The Metropolitan Museum* released a report on Friday stating that its three spring/summer exhibitions had generated $781 million in spending for New York City; that’s what the regional, national, and foreign tourists who visited the Met spent, according to a visitor survey, while coming to see Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations; Tomás Saraceno on the Roof: Cloud City (below); and The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde.Â
Then, “using the industry standard for calculating tax revenue impact,” the Met said they brought $78.1 million in direct tax benefits to the City and State from its out-of-town visitors. Pretty hefty.
The totals are a bit of a decline from 2011, when Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty; Anthony Caro on the Roof; Richard Serra Drawing: A Retrospective; and Rooms with a View: The Open Window in the 19th Century were found to have generated $908 million — but credit the McQueen show for the bulk of that (it drew 661,509 visitors).
And the sums are up substantially from 2009 and 2008 (I couldn’t find a figure for 2010).
You can read more details — like spending in restaurants and shops — here.
I want to focus on two puzzles.
In 2011, “68% of the visitors traveled from outside the five boroughs of New York …38% were from other states, and 42% were international visitors.”
In 2012, “80% of visitors traveled to the Museum this summer from outside the five boroughs of New York…30% were from other states, and 47% were international visitors.”
Why has the percentage of foreign visitors gone up? Was it non-traditional Met visitors from the NYC fashion set who flocked to the McQueen show that made the difference in 2011? Or did, perhaps, the new Islamic galleries draw more foreign interest and also send visitors to the special exhibitions? Overall attendance at the Met was up in the last fiscal year, which ended June 30, partly because of those galleries.
The Met also disclosed that 339,838 people saw Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations; that 368,370 museumgoers visited Tomás Saraceno on the Roof: Cloud City (through Aug. 31 — it will remain up through Nov. 4), and that 323,792 visitors went to The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde.
The rooftop shows always draw big; they are aided by the fact that they’re outdoors in summer on a roof with spectacular views of NYC. But that Stein number, while fine, is a disappointment for such a fabulous show — both in a scholarly way and visually.
And here’s the surprise: The Steins Collect did better at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art than it did in NYC, according to a story in Friday’s Los Angeles Times. It said SF MoMA’s total was “360,588 visitors …the fourth largest in the museum’s history, even though there was a $7 surcharge on top of the regular admission price.”
Yes, the Steins had roots in the San Francisco area, but given the population disparity between the SF metro area and NYC, it’s still hard to see why it drew more people in the West than in NYC. Better marketing? Less competition? Hard to say.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Met
*I consult to a foundation that supports the Met