Visitors from all 50 states traveled to see exhibition of 131 works by Dutch graphic artist
The North Carolina Museum of Art’s exhibition The Worlds of M. C. Escher, which closed Sunday, attracted 116,565 visitors in just 14 weeks. It is the highest attended exhibition since 2011’s Rembrandt in America, which drew 150,905 visitors.
“During The Worlds of M. C. Escher we welcomed visitors from all but four counties in North Carolina and from all 50 states, plus Puerto Rico. We had international visitors from across the globe, from France and the UK all the way to Argentina and Australia!” says Museum Director Lawrence J. Wheeler. “We are thrilled with the success of this blockbuster exhibition. Not only did we exceed our attendance goals, but we were also able to engage with a wonderfully curious and imaginative audience, some of whom had never visited the Museum before.”
The Worlds of M. C. Escher, open October 17, 2015, through January 24, 2016, brought an average of 1,371 visitors per day to the Museum. During the highest attended week (January 10 through January 16), 18,314 visitors attended the exhibition.
The Museum’s concurrent exhibition Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Leicester and the Creative Mind, which featured a rare 500-year-old journal handwritten and illustrated by Leonardo, drew 87,956 visitors. It closed on January 17, while The Worlds of M. C. Escher was extended one week to January 24.
The Museum offered free admission to college students every Friday night during the exhibition, and 3,000 college students took advantage of the promotion.
The NCMA is now looking forward to two exciting exhibitions opening on March 19: American Impressionist: Childe Hassam and the Isles of Shoals and Marks of Genius: 100 Extraordinary Drawings from the Minneapolis Institute of Art. American Impressionist features 39 breathtaking oil and watercolor paintings created by Childe Hassam on the Isles of Shoals, while Marks of Genius includes master drawings, watercolors, gouaches, and pastels dating from the Middle Ages to the present.