Counter proposal

While we're on the subject of art museum attendance numbers maybe all our institutions should just purchase Roman Ondák’s installation Clockwork. This could replace surveys done at conveniently busy times or automatic door counters that can't discriminate among people who come in for the café/toilet/convention/dinner and the ones who actually have a museum experience or the itchy-fingered manual counters. In the very efficient Ondák work an attendant stands in an empty room and asks everyone who comes in two questions. “What time is it?” and “What’s your name?” The answers are recorded on the walls. Simple, huh? By that count the Gwangju Biennale can confidently say it had at the very least 23,450 active real-time visitors in its first 46 days or an average of 510 a day.

Image: top, a gallery assistant ready with her pen to add visitor number 23,451. Bottom part of the tally so far.