Just over 472,600 visits were made to Otago Museum in the year to the end of June - a record for the institution and a figure almost four times the population of Dunedin.
Using the same calculation of visits per head of population, the Louvre came out at 3.83, the British Museum 0.81 and the Metropolitan Museum of Art 0.54.
"Our total is truly amazing," Mr Paul told the museum trust board yesterday.
"It's mind-blowing".
What made the total more significant was that an estimated 80% of visits to Otago Museum were made by people living in Otago, he said.
"A lot of the big museums get their numbers from tourists, but we get the majority of ours from repeat visits by local people."
The 2007-08 figures beat the previous year's total by more than 108,300.
Sales figures for the museum shop were also well up - $528,505 in the 2007-08 year compared with $424,998 the previous year.
The museum's new tropical forest exhibition has been hugely popular since it opened at the start of November.
Just under 135,000 people viewed the exhibition's 1000 live butterflies and other creatures in the nine months to the end of June, paying $891,758 in admission charges.
The busiest month was January, when 26,411 visits were made.
Mr Paul said after the meeting he had expected tropical forest attendances to plateau after a few months.
"I told my staff it would plateau and they keep telling me I was wrong and rubbing it in like salt into a wound. It is a nice thing to have been wrong about though."
He said the museum broke another record last month when 60,900 visits were made - the highest single monthly total ever and a 78% jump on figures for July last year.
Of those visits, 13,160 were to the tropical forest.
