History

The USA has the world record for the most museums.

https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/781353-most-museums-country

And if you want raw data, check out this PDF:

https://www.imls.gov/sites/default/files/museum_data_file_documentation_and_users_guide.pdf

Would you believe the list on Wikipedia?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_museums_in_the_United_States

You doubting the truth does not make it any less true.

I live in a very small town in the USA (~300 people), and we don't have a single museum. But I can drive to what counts as a "city" here, and visit 2 art museums, a science museum, and a history museum.

There are 53 museums within driving distance of my home.

That's just 1.5 museums per town. Tiny towns have tiny museums. Like a small town i went to once had a "lock and key" museum and it was just the history of locks and keys. Very niche, pretty small. I think they weirdly also had like history of telephones and maybe record players in there? Like a decade ago, so i can't remember.

But also, most actual cities have multiple museums, or even over a dozen, so a lot of small towns don't need any to make it to 30k.

So nominally 2 per town/city.

I grew up near a "city" of 50,000 people, and there were at least half a dozen museums there. I know I visited several of them in grade school, so there's likely more I didn't know about, and there's likely more today.

Then there's places like DC, which has museums everywhere.

I recently did a road trip across half the US - pretty much every small town I stopped in had a museum of some sort.

I now live in the 'burbs of a city with a metro population around 5 million. There are half a dozen museums within a 15 minute drive that I personally know of (they're on my list of places to visit), this without going into the city itself.

I doubt it as well, but it makes me think that, in the Netherlands, museums get significant tax benefits, so a lot of shops are also “museums” to get the benefits. Maybe that would partially explain the bloated number?

The big cities are the Spiders Georg of museum distribution, though. There are hundreds each in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, etc.

Every American hoarder considers themselves having a "museum". So a town with 3 hoarders would have 3 museums. Would they be considered museums anywhere else in the world? No. But that's America, they think pedophiles are good people to run a country.