Most Visited Art Galleries in 2009.

Charles Saatchi opened the new Saatchi Art Gallery on the King’s Road in Chelsea in 2008, hoping that it would attract “well over one million visitors” a year. The Art Newspaper’s (click title for link) 15th annual survey of attendance figures confirms that Saatchi has hit that target, tempting 1.2 million to visit. “The Revolution Continues: New Art from China” art exhibition and “Unveiled: New Art from the Middle East” attracted 4,139 and 3,828 people a day respectively, tallied by automatic counter. This made them the first and third most visited shows in the UK. Only the “Banksy effect” stopped Saatchi securing a top one and two in the UK. The street artist/local boy made good drew almost 4,000 people a day to see his interventions, or “remix”, of Bristol’s City Museum and Art Gallery. As in London, in Paris and Moscow young art museums have toppled long-established ones from the top of the exhibition tree in each respective city. But globally Japan’s museums remain in a league of their own when it comes to organising blockbuster exhibitions - three filling the top four places with three filling the top four places with the Musée Quai Branly in Paris in fifth with shows like three filling the top four places “Picasso and the Masters”. In terms of strength in depth from one institution, New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is unrivalled. In 2009 its exhibitions provided seven of the top 16 shows - Joan Miró, Rist, Van Gogh and Ensor. As large-scale art exhibitions can take several years to prepare, the effects of the financial recession — and the scarcity of business sponsorship to mount them — will begin to become apparent in next year’s list. For full source and full article click the Headline). Irish Art