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Among the costumes on show at David Bowie Is is a quilted, two-piece suit from 1972.The Globe and Mail

David Bowie Is …, the epic survey of the art and life of the fabled British pop star, drew just over 146,000 visitors to the Art Gallery of Ontario during a nine-week run, it was announced Tuesday in Toronto.

The gallery was the only Canadian venue for the exhibition, which originated earlier this year at London's Victoria and Albert Museum. More than 310,000 visitors attended the London showcase, which ran for more than four months, enough to make it the museum's best-attended event in the past 10 years.

Its AGO incarnation came nowhere near to besting the Toronto gallery's own all-time single-event attendance record, 750,000, established in 1979 for a show of King Tutankhamun  artifacts.

However, Bowie did surpass the number of visitors (145,407) the AGO claimed for the Ai Weiwei retrospective it hosted for close to 10 weeks earlier this year.

Culled largely from the singer-songwriter's own vast archives, the Toronto David Bowie Is … opened Sept. 25 and closed Nov. 29. It next visits the Museum of Image and Sound in Sao Paulo, starting Jan. 28, 2014.

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