By the numbers

2  the number of women currently showing at City Gallery Wellington

3   the number of books to be published by Te Papa Press in 2016

24  the number of policy statements setting out the principles for presenting Len Lye’s work at the Govett-Brewster

25  the number of Gordon Walters paintings currently on loan to the Auckland Art Gallery by the Chartwell Collection

29  the number of Trevor Moffitt paintings being sold as consecutive lots (one to 29) at Dunbar Sloane on 10 August

11   the number of years the Britten V1000, the star of Billy Apple’s latest exhibition at Christchurch Art Gallery, held the speed record at Ruapuna Raceway

30  the number of documents online relating to the Sarjeant Gallery’s extension and its funding

36   the number of works by Gordon Walters in the collections of the Auckland Art Gallery

100  the number of paintings by Gottfried Lindauer that the Auckland Art Gallery thinks are unaccounted for and possibly held in family collections

220  the amount in dollars needed to purchase Fiona Clark’s Artspace edition Book Shelf, Tikorangi

700  the cost in dollars of lighting a public sculpture (based on Neil Dawson’s Spires in Christchurch) for one year

By the numbers

0  the number of jobs currently being advertised by Te Papa to fill vacancies at Te Papa Press

0  the number of media releases by the Minister for Culture and Heritage on visual art-related topics so far in 2016

3.022 the difference in millions of dollars between what was applied for and what was granted in the latest Creative NZ Arts round

9 the number of media releases by the Minister for Culture and Heritage on war-related topics so far in 2016

12.9 the amount in cents per every rated dollar that goes toward arts and culture in Christchurch.

20 the number of art works purchased by The Chartwell Collection so far this year

26 the number of days before Jamie Hanton takes up his position as the new Director of The Physics Room

365 the number of days Te Papa is open ‘Te Papa is open 365 days a year (that’s every day!)’

366 the number of days in 2016

943 the number of ‘ideas’ thrown up by the Auckland Art Gallery’s website when you click on the ideas category in the ‘Art & Ideas’ section

Painting up a storm

It’s always fun when art curators put themselves on the line and make a list of who they think are the most important in their field. It’s an old tradition. MoMA’s Dorothy Miller famously did it with her contemporary Americans series (mainly painters) although, as we once posted, these best-of-the-bunch picks are usually only good for around a decade, and sometimes less.

This year the Auckland Art Gallery has decided that 'painting has arguably never been stronger in our contemporary cultural environment’. Now that might sound pretty contentious but the Gallery is launching with rather a lot of fanfare later in November Necessary distraction: a painting show. What sort of mix has curator Natasha Conland come up with? Encouragingly, over 50 percent of the artists included are women. Interestingly, the majority of the exhibitors were born in the 1970s. Unsurprisingly, the majority make abstract paintings. And predictably, most of them studied at Elam and nearly all of them live in Auckland. For some reason the Auckland Art Gallery is describing current painting as a ‘static form’ which will come as something of a surprise to at least one of the artists, painting machine guy Simon Ingram.

Some more numbers:

20 painters are included in the show
9 are male
65 percent studied at Elam
5 were born before 1970
13 were born in the seventies (9 after 1975)
2 were born after 1980
25 percent show with Hopkinson Mossman
3 are represented by Ivan Anthony
11 are represented in the Auckland Art Gallery’s collection
2 were in Natasha Conland’s Freedom Farmers exhibition in 2013
72 is the age of the oldest artist and 29 the youngest

Image: cyclone Josh hits land

Counter attack

You do have to wonder why public art museums keep using numbers to justify their existence and their funding. As Richard Pierce, a spokesman for the Brooklyn Museum, once famously said, 'The whole attendance figure game is just that - a game.’ For all the electronic devices, hand-held counters and surveys, audience counting is an art not a science. As anyone working in a busy institution knows the only real count is a paid-for ticket but you do to have to feel a twinge of sympathy for Simon Rees, the director of the Govett-Brewster. He invested in the usual electronic people counters used by museums internationally beefed up with some staff using manual clickers and the figures have been suitably impressive: 30,000 through the new complex already. But wouldn’t you know it. One of the G-B's chief detractors has an office overlooking the building and by looking out his window he's making his own assessment. Rather predictably it is somewhat lower. Of course the opening months of any new building can be expected to pull the crowds but even if, allowing for initial attendances settling down, you halve that first month's 30,000 as your base the G-B would be indicating an annual attendance of around 180,000. Now that's a stretch as we've discussed before. And that's the problem with figures; today’s success is the rope they hang you with tomorrow.

Follow the yellow brick road

An NZ art museum director highlighted a piece in Variety (the Hollywood Biz paper) about how to deal with fragmenting TV audiences and reckons its got a lot to say to the art museum business. Let's see how that works out. 

The TV guy reckons:

They are facing an increasingly segmented audience:
"We're doing more with less than at any other time.” “

And they're distracted too: 
"Attention spans are so short, the instant you are not entertaining them, they are gone.”

Along with increased demands:
“In an era of declining budgets, but increasing opportunity, you've just got to do everything.”

Then, the numbers game has shifted:
“If you make a show for a certain audience, you want to make sure you get that audience." 

Meaning it's no longer good enough:
"to just pull in as many viewers as possible"

Which leaves a big challenge: 
"With niche audiences on the rise and budgets per show sinking, the challenge becomes how to create high-quality content without always having the benefit of a bottomless checkbook."

Figure skating

Te Papa is pretty pleased with itself over the numbers for its dinosaur show. The new CE Rick Ellis was thrilled/relieved to announce that the 'hugely popular' exhibition had drawn 'massive crowds'.  Turns out that 120,000 people visited the exhibition over 130 days. Unfortunately there was no mention of the daily average that is usually part of Te Papa announcements of this kind but we can figure that out at around 923 a day. Tyrannosaurs Meet the Family had a long season (over a third of a year), including sucking up the entire summer holidays and probably owes about a third of its attendance to the ‘C’ word – cruise ships. For context here are the top Te Papa blockbuster shows in order of ticket sale matched attendances.

Lord of the Rings (2002-03) 219,539
Monet and the Impressionists (2009) 152,000
A Day in Pompeii (2009-10) 130,000
Egypt: Beyond the Tomb (2006-07) 120,358
Tyrannosaurs (2014-15) 120,000
Constable (2006) 98,328

And by average daily rates-

Lord of the Rings 1770 per day
Monet and the Impressionists 1652 per day
Constable 1035 per day
A Day in Pompeii 1023 per day
Tyrannosaurs 923 per day
Egypt: Beyond the tomb 918 per day

And talking daily averages, let's not forget the performance of a couple of homegrown, free attendance exhibitions: Rita Angus (2008) with 127,812 visitors at an average of 1,374 per day and Brian Brake (2010-11) at 190,000 with a daily average of just under 1,000. And, ok, the giant squid.

So what do these numbers show? Well, while Te Papa has had some solid blockbusters it's very tough to do year after year, and looking at the last five years it’s getting tougher. Audiences have more choices now and maybe the novelty has worn off. But one thing you can read loud and clear from the figures, if you want big audiences, don't even think outside the tourist season.
Sources: Te Papa Annual reports and media releases

Prepare for glory: 100

The Art Review 'Power 100' is out again with its list of 75 powerful men headed by Nicholas, David and Iwan. This year a woman did sneak up into  the top ten. It was Marina Abramovic of course up from possie number 11 last year and judged to be more powerful than Jeff Koons. In the top 25 there were seven women with three of them in the top 10. They included two artists with Cindy Sherman taking slot 10, up from 13 last year. The criteria may be dubious but who can resist a list? There are even some NZ connections to be made. Two Walters Prize judges made the top 100 - Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev at 19 and this year’s judge Charles Esche on the list for the first time as number 87.  A number of the 'powerful' artists have shown in NZ but the City Gallery scored two big ones Rosemarie Trockel (slot 63) and Yayoi Kusama (slot 52) who both had solo shows. And that's not to forget the National Art Gallery's solo exhibition of Cindy Sherman way back in 1989. Then, with the rise and rise of the dealers, lets give a nod to Simon Denny’s German dealer Daniel Buchholz who came in at number 67. You can study the full list here.

Image: OTN breakdown chart of the Art Review 'Power 100' occupations

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.

By the numbers

5         the number of contemporary bronze sculptures reported stolen in New Zealand since 2005

6         the ranking of Auckland Art Gallery patron Julian Roberts in a list of the most generous American philanthropists in finance

8          the number of years MTG former director Douglas Lloyd Jenkins will have devoted to the people of Hawkes Bay and Napier when he leaves town in December

12        the number of days left to put in an application to be the new chief executive of Te Papa

19.5     the amount in millions of dollars estimated as the value of the Christchurch Art Gallery’s site

30.65   the price in dollars per square centimetre paid for Colin McCahon’s North Otago painting at the last Webb’s auction

33        the height in metres of the Phil Price sculpture Zephyrometer that was struck by lightning in Wellington

34        the number in thousands of dollars that the Napier City Council spent to get a report on the first six months operation of its revamped museum MTG

360      the amount in thousands of dollars currently allocated as the salary of the CE of Te Papa

510      the number of stainless steel panels that will make up the façade of the Govett-Brewster’s Len Lye Center in New Plymouth

768     the number of people following the new senior curator of the Christchurch Art Gallery (aka Cheryl Bernstein) on Twitter

Numbers: international edition

57     the number in billions of dollar a year that is the estimated size of the contemporary art market

69     the number in thousands of square feet that is the footprint of the three buildings occupied by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

74     the percentage of people making a living from the arts in New York who are white

75     the number of artists in New York thought to earn seven figure sums from their work

75     the number of plane and truck shipments needed to get all the work delivered to the Jeff Koons retrospective at the Whitney Museum in New York

80      the percentage of visitors who are attracted by temporary exhibitions when they visit the famously successful Tate in London

200    the figure in millions of dollars that represents the estimated value of the works in the Jeff Koons retrospective

246    the number in millions of dollars that British artist Damien Hirst was said to be worth in 2012

100    the number in thousands of square feet that will be the footprint of the dealer gallery Hauser Wirth & Schimmel when it opens in Los Angeles

1575  the estimated number of art museums in the United States

1964   the year American critic Arthur Danto coined the phrase ‘The art world’

The Count

With all the fuss over Napier’s MTG not getting enough people through the door to satisfy its City Council (who let it not be forgotten originally set the target at an absurd 690,000 in their Annual Plan), we did a quick check to see how everyone else was doing.

Top people magnet is the Auckland Art Gallery helped hugely by its new building. Next up, kind of surprisingly, is the Dunedin Public Art Gallery. Its attendances must wipe everyone else off the map in visitors as a percentage of population. Then it’s Te Papa’s fifth floor. There are no audited figures available but over the years we've cobbled together an estimate based on its own reports.

Only one on the list Rotorua charges an entrance fee although some of the others do charge for temporary or touring exhibitions. Many institutions don’t publish their attendance figures or do so in a way that makes them difficult to extract. The Dowse's attendance numbers, for instance, are combined with the Petone Settlers Museum at 204,000 so aren't included (The Dowse have since told us their latest annual attendance figure is 205,563 not including the Petone Settlers Museum). There's also the notorious kid factor - the percentage of non-voluntary children (aka school kids) bulking up these figures is of course a deeply hidden secret.

But here’s a rough and ready guide.

Auckland Art Gallery  720,000
Dunedin Public Art Gallery 255,000
Te Papa’s fifth floor 190,000
City Gallery Wellington 161,681
Waikato Art Museum  111,915
Rotorua Museum 97,642
Govett Brewster 67,000
Sarjeant Gallery  37,463

Image: sophisticated chart from OTN’s design department

By the numbers

0         the number of speeches the Minister of Culture and Heritage has made so far this election year

1.6      the percentage of dealer galleries from New Zealand in the total number at Art Basel Hong Kong

3.5      the number of years since Te Papa last had a senior curator of art

6         the number in thousands of dollars of the average Boosted grant over the programme's first year

10       the number in millions of dollars the Government wants spent on new public art on the banks of the Avon River ,while simultaneously announcing it won't pay for it

15       the amount in dollars charged as the entry fee for adults visiting the MTG Hawkes Bay (formerly the Hawke's Bay Museum & Art Gallery)

17       the number in millions of dollars that the Ministry of Culture and Heritage is spending on the celebration of World War One

21       the number of reviews John Hurrell has written for EyeContact in the last two months

47.43   the number in thousands of dollars being spent by the new director of the Govett-Brewster Simon Rees on his first submission of contemporary art acquisitions to the City Council

130      the average number of dollars donated by individual contributors to Boosted in its first year 

213      the number of days community leaders, museum and art experts and iwi and cultural representatives have left to prepare a business case for Te Papa North

Er...about those art museum attendance figures

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
Albert Einstein

By the numbers: local edition

0         the number of art museums to receive matching dollar-for-dollar funding in the latest round of Creative NZ’s Matched Funding Scheme

5         the average number of entries posted a month on the Auckland Art Gallery blog last year

14.83  the cost in dollars of a taxi from Te Papa to the Terrace as noted in the Chief Executive’s published expenses disclosures

27       the number of people currently serving on Creative NZ councils soon to be reduced to 13

32       the number in tonnes of steel that will be required to fabricate the mirror surface façade for the Len Lye Centre

50       the number in kilograms of gold glitter used to make Reuben Paterson’s gold tree Golden bearing for New Plymouth’s Pukekura Park

68       the number of artists given solo exhibitions in the 47 years Peter McLeavey ran the Peter McLeavey Gallery in Cuba Street

10       the number of days left to put in an application for the role of senior curator at the Christchurch Art Gallery

150     the revised number in thousands of people that Napier City now still projects will visit its new museum each year

195     the number in thousands that is paid in salary to the director of the Auckland Art Gallery

300     the number of artworks estimated to be lost in the John and Lynda Matthews house fire

690     the number in thousands of people that Napier City in a burst of confidence initially projected would visit its new museum each year.

Down under

For the first time in many years no dealer galleries from either Australia or New Zealand have been selected for inclusion in Art Basel Basel in Basel. Indeed there will be only seven galleries from the entire Southern Hemisphere making up a don’t-call-us-we’ll-call-you 2.3 percent. We did hear that Hopkinson Mossman might do their bit and make it into Liste (They have since been accepted and will show Oscar Enberg), the young art fair in Basel again. Here's hoping. You can see the full list here.

By the numbers: International edition

0      the number of dollars it will cost you to visit the Eli Broad museum of contemporary art currently being built in LA

1      the number in billions spent on art per year by the royal family of Qatar

6.6  the cost in millions of dollars paid for the townhouse in New York where Warhol lived from 1959 to 1974

8       the estimated number in billions of dollars of the size of the annual global auction market
 
15     the number of curators it took to curate the current Texas Biennial

15     the number in thousands of masters degrees in the visual and performing arts awarded each year in the United States
 
15.3  the amount in millions of dollars slashed off the value of a Peter Doig painting offered for auction when Peter Doig announced he didn’t do it

43     the percentage representing the amount of contemporary art sold in the current art market

93     the number in thousands of new bachelor degrees in the visual and performing arts awarded each year in the United States

137   the number in millions of dollars paid for the work of Andy Warhol in the first half of 2013
 
425   the number of gondolier available for hire in Venice to get you to the Bill Culbert exhibition at the Venice Biennale
 
4000 the number of counterfeit tickets to the Louvre found concealed in a parcel from China by Belgian customs officials

Man up

“In this years Venice Biennale, out of 31 countries that will show solo artists, 74% solo artists will be male and 26% will be female. Assuming all of these countries have similar ratios of artists in general and art school graduate ratios as Australia has, (35% male grads and 65% female grads) a male artist will have above 5 times more chance of showing at the Venice Biennale than a female artist.”

The COUNTESS

Gilty

Webb’s has always done a bit of it, Art+Object in general resisted, Hotere was always a sitter for as was Fomison, and as for Goldie, it’s impossible to imagine one without it. We’re talking the frame here, not just on paintings, but in the photographs of paintings.

The latest Art+Object catalogue (Tuesday 6.30 pm) looks like a push into having the frame become an essential part of presenting paintings for auction. This time 32 percent of the works in the catalogue have been photographed with their frames included, that’s twice as many as in the Les and Milly Paris auction back in September.

Webb’s latest catalogue (Wednesday, 6.30 pm) only has 15 percent of its entries photographed with frames, but back in March it was only eight percent so maybe the increase is a trend. If anyone can be bothered going back through a hundred or so auction catalogues they might be able to confirm this but, in the mean time, we’ll settle for it being a cluster. Still it isa truism that many dealers and collectors play the frame game. People might not understand the value of a work but whack an expensive or exotic frame round it and there's not many who don't get the message.

In case you’ve drifted off, here's a guessing game. The frames in this post’s image are all from the Art+Object catalogue. Can you name the artists they enhanced? Answers here.

By the way, if you’re after work by women artists at either of these two auctions, forget it. Artworks by women at A+O are 8.3 percent of the 84 lots and Webb’s 11.5 percent of their 87.

By the numbers: International edition

3           The number of art museums that joined forces to purchase Christian Marclay’s The Clock. (Tate in London, Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem)

3            The average number of seconds visitors to the Guggenheim Museum spend looking at an art work.

8           The number in millions of individually painted porcelain sunflower seeds purchased by Tate as the work Sunflower Seeds 2010 by Ai Weiwei

10         The weight in tonnes of eight million individually painted porcelain sunflower seeds

12.5      The number in millions of $US paid in 2008 per Elvis for Andy Warhol’s painting Eight Elvises 

70          The percentage of the fine art market occupied by Modern and Contemporary art. 

100       The number of names on the waiting list for a silver painting by artist-of-the-moment Jacob Kassay

25,781 The number of individually painted one millimetre spots that will need to be applied by Damien Hirst’s assistants to create his latest dot painting

By the numbers: international edition

2          the number of women artists included in the 202 works donated to the Art Gallery of New South Wales by the Kaldor Family Collection 

8.8      the number in millions of visitors to the Louvre last year

13        the number of hedge fund operators in the 2011 ArtNews Top 100 collectors list

24       the height in meters of the Richard Serra sculpture recently installed in Qatar

50       the percentage of the 700 acknowledged Rembrandt paintings that have been reattributed over the last 100 years

70       the number in degrees which when coupled with 50% relative humidity provides the climate required by international museums lending major art works to other institutions 

94       total number in millions of dollars paid for eight Gerhard Richter paintings in the last Sotheby’s auction

122     number in hundreds of thousands of dollars exchanged as ransom for René Magritte’s painting Olympia stolen in 2009

18,000   the number of spots Damien Hirst plans to apply to a 16 x 41 cm canvas for the opening of his spot painting exhibition 

50,000  the estimated number of art works made by Pablo Picasso in his lifetime

89,000  the number of dollars paid by the Warsaw Museum of Modern Art for a concentration camp LEGO construction set made by Polish artist Zbigniew Libera