The Art Newspaper reveals most popular exhibitions and museums of 2011

by Sean McLachlan on


The folks over at the Art Newspaper have just released some interesting stats about the art world of 2011. Collecting a huge amount of data from hundreds of museums and galleries, they’ve discovered some important trends.

First off, the big shows are getting bigger. The top ten most popular art shows back in 1996, the first year they gathered figures, averaged 3,000 visitors a day. Last year’s top ten shows averaged almost 7,000 visitors a day.

For total attendance in 2011, the Louvre in Paris was way ahead with 8,880,000 visitors. Number two was the Met in New York City with slightly over 6,000,000 visitors. Paris and London dominated the top ten. Three Parisian museums made the top ten: the Louvre (#1), Centre Pompidou (#8), and Musée D’Orsay (#10), with a combined total of 15.2 million visitors. London boasts the British Museum (#3), National Gallery (#4), and Tate Modern (#5), with a combined total of 16 million.

For top exhibitions, last year had several blockbusters, with “The Magical World of Escher” coming out on top with 573,691 visitors. It was free at the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil. The most popular paid exhibition was “Kukai’s World: The Art of Esoteric Buddhism” at the Tokyo National Museum with 550,399 tickets sold.

There’s a lot more data in the report giving lots of insight into the booming world of major art exhibitions. It should be interesting to see what trends this year’s figures show.

Photo of the Louvre courtesy Ivo Jansch.

‘Egyptomania’ grips Houston

by Sean McLachlan on

The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas, has just opened a new exhibition exploring the West’s fascination with ancient Egypt.

“Egyptomania” collects forty objects from the Egyptian revivals of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. This was the time when the West became widely aware of the great civilization of Egypt and started excavating there. Cutting open mummies became popular entertainment, the rich collected Egyptian artifacts, and it seemed like everyone wanted to own something in the Egyptian style — like this Art Deco perfume bottle shown here in a photo courtesy MFAH. It was designed by Baccarat c. 1930. Other items on display are Egyptian-style furniture, garden sphinxes (much cooler than garden gnomes) and even Egyptian asparagus tongs.

Visitors to the museum can get a double dose of ancient Egypt right now because the traveling exhibition “Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs” is on display through April 15. This exhibition features more than a hundred artifacts, most of which have never been shown in the U.S. prior to this tour.

If this isn’t enough to stave off your Egyptomaniacal cravings, I suggest a trip to the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum & Planetarium in San Jose, California. This place is a strange hybrid of serious museum and cultish quackery founded by a modern spiritual group inspired by ancient Egypt.

“Egyptomania” runs from March 18 through July 29.

Major Goya exhibition in Barcelona, Spain

by Sean McLachlan on

The CaixaForum art gallery in Barcelona, Spain, has just opened a major exhibition on the famous Spanish artist Francisco de Goya.

Best known for his dark paintings of witches and Napoleon’s brutal invasion of Spain, Goya actually produced a broad range of work during a career that spanned almost seventy years and included paintings, drawings, prints and tapestries. He was very popular with royalty and produced many royal portraits.

Goya lived from 1746 to 1828, an era that straddled the transition from the Old Masters to a more modern style. The exhibition, which brings together almost a hundred works from all phases of his career, tracks his development as an artist.

The exhibition is a collaboration between the Caixa Foundation and Madrid’s El Prado art museum. The works are from the Prado’s collection and the Caixa Foundation is funding their stay in Barcelona as part of four planned collaborations.The artist is unusual in that he produced self-portraits throughout his life, sometimes even including himself in portraits of royal families. One of the most interesting self-portraits was done in the final years of Goya’s life and shows him as an old, feeble, but still spirited man. It’s titled I am Still Learning. That’s a good attitude for anyone to have.

Goya: Lights and Shadows runs from March 16 to June 24.

Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Marilyn Monroe exhibit opening in London

by Sean McLachlan on

A new exhibit in London is dedicated to Marilyn Monroe, the icon of beauty from an era when “beauty” meant something other than “built like a fourteen-year-old anorexic junkie.”

Marilyn opens today at the Getty Images Gallery and will feature iconic photographs and original dresses from Monroe’s many films. It also tells the story of how she rose as an aspiring actress to become one of Hollywood’s most unforgettable faces.

London’s Getty Images Gallery is one of the largest image archives in the world, with a collection ranging from the very earliest days of photography in the 1850s right up to the latest news stories of today. Their gift shop has an amazing variety of books on photography and high-quality photographic prints. In honor of the exhibition, numerous images of Marilyn Monroe will be for sale.

Marilyn runs from today until Sunday, May 26, 2012. Admission is free.

[Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.]

Upcoming exhibition will debunk Mayan prophecy of the end of the world in 2012

by Sean McLachlan on


An exhibition coming to Philadelphia will tackle this year´s hottest pseudo-archaeological topic: the Mayan prophecy that the world will end in 2012.

“Maya 2012: Lords of Time” at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology will explain the Mayan civilization’s complex interlocking calendar systems through interactive displays and a rich collection of art and artifacts. These calendars developed out of an advanced knowledge of astronomy and an obsession with the cyclical nature of astronomical events such as the solar and lunar years, eclipses, and the movements of the planets.

One of these calendar systems is the so-called Long Count, which starts a new cycle every 1,872,000 days, or approximately 5,125 solar years. The current cycle ends on December 21 or 23, depending on which scholar you believe. Most scholars say the Long Count doesn’t actually end on this date, it merely starts another cycle. The other Mayan calendars keep going too. No Mayan text says the world is supposed to end this year. In fact, some Mayan inscriptions actually mention dates later than 2012. They don’t mention anything about cosmic vibrations, visiting UFOs, or any of the other bullshit theories being bandied about either.

Dr. Sandra Noble, executive director of the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, said in an interview that the ancient Maya felt the end of a cycle was cause for celebration. Anthropologist and Maya specialist Dr. Judith Maxwell did what the New Agers didn’t bother to do and actually asked the Maya what they thought. While the ancient civilization is gone, the Mayan culture is alive and well in Mesoamerica and Mayan shamans, called daykeepers, told Maxwell that the end is not coming.

Apparently the exhibition organizers agree there’s nothing to fear. The exhibition runs from May 5, 2012 to January 13, 2013.

So the world isn’t going to end in 2012.

This ranks top on my list of “unsurprising news of the week.” I’m 42, and I have a hard time remembering a year that the world wasn’t supposed to end. Some hack writer or religious conman is always trying to scare us into thinking the world is going to end. The sad thing is, people embrace this nonsense. The world is not ending this year. You still have to deal with the consequences of your actions and you still have to shoulder your responsibilities. Chances are you will have to do that for many years to come. Chances are you will grow old and live through many more of life’s ups and downs.

That’s not a bad thing.