News

Thousands of people streamed through the doors of the new Art Gallery of Ontario yesterday and Sunday as the Toronto museum let its members get the first peek at its refurbished home. The AGO, which reopens to the general public at 4 p.m. on Friday, is expecting thousands more for its first weekend of operations and hundreds of thousands in the weeks to come.

Those folks had better show up: Like Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum, the AGO has built the business plan for expanded premises around the assumption that more people will pay more money to see more art and artifacts. And, like the ROM, it remains bullish about the prospects of increased attendance and revenue from a higher ticket price despite a looming recession.

"People say, 'What are you opening with?' And I say, 'Four thousand artworks in 110 galleries,' " says Arlene Madell, director of marketing and visitor services at the gallery, referring to the refurbished galleries and the new art donated by the late Kenneth Thomson.

The gallery's administration predicts almost 400,000 visitors by the time its fiscal year ends on March 31, 2009, and as many as 800,000 in the first full year of operation.

After that honeymoon period, with extra visitors coming to see the renovation designed by international architect Frank Gehry, the annual attendance should settle at around 650,000, Madell said. Previously, that would have been record attendance for the AGO - it welcomed that many visitors in 2004-05 when it offered the Turner Whistler Monet exhibition.Average years stood around 550,000 and attendance dipped to 460,000 in 2003-04, the year Toronto suffered the SARS scare. Madell hopes that the draw of the Thomson collection, which includes Canadian and European paintings, model ships and antique pens, will level out these peaks and valleys and that attendance will stabilize in 2010 and beyond.

The ROM, on the other hand, thinks married life should be even better than the honeymoon. That institution is still banking that its attendance will keep growing even though the hoopla that attended the opening of the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal in 2007 is now past. ROM director William Thorsell said attendance will hit one million for 2008, and he expects it to reach the 1.3 million mark by 2010, as its five-stage renovation continues with more new spaces, including the Earth sciences galleries slated to open by Christmas.

"The audience builds, the more value we add; different parts of the community respond," he said. He still has hope that the ROM's attendance will hit 1.6 million, the target that was originally set in 2002 and now looks optimistic.

Raising attendance was the principal motivation of the ROM renovation while, from the start, the AGO's $276-million expansion was less risky because it was driven instead by Thomson's donation of $70-million and an art collection. The ROM's lead donor, Michael Lee-Chin, came in with 10 per cent of the $300-million budget shortly before groundbreaking. Although the ROM changed its installations and brought many unseen pieces out of storage, it had no new collections on offer. Also, the AGO's final goal remains smaller - about a 20-per-cent increase in attendance against the ROM's almost 100 per cent. And, as a less populist institution than the ROM with its bat cave and dinosaurs, the visual-art institution depends less heavily on ticket revenue.

On the other hand, with bad institutional memories of a 20-month closing in the early 1980s from which attendance figures did not recover for five years, the ROM insisted that its expansion would never close the museum. The AGO, however, gambled that it could risk a 13-month closing and not be forgotten by the public. If both institutions remain cheery despite all the bad economic news, it is partly because they have already had to adjust their figures and their marketing to reflect big drops in American tourism. Paradoxically, a recession might make them more attractive to Ontario visitors now forgoing foreign trips.

"I am not doing advertising in the United States. My marketing dollars are being spent in Ontario," Madell said.

"I don't think that's bad," Thorsell said of his institution's domestic focus. He has suggested his marketing department consider the slogan "great value close to home."

"These institutions should be deeply rooted in their communities. ... We are lucky we have a hinterland of five million, most of whom have not come down here. We have to work harder to get those people at our back door."

So, while the new ROM targets visitors from Toronto bedroom communities such as Brampton and Mississauga and dedicated a recent weekend to Islamic programming, the new AGO is making a concerted effort to appear more approachable to the uninitiated and more accessible to those short of cash.

"People think of us as staid, traditional and intimidating if you don't know something [about art]. We have worked hard to break down those barriers," Madell said, describing various free programs, including the new policy of letting high-school students in free on weekdays after school. Other changes are more symbolic: The AGO has renamed the volunteers once known as "docents." Henceforth, they will be called gallery guides.

Two institutions, two approaches

ART GALLERY OF ONTARIO

Adult ticket price: $18

Adult ticket price before

renovations: $12

Attendance before renovations: about 550,000 in an average year but with wide fluctuations depending on special exhibitions

Attendance target for 2010: 650,000

Percentage of budget from ticket sales: one-10th

Percentage of budget generated from ticket sales, gift shops, restaurants and rentals: one-third

ROYAL ONTARIO MUSEUM

Adult ticket price: $22

Adult ticket price before

renovations: $15

Attendance before renovations: 650,000

Attendance for 2008/o9: 1 million

Attendance target for 2010:

1.3 million

Percentage of budget from ticket sales: one-fifth

Percentage of budget generated from ticket sales, gift shops, restaurants and rentals: two-fifths

K.T.