http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/871148--ago-loses-3m-on-costly-flop?bn=1
By Martin Knelman
Entertainment Columnist
Drama and Desire — a major summer exhibit showcased at the Art Gallery of Ontario with great expectations — turned out to be a spectacular flop that has left the gallery reeling from grim attendance numbers and a $3 million revenue shortfall.
The costly show, including works from the Musée d'Orsay and the Louvre in Paris, had been expected to draw crowds to The Grange from mid-June until late September.
Instead D&D — exploring the links between theatre and painting in 18th and 19th century Europe — turned out to be the biggest disappointment in the recent history of museum exhibitions.
Despite novel enhancements, such as using stage sets and live performance to supplement the paintings, D&D drew only 54,209 visitors — 34,000 of whom were AGO members.
Translation: The general public accounted for only 20,000 visitors to the exhibit. That represents such a fraction of what the AGO needed and expected that by the time it closed on Sept. 26, Drama and Debacle seemed a more apt title.
The upshot: Not just a huge revenue shortfall but an alarmingly low attendance figure for the first six months of the current fiscal year — just over 200,000. That’s a worrisome 38 per cent below attendance for the same period in 2009.
The lethal combination of low attendance and revenue shortfall threatens to trigger a financial crisis before the end of the fiscal year for an institution already shaken by layoffs and a revolving door of departures at the senior management level.
Nevertheless, Matthew Teitelbaum, director and CEO of the gallery, is upbeat about prospects for the second half of the year.
“This summer presented a complex set of external factors that contributed to Drama and Desire results,” Teitelbaum says. “While visitor surveys were uniformly high, and attendees were very complimentary of the exhibition, the attendance for the show did not meet expectations.
“With all shows, we benchmark performance and make adjustments to our plans to ensure success. We are moving full steam ahead with our plans for the Maharaja exhibition opening Nov. 20. With over 200 dazzling works of art, we hope to entice both new and loyal visitors.”
Despite those reassuring words, members of the AGO board have good reason to be alarmed. The numbers are grim, partly because when attendance drops, it affects not only ticket sales but also revenue from the restaurants and gift shop.
The AGO declines to give a dollar figure for the damage caused by low attendance so far this year. (Its policy is to divulge financial information only at the end of the fiscal year.) But sources say internal memos describe this as a $3 million problem.
The explanation offered by the AGO is that low attendance this summer was caused by the recession, lack of tourists in Toronto, unusually warm weather, and the increased number of free festivals.
Yet none of those factors seemed to affect attendance at the Royal Ontario Museum, where a phenomenal 199,000 people have already visited the Terra Cotta Warriors show during the first three months of a six-month run.
Indeed the AGO’s low attendance can be explained by a combination of quite different factors:
• Drama and Desire was at best suitable for a boutique audience with a special interest in the history of European painting and theatre. It was of interest to me but not a big crowd-pleaser. It had few major works by famous artists, and it wasn’t a show with wide popular appeal.
• The gallery invested far too much money in this show, and rationalized the cost by overestimating potential returns.
• Marketing for the exhibition was at best underwhelming.
Bewilderingly, the AGO missed a huge opportunity by failing to partner with Luminato (which would have contributed funding and marketing clout and publicity) even though its opening coincided with the annual arts festival and the intersection of two different art forms made it a perfect fit for Luminato.
Programming and marketing have felt the effects of rapid turnover within the gallery’s senior management team.
In the fiscal year that ended on March 31 — its first full year following the transformation led by architect Frank Gehry — the AGO (with an annual budget of more than $60 million) had an impressive attendance of 878,000, spiked by 404,364 visitors to its King Tut exhibit. But so far this year, the numbers tell a far less healthy story.
Is there still time for the AGO to pick itself up, dust itself off, and avoid a meltdown? According to communications manager Antonietta Mirabelli, the gallery is determined to use the lessons it learned from its Drama and Desire experience to do better with its big fall show — Maharaja: The Splendour of India’s Royal Courts, which has drawn big crowds at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum.
But even if the Maharaja exhibition is sensationally popular, it will be hard for the gallery to wind up with total attendance of more than 500,000 this year. Such a result would put it right back in the underperforming zone it occupied for years prior to the spectacular expansion that led to its reopening in November 2008.
And that will be far short of what’s needed to balance the budget. With its wonderful new building and its marvelously enhanced permanent collection, the AGO needs to draw about one million visitors annually.
With all the advantages of being the dominant art venue in a city with one of the largest, most diverse and best-educated populations in the world, that should be achievable.
But to get there the AGO needs a stronger and more consistent program of temporary exhibitions, and vast improvements in its marketing.
By Martin Knelman
Entertainment Columnist
Drama and Desire — a major summer exhibit showcased at the Art Gallery of Ontario with great expectations — turned out to be a spectacular flop that has left the gallery reeling from grim attendance numbers and a $3 million revenue shortfall.
The costly show, including works from the Musée d'Orsay and the Louvre in Paris, had been expected to draw crowds to The Grange from mid-June until late September.
Instead D&D — exploring the links between theatre and painting in 18th and 19th century Europe — turned out to be the biggest disappointment in the recent history of museum exhibitions.
Despite novel enhancements, such as using stage sets and live performance to supplement the paintings, D&D drew only 54,209 visitors — 34,000 of whom were AGO members.
Translation: The general public accounted for only 20,000 visitors to the exhibit. That represents such a fraction of what the AGO needed and expected that by the time it closed on Sept. 26, Drama and Debacle seemed a more apt title.
The upshot: Not just a huge revenue shortfall but an alarmingly low attendance figure for the first six months of the current fiscal year — just over 200,000. That’s a worrisome 38 per cent below attendance for the same period in 2009.
The lethal combination of low attendance and revenue shortfall threatens to trigger a financial crisis before the end of the fiscal year for an institution already shaken by layoffs and a revolving door of departures at the senior management level.
Nevertheless, Matthew Teitelbaum, director and CEO of the gallery, is upbeat about prospects for the second half of the year.
“This summer presented a complex set of external factors that contributed to Drama and Desire results,” Teitelbaum says. “While visitor surveys were uniformly high, and attendees were very complimentary of the exhibition, the attendance for the show did not meet expectations.
“With all shows, we benchmark performance and make adjustments to our plans to ensure success. We are moving full steam ahead with our plans for the Maharaja exhibition opening Nov. 20. With over 200 dazzling works of art, we hope to entice both new and loyal visitors.”
Despite those reassuring words, members of the AGO board have good reason to be alarmed. The numbers are grim, partly because when attendance drops, it affects not only ticket sales but also revenue from the restaurants and gift shop.
The AGO declines to give a dollar figure for the damage caused by low attendance so far this year. (Its policy is to divulge financial information only at the end of the fiscal year.) But sources say internal memos describe this as a $3 million problem.
The explanation offered by the AGO is that low attendance this summer was caused by the recession, lack of tourists in Toronto, unusually warm weather, and the increased number of free festivals.
Yet none of those factors seemed to affect attendance at the Royal Ontario Museum, where a phenomenal 199,000 people have already visited the Terra Cotta Warriors show during the first three months of a six-month run.
Indeed the AGO’s low attendance can be explained by a combination of quite different factors:
• Drama and Desire was at best suitable for a boutique audience with a special interest in the history of European painting and theatre. It was of interest to me but not a big crowd-pleaser. It had few major works by famous artists, and it wasn’t a show with wide popular appeal.
• The gallery invested far too much money in this show, and rationalized the cost by overestimating potential returns.
• Marketing for the exhibition was at best underwhelming.
Bewilderingly, the AGO missed a huge opportunity by failing to partner with Luminato (which would have contributed funding and marketing clout and publicity) even though its opening coincided with the annual arts festival and the intersection of two different art forms made it a perfect fit for Luminato.
Programming and marketing have felt the effects of rapid turnover within the gallery’s senior management team.
In the fiscal year that ended on March 31 — its first full year following the transformation led by architect Frank Gehry — the AGO (with an annual budget of more than $60 million) had an impressive attendance of 878,000, spiked by 404,364 visitors to its King Tut exhibit. But so far this year, the numbers tell a far less healthy story.
Is there still time for the AGO to pick itself up, dust itself off, and avoid a meltdown? According to communications manager Antonietta Mirabelli, the gallery is determined to use the lessons it learned from its Drama and Desire experience to do better with its big fall show — Maharaja: The Splendour of India’s Royal Courts, which has drawn big crowds at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum.
But even if the Maharaja exhibition is sensationally popular, it will be hard for the gallery to wind up with total attendance of more than 500,000 this year. Such a result would put it right back in the underperforming zone it occupied for years prior to the spectacular expansion that led to its reopening in November 2008.
And that will be far short of what’s needed to balance the budget. With its wonderful new building and its marvelously enhanced permanent collection, the AGO needs to draw about one million visitors annually.
With all the advantages of being the dominant art venue in a city with one of the largest, most diverse and best-educated populations in the world, that should be achievable.
But to get there the AGO needs a stronger and more consistent program of temporary exhibitions, and vast improvements in its marketing.
