Charles Saatchi’s ambition was to draw 1 million visitors a year to his gallery, The Art Newspaper recollects:
The Art Newspaper’s 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” 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. […]
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 attracted 6,299 visitors a day, and Pipilotti Rist’s “Pour Your Body Out (7345 Cubic Meters)”, a sensuous multi-media makeover of its otherwise chilly atrium, attracted almost the same number of visitors. “Van Gogh and the Colours of the Night” attracted more than 436,000 visitors in total, but when the average visitor per day is calculated, the show comes after James Ensor, Ron Arad, Martin Kippenberger and Marlene Dumas exhibitions. This may be reflection of the effectiveness of MoMA’s timed-entry ticketing for Van Gogh, however.
Saatchi vs Banksy (The Art Newspaper)
