Creative New Zealand announced yesterday
that 218,000 people had visited the Bill Culbert exhibition over its six and a half
month run at the Venice Biennale. Given that it also reports 14,000 of these
people came in the first week alone, that’s 1,250 a day for every single day of
the following 163 days. To put that into perspective, it’s over twice the
number of people who go to regional galleries like the City Gallery Wellington, the Dowse Art Museum and the
Govett-Brewster in a full year.
How do they count these people? As it
happened we know as we visited the Culbert exhibition and saw the staff member
at the door recording everyone who stepped inside. At one second per visitor that’s over 60 hours of work
just there.
NZ’s 218,000 total tops Australia’s Simryn
Gill presentation (in the Giardini and therefor subject to ticket sales) by 18,000
visitors and means that nearly half (45.9 percent) of the total visitors who
attended the Biennale (475,000) went to the New Zealand pavilion. This hopefully
also included half of the 4,655 journalists representing the foreign press.
The only other comparative stats we could
find on the CNZ site for New Zealand at Venice was that 114,000 people visited
the two exhibitions (Upritchard 21,642and Millar 92,914) in 2009.
The
takeaway? Location, location, location. A prime spot on the promenade leading
to the Giardini not only hooks in Biennale visitors but also gets the added
values of tourists doing the stroll thing along the Riva degli
Schiavoni from the Bridge of Sighs.
