Thursday, December 24, 2009

By the numbers


Creative NZ has put the number of people visiting the Francis Upritchard and Judy Millar exhibitions in Venice at 114,000 –around 31% of the total number of people (375,000) to visit the Biennale. The NZ Herald has claimed the full 114,000 for Judy Millar, but we suspect this is just Super-City talk and that the numbers were split between the two venues at around 57,000 each. However you cut it, it’s a lot. For example, it’s 30% more than the Irish pavilion (in the same building used by et al. in 2007) that attracted 40,000 visitors. We tried to get numbers for previous years of NZ Venice exhibitions for comparison, but they seem to have vanished from the Googlesphere. We couldn’t even find them in the report on Venice commissioned by CNZ. It would also be interesting to know the split between Upritchard and Millar visitation, so if anyone is keen to dig around over the holiday season and uncovers the numbers, let us know.