Visitor numbers down at Smithsonian due to closures

Tom Hoepf
Tom Hoepf

Doorway to the Smithsonian 'castle,' the institution's headquarters and first building. Photo by David Bjorgen, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Doorway to the Smithsonian ‘castle,’ the institution’s headquarters and first building. Photo by David Bjorgen, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
WASHINGTON (AP) – Smithsonian officials say visitation is down at the museum complex this year due to the government shutdown and closures due to winter weather.

Smithsonian Secretary Wayne Clough said Monday that visitation is down by about 2 million visitors since the fiscal year began Oct. 1, 2013. He says about half of the decline is due to the federal government shutdown last October.

Clough says visitor numbers are also down for the 2014 calendar year. He says that’s because there were fewer visitors during the winter months. The federal government was closed several days due to snow.

Clough says visitor numbers have rebounded to normal levels in the spring and early summer tourism season this year.

Last year, the Smithsonian counted about 30 million visits to its museums.

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AP-WF-06-24-14 1249GMT

ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE

Doorway to the Smithsonian 'castle,' the institution's headquarters and first building. Photo by David Bjorgen, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Doorway to the Smithsonian ‘castle,’ the institution’s headquarters and first building. Photo by David Bjorgen, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.