Van Gogh exhibition smashed National Gallery visitor records

The National Gallery’s Van Gogh exhibition, which recently closed after staying open throughout the last night to sate visitor demand, was the most popular ticketed exhibition in the gallery’s 200-year history.

The exhibition, Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers has just closed with 334,589 people visiting the gallery to see it. Nearly 20,000 people visited during the last weekend alone – that one person every 10 seconds.

So popular was it that the exhibition’s catalogue even managed to enter the ‘Sunday Times’ Bestseller list.

‘Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers’ was the National Gallery’s first exhibition devoted to Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) and was also the first anywhere to focus on the artist’s imaginative transformations. It had over sixty works and loans from museums and private collections around the world.

Sir Gabriele Finaldi, Director of the National Gallery, London, says: ‘I am delighted that there have been over 330,000 visits to ‘Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers’. Van Gogh has become a talisman for passion, authenticity and commitment to his art. The paintings in this exhibition are among his most striking works and have a freshness and immediacy about them. The show presents Van Gogh as a very serious painter but his ‘lust for life’, as Irving Stone put it, remains evident and infectious.’

Figures for ‘Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers’ have overtaken the previous first and second most visited ticketed (or paid) exhibitions – ‘Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan’ (Nov 2011 to Feb 2012) which totalled 323,827 and ‘Velázquez’ (Oct 2006 to Jan 2007) with 302,520 visits.

Among the NG200 celebrations this year will be the re-opening of the Sainsbury Wing on 10th May together with the unveiling of ‘C C Land: The Wonder of Art’, the Gallery’s most extensive rehang of the collection for several years. A new Learning Centre will open on 3rd March, with a new Supporters House, for Members and other supporters, also opening in 2025.