Corcoran Gallery's Major Modernism Exhibition Was a Modest Success

The Corcoran Gallery of Art, testing new ways to regain its foothold as a high-profile Washington exhibition space, drew modest crowds to its recent sprawling exhibition on modernism.

"Modernism: Designing a New World 1914-1939," which ran from March 17 to July 29, drew 93,000 visitors over 116 days, an average of 801 a day. The projected attendance was 100,000.

More people showed up on Sundays than any other day, and on the second Sunday, March 25, attendance was 3,022 visitors.

Paul Greenhalgh, director and president of the Corcoran since April 2006, said he was happy with the numbers and the spectrum of people the exhibition had attracted. "We think overall it was very good," he said. "We got 1,800 new members, and that was a dramatic success. We have opened up the range of visitor types."

The exhibit was preceded by enormous fanfare because it was the first major evidence of Greenhalgh's taste. It was also a splashy, expensive show that concentrated on design. Organized with the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, it was the largest and most comprehensive show on modernism to appear in America. Among the exhibits were a kitchen, a car, architectural models, dozens of chairs, films, paintings, clothes, teapots, engines, a bookcase, an airplane model, vases, posters, an X-ray machine, dance costumes, cameras and dinnerware. The exhibition filled most of the Corcoran's galleries.

The modernism show was also positioned by the museum as the end of its rocky days -- a failed capital campaign that would have paid for an addition designed by Frank Gehry, the departure of its former director and a search for a unique identity in Washington's crowded museum world.

"We were looking to do something on a grand scale, not just to bring in attendance, but to reposition us with colleagues in the East Coast museums," Greenhalgh says. He says the audiences were also in tune with the Corcoran's new statement. "The visitors' comments often said, 'I'm pleased with the new direction of the Corcoran.' There had always been a great deal of affection for the museum. For more than a decade, it had been a troubled child or a troubled grandparent. I think people were anxious for us to succeed."

The show cost $2 million, the Corcoran's most expensive, and Greenhalgh said the museum has not yet reconciled the costs and money received from the $14 admission fee and sales at shops and cafes. An experiment to stay open until 6 p.m. instead of 5 p.m. three nights did not make much difference in the gallery traffic, he said.

The show was the Corcoran's third most popular exhibit in recent history. In 2002, "Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years" was open for six months and had 153,000 visitors. In 2004, "Norman Rockwell's Four Freedoms: Paintings That Inspired a Nation" attracted 110,000 visitors in five months.

The Corcoran increased its admission from $8 for the show. The numbers at the Corcoran also suggest that local residents and tourists are accustomed to free first-class shows. No matter how exquisite the exhibitions, museums that charge struggle to find a broad audience.

The National Museum of Women in the Arts charges $10 for admission. Its most recent popular show was "Berthe Morisot: An Impressionist and Her Circle" in 2005, when 29,966 people visited over five months. The average daily attendance was 200.

The Phillips Collection, which has free admission Tuesday through Friday and charges $10 on weekends, is currently showing "American Impressionism: Paintings From the Phillips Collection." Since its opening in June, it has averaged about 450 people a day.

In contrast, when the free National Gallery of Art mounted "Cézanne in Provence" last year, it drew 335,049 visitors in 92 days.

One of the National Gallery's successes was a show curated by Greenhalgh when he was head of research at the Victoria and Albert. "Art Nouveau: 1890-1914" ran for 115 days from 2000 to 2001 and had 268,155 visitors.

Greenhalgh said he hopes to do a survey of the postmodernist movement in late 2010.