Blockbuster exhibitions are known not only for their broad appeal but also for the significant resources required to stage them. As Andrea Tarsia, Head of Exhibitions at the Royal Academy, describes, a blockbuster exhibition is one that "captures the imagination and interest of a broad sector of the public," enabling a subject or artist to reach wider audiences than ever before.1 Large institutions like Tate, The Met, and MoMA, with the necessary financial and logistical resources, typically host these exhibitions, which also generate substantial profits. With their capacity to educate, engage, and draw massive crowds, blockbuster exhibitions play a crucial role in bringing art to the public on an unprecedented scale.

True to Tarsia’s definition, the blockbuster exhibition has the ability to engage a large audience due to its subject’s ability to appeal to the mass population. Exhibitions are indexed as the most sizeable event of a museum, bringing the largest audiences, longest queues, highest profits, but also highest costs.2 One clear example of this is the 1963 Leonardo da Vinci show at The Met, which brought in over one million viewers. Another example is their 2010 Pablo Picasso exhibition, which attracted over 700,000 spectators.3 With great audience numbers comes great revenue. While ticketing prices do differ dependent on the decade in question, in 2022, one ticket to view an exhibition at The Met costs twenty-five dollars. The accompanying exhibition guide ranges around forty-five to sixty-five dollars, depending on the exhibition.4 All exhibitions also offer various consumer goods that depict the featured works, such as notebooks, posters, scarves, magnets and wallets that can run anywhere between five dollars to fifty dollars.

These are sizeable profits when taking into consideration that due to COVID-19, a good portion of 2020 and 2021 temporary museum exhibitions, which at times are planned years in advance, were strongly affected.5 It was only in May 2021 when we started to see museum attendance numbers slowly increasing again post-pandemic. Tate Britain reported thirty-seven percent of their visitor numbers were back in May 2021; considerably higher than their reopening in July 2020, which saw just eighteen percent of their pre-COVID numbers. The National Gallery’s reported attendance for May 2021 was only fourteen percent of what it was around the same time in 2019 due to the COVID outbreak.6 When looking at The National Gallery’s 2021 Year-End Report, there is a sixteen percent increase in exhibition profits alone, compared to the previous year in which the museum's highest profits were from donation and funding.7 This is a dramatic change in profitability. The blockbuster exhibitions appear to be an exceptional way to yield a profit, entertain and educate the public, and bring attention to an academic institution.

Museums play a vital role in educating and engaging audiences by offering exhibitions that showcase masterpieces, providing access to art and culture that many people might not otherwise have the opportunity to experience. Tate Britain put on a blockbuster exhibition in 2017 in order to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Sexual Offences Act. This exhibition, titled Queer British Art, was the ‘first exhibition to explore over a century of queer British art.’8 The show offered a thematic exploration and instead of observing the works of one artist, Tate brought together a multitude of artists. Some of these included the biographically queer, to works that questioned the definition of queer, giving a detailed history of oppressions, struggles, and triumphs.

The curator of the exhibition, Claire Barlow, painted such a fantastic picture of the inferiorities of the times that she also included supporters of the movement in the exhibition, and took the opportunity to highlight barriers of gender, class, and race - obstacles that were running parallel to queer rights at the time. An example of this was in the hang of Laura Knight’s Self- portrait (1913), in which she pictured herself painting the female nude, making a statement on women’s inability to join life drawing classes at the time.9 The sponsor for this show was the Queer British Art Exhibition Supporters Circle: London Art History Society, smartly enabling them a greater opportunity to tell a full story through artworks.

In her case study, Exhibiting the Canon: The Blockbuster Show, Doctor Emma Barker suggests that in order to be defined as a blockbuster exhibition, a show should have a minimum of 250,000 visitors. She fortifies that by giving an example of the British Museum’s 1972 exhibition, Treasures of Tutankhamun, which was smaller in size, but gained 1,694,117 visitors in a total of nine months.10

According to a study conducted in 1989, regular museum visitors were more likely to be well educated and financially stable. Taking a look at more recent polls, the United Kingdom’s National Statistics of 2019/20, people aged twenty-five to seventy-four all regularly visited museums about the same amount. Where we see a larger spike is with ethnicity, where more visitors are ‘Mixed’ and ‘White’ compared to ‘Black’ or ‘Other’. Although there is no information available in regards to class standing, regular visitors were fifty-six percent more likely to be employed and homeowners. When comparing these two time periods, there isn’t too drastic a difference when looking at the regular museum visitor. When examining the blockbuster exhibition visitor, we see a much wider audience.

The museum regulars are still in attendance, but also received is a crowed whose motivations are different. Their intentions for visiting range from attraction to an artist or topic, to visitors that don’t have any background knowledge, but don’t want to miss out on an experience they may not have the chance to have again. Shearer West writes, ‘The blockbuster provides ‘cultural capital’ for a socially aspirant middle class.’ These visitors seek to view works they have seen reproduced on commercial goods, which at times are not present due to their fragility to travel. Additionally, in some cases iconic works are unable to move from their permanent location due to it being an institution staple and the reason why people visit a particular institution. This is the case with The Kiss (1908-09) by Gustav Klimt at Belvedere Gallery and Mona Lisa (1503) by Leonardo da Vinci at the Louvre.

Along with the benefit of museums making a profit, these exhibitions are a great way to engage, educate, and share masterpieces with audiences that would otherwise not have the ability to view them. In 2019 the Louvre Museum reported that after Jay-Z and Beyonce featured the Mona Lisa in their music video ‘APESH*T’ in 2018, the museum had over 10.2 million visitors—the highest number the museum has ever seen. This number was twenty-five percent higher than that of 2017.

Blockbuster exhibitions have a profound impact on both the financial and educational aspects of museums. While they require significant resources to stage, their broad appeal and ability to attract large, diverse audiences make them an invaluable asset to cultural institutions. By showcasing iconic masterpieces and engaging with topical themes, these exhibitions not only generate substantial revenue but also provide unique opportunities for public education and cultural enrichment. Despite criticisms about their commercial nature, blockbuster exhibitions allow art to reach wider audiences, many of whom might not otherwise have access to these works. As shown in examples like the da Vinci and Picasso exhibitions at The Met, as well as the Queer British Art show at Tate, these exhibitions create a dynamic blend of entertainment, education, and cultural significance.

References

1 Andrea Tarsia, What Makes a Blockbuster Exhibition?, London.
2 Shearer West, The Devaluation of “Cultural Capital”: Post Modern Democracy and the Art Blockbuster, London, 1995, 80.
3 Charlotte Coates, Blockbuster Museum Exhibitions and the Fight Against Falling Numbers, 2019.
4 Met Museum, Exhibition Listing for Jacques Lois David: Radical Draftsman, 2022.
5 K. Jurčišinová, M. Wilders and J. Visser, The Future of Blockbuster Exhibitions After the Covid-19 Crisis, 2021, 23.
6 Gareth Harris, Visitor Figures: How Many People Are Actually Returning to London Museums Post-Lockdown?, 2021.
7 The National Gallery, Annual Report and Accounts for Year Ended 31 March 2021, 2021, 39.
8 Alex Farquharson, Foreword in Queer British Art, 1861-1967, London, 2017, 7.
9 Caroline Gonda, Defying Convention in Queer British Art, 1861-1967, London 2017, 123.
10 Emma Barker, Exhibiting the Canon: The Blockbuster Show in Contemporary cultures of Display, New Haven, 1999, 128.