Ateneum Picasso exhibition stole visitors from Helsinki’s other art museums

Many large art museums saw attendance figures plummeting in 2009

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By Teemu Luukka
     
      Last year visitors to Finnish art museums marched to the tune of one gentleman.
      This gent was a certain Spanish artist called Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), whose exhibition in Helsinki’s Ateneum had already been seen by 237,000 art lovers before the turn of the year.
      Thanks to Picasso, of the ten largest art museums in Finland, Ateneum was the only one that managed to increase its attendance figures in 2009. They soared from roughly 250,000 to more than 380,000.
     
So much for the good news. The other side of the coin is that with regard to many of the country’s large art museumsin 2009, the expression “major implosion of popularity” is not that far from the mark.
      According to information compiled by Helsingin Sanomat, after Ateneum the nine most popular art museums attracted around 500,000 visitors last year, which is about 200,000 fewer than in 2008.
     
The number of visits to Espoo’s Museum of Modern Art EMMA was halved from around 150,000 to 73,200.
      The Amos Anderson Art Museum was visited by fewer people than ever before in the 2000s.
      Helsinki City Art Museum Meilahti’s popularity also fell to less than half of the previous year's level.
      The Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, in turn, saw an 11 per cent reduction to its attendance numbers, with an all-time low of 174,000 visitors in 2009.
      Kiasma opened in 1998 and attracted more than 300,000 people through its doors in 1999, so it has fallen very substantially once the initial novelty wore off.
     
Helsinki City Art Museum Tennispalatsi and the Didrichsen Art Museum, on the other hand, were let off a little more lightly.
      In fact, apart from Ateneum, the Didrichsen Art Museum was the only one of the ten largest art museums whose visitor figures did not actually fall.
     
The museum directors list several reasons when asked about the mass exodus of visitors: recession, beautiful summer, less magnetic exhibitions - and Pablo.
      “The Picasso exhibition had a clear impact on our attendance figures”, says Helsinki City Art Museum administrative director Pia Uljas.
      According to Uljas, the City Art Museum hosted expensive exhibitions last summer, leaving little money for the marketing budget.
      As a result the museum was unable to compete with the massive marketing campaign built around the Picasso exhibition.
     
Kiasma chief curator Arja Miller is fairly satisfied with the year.
      In Miller’s view the largest attendance reductions related to free visits:
      Previously Kiasma had a free attendance day once a week, but now, because of shortage of money, the arrangement is in place only once a month.
      Kiasma, like many other art museums, was on a tight budget because of the economic measures enacted by the state and the city.
      This was reflected in both the content and marketing of exhibitions.
      Maria Didrichsen, head of exhibitions at Didrichsen Art Museum, reckons that without Picasso and the bleak economic situation the museum’s attendance figures would have been a quarter higher than the year before.
      “The recession was manifested in the fact that usually on the free-attendance days people buy lots of books. Last year they did not”, Didrichsen notes.
     
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 5.2.2010


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Popular Picasso exhibition at Ateneum sets new museum record (29.1.2010)

See also:
  Pablo Picasso and his wall of myths (15.9.2009)

Links:
  Ateneum
  Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma
  Didrichsen Art Museum
  EMMA
  Amos Anderson Art Museum
  Helsinki City Art Museum

TEEMU LUUKKA / Helsingin Sanomat
teemu.luukka@hs.fi