London Science Museum hosts an event on China.

With Chinese New Year almost here, museums abroad have been eager to celebrate.

Spring Festival is widely celebrated by museums as a chance to attract broader audiences and invite visitors to learn more about China.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has hosted a Lunar New Year festival for nine years. Last year, 89 percent of all attendees indicated that they went to The Met specifically for the festival, according to Julie Marie Seibert, assistant educator for family programs at the museum.

The celebrations usually feature family-friendly performances and art workshops. Lion dances, traditional Chinese music and dance, paper-cutting, red envelopes, scrolls and the Chinese zodiac are among the favorites.

"For each festival, we develop unexpected, multimodal activities with artists, performers and arts organizations to connect visitors to a broader cultural community," Seibert said.

The Met also plans an annual exhibition for the year's corresponding Chinese zodiac symbol. This year, a six-month exhibition features pigs created by Chinese artists over the past 2,000 years.

Museums look at Chinese New Year as a great educational opportunity. "We hope that families from Philadelphia's Asian communities make our Lunar New Year celebration a part of theirs," said Elizabeth Baill, manager of family programs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which has been hosting such celebrations for over 20 years.

The Art Institute of Chicago has hosted Lunar New Year celebrations for five years. It saw attendance increase 24 percent during the 2018 Chinese New Year celebration.