OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) - The Oklahoma City Museum of Art literally has broken out the Champagne to celebrate a blockbuster summer.
More than 62,000 people from all 50 states and at least a dozen foreign countries flocked to the museum between June 18 and Sept. 18 to see “Matisse in His Time: Masterworks of Modernism from the Centre Pompidou, Paris,” said Jerome Holmes, chairman of the museum’s board of trustees.
“It is certainly one of the most successful, if not the most successful, exhibits that we’ve had. The numbers are a little difficult to put pen to paper to just because some of the other (successful) exhibitions ran longer than ’Matisse.’ But the reality is that it was a blockbuster exhibition,” Holmes told The Oklahoman (https://bit.ly/2f5U7yk ).
“It is a rare, rare thing indeed that you will have an exhibition that only is in one place in North America, and that is in Oklahoma City. . So, I think this is really a landmark occasion for the arts in Oklahoma City and certainly whets our appetite to consider further projects that we can have in the future.”
The board chairman surprised museum President and CEO E. Michael Whittington and other staff members with a Champagne toast at the end of its recent board meeting.
“Our reward for doing our job is to walk down to the gallery and see the gallery packed with people, and people coming from all over and saying, ’Thank you for doing this. This is the most amazing experience,’ ” Whittington said. “It was kind of an aura of reverence. They were in the midst of these masterpieces, and they were overwhelmed. We had reports of several people actually crying in the galleries.”
Bringing “Matisse in His Time” to OKC was nearly a three-year process, which Whittington said he started shortly after taking the helm at the museum in 2013. The Inasmuch Foundation spent $2.5 million to make the Oklahoma City stop possible, using the exhibit as an opportunity to honor founder Edith Kinney Gaylord.
“It would not have gone anywhere if the Inasmuch Foundation had not said, ’We want to do something to honor our founder in what would have been her 100th birth year’ because we couldn’t have taken on a project of this magnitude without a significant underwriter right up front,” Whittington said.
“Matisse in His Time” was expected to be one of the biggest in the museum’s history in more ways than one. Not only did it span the downtown building’s entire second floor, but it also was expected to draw huge crowds, since the Oklahoma City museum was the only North American venue for “Matisse in His Time.”
But the exhibit, which included 100 works of art by the likes of Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris, Georges Braque, Andre Derain, Fernand Leger and Amadeo Modigliani, exceeded expectations. The museum averaged 749 visitors per day during its three-month run, about twice what a typical summer traveling exhibit might draw.
“It was more than I expected. You know, I’m sort of cautious by nature. I thought it would do well; I didn’t know it would do that well. So, it was really rewarding and exciting on a day-to-day basis,” said Michael Anderson, the museum’s director of curatorial affairs. “Our final weekend we were essentially sold out, so people really made a point of seeing it before it left.”
The museum instituted timed ticketing for the first time in anticipation of large crowds and offered extended hours during Labor Day weekend and for the last three Sundays. More than 1,800 people visited the exhibit on the final day alone, Director of Marketing Becky Weintz said.
She said the museum’s usual yearly attendance is about 125,000 people.
“Matisse in His Time” drew visitors from every U.S. state, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, as well as from Canada, Australia, Brazil, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
Whittington said he had colleagues from all over the world visit during the exhibit, and all praised the professionalism of the museum staff, the quality of the institution and the hospitality of Oklahoma City.
“Having success of the Matisse exhibition now opens doors across the world for the Oklahoma City Museum of Art,” he said. “We may not have Central Park . but what we have is a unique culture here that makes people feel wonderful.”
The exhibit created opportunities to introduce people not only to the museum but also to Oklahoma City and its hotels, restaurants and other attractions.
“To have something the quality of the Matisse exhibit in Oklahoma City was absolutely phenomenal,” said Meg Salyer, Ward 6 city councilwoman and museum trustee.
“We were able to introduce the museum in a way that perhaps it really hadn’t been seen, maybe since we had the work from the Louvre here, the ancient Roman art. The publicity that we got regionally and nationally begins to include the Oklahoma City Museum of Art in a really different conversation. I think people just see us today as a different kind of partner, and it’s already opening up doors for other conversations about blockbuster traveling exhibits.”
Salyer said she had a friend from India traveling from California to New York who routed through Oklahoma just to see the exhibit. She said people who visited hopefully will now spread the word about the great experience they had in OKC.
“The whole package is a lot bigger than just ticket sales at the museum. It’s really getting to showcase this Oklahoma City renaissance we keep talking about,” she said. “The opportunity to have something as world-class as the Matisse exhibit, it really moves the museum - and default, Oklahoma City - to another level. We keep raising the bar - you know, that’s our job - and these are the kinds of things that do that.”
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Information from: The Oklahoman, https://www.newsok.com
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