Displaying items by tag: attendance

In 2012 the New York Botanical Garden struck gold with the success of its exhibition “Monet’s Garden,” which shattered attendance records as it brought some 373,000 visitors to Bronx.

Then this year’s Frida Kahlo show happened. Before it closes on Nov. 1, “Frida Kahlo: Art, Garden, Life” is expected to pass the 500,000-visitors mark and set a record. Gregory Long, the garden’s president and chief executive, was surprised. “We thought Frida Kahlo would be a wonderful thing,” he said, “but we never thought it would outdo Monet.”

Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, one of the nation’s most significant botanic and sculpture experiences, broke attendance records again in August, making it the best summer, and best three consecutive months, in the organization’s history.

In June, over 85 thousand guests visited Meijer Gardens. In July, that figure increased to 101 thousand, making it the best attended month on record. Following the in a similar pattern, August’s attendance wrapped up the summer with 93 thousand guests, totaling over a quarter of a million people in three months.

Buoyed by strong international tourism, a spate of well-attended shows and a seven-day-a-week schedule, the Metropolitan Museum of Art drew 6.3 million visitors in the last year, the most since it began tracking these statistics more than 40 years ago.

The Met, which announced the figures late Monday, said it was the fourth year in a row that the museum had drawn more than 6 million visitors, keeping it in a rarefied group that includes the National Gallery and the British Museum in London, which both attracted slightly larger numbers, and the Louvre, the world’s biggest draw with more than 9 million in each of the last three years.

New York's Museum of Biblical Art (MOBIA) will close its doors this summer, after operating for a decade. The institution's current Donatello exhibition will remain on view through June 14, as planned, but MOBIA will cease operations on June 30, 2015, the museum announced today.

"Sculpture in the Age of Donatello: Renaissance Masterpieces From Florence Cathedral," which features 25 pieces from the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, many of which had never before left Italy, has been a blockbuster by the small museum's standards. Since opening in mid-February, the show has very nearly surpassed MOBIA's all-time high for annual attendance with 20,000 visitors.

Opening a staging area and gift shop, and having the technology to finally accept credit cards has made a big difference in visits to the Rosenbaum/Frank Lloyd Wright museum.

The number of visitors in the first quarter of the fiscal year, compared to the same period a year ago, is up 57 percent, while total revenue is up 93 percent, according to the city Arts and Museums Department.

"The staging area is a different concept from the way we had taken in guests," Barbara Broach, director of Arts and Museums, said. "We give them an orientation with exhibits on the walls, then we send them over in groups of 12."

New studies released today by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and based on surveys carried out in 2012 claim that arts attendance in the US has continued to drop over the past two decades, but both struggle to incorporate digital activities into their findings. The studies, “A Decade of Arts Engagement: Findings From the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, 2002–2012” and “When Going Gets Tough: Barriers and Motivations Affecting Arts Attendance,” break down arts attendance, participation, and production figures demographically and attempt to account for the reasons certain groups do and don’t attend cultural events.

 The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York has announced that it will extend the run of its wildly successful exhibition “Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs.” Since opening on October 12, 2014, over 500,000 visitors have seen the blockbuster show, which smashed attendance records when it was on view at Tate Modern in London last summer.

“The Cut-Outs” was supposed to wrap-up its run on February 8, 2015, but the show will remain on view through February 10, 2015. MoMA will also extend “The Cut-Outs” viewing hours -- the exhibition will be open until 8PM on the weekends of January 17–18, 2015, and January 24–25, 2015. A marathon viewing will take place from 10:30AM on Friday, February 6, 2015, to 5:30PM on Sunday, February 8, 2015.

Paris’s Louvre museum was the world’s most visited museum in 2014, keeping its place at the top of the international culture league. More than half of its 9.3 million visitors in 2014 were under 30, a statement said.

Some 100,000 more people visited the Louvre in 2014 than in 2013, a statement said Tuesday, flocking to see world-famous masterpieces like Leonardo da Vinci’s "Mona Lisa" and the ancient Greek "Winged Victory of Samothrace."

The "David Bowie Is” exhibition broke the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago’s attendance record with more than 193,000 people visiting in its 15-week run.

“David Bowie Is” is the most successful exhibition in the MCA’s 47-year history, with some Bowie-related programs and performances selling out in less than an hour as well as the highest sales for the MCA Store.

Most of the large museums in the Netherlands had more visitors this year than last year. The Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam especially had many visitors, 2.5 million and 1.6 million respectively. This is according to a survey done by the ANP.

Five museums had a record year: the Rijksmuseum and Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, the Spoorwegmuseum (Railway museum) in Utrecht and the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (National Museum of Antiquities) in Leiden.