834.025 visitors came to enjoy special art
Congratulations: in 2017, a total of 834,025 visitors saw the exhibitions at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, the Städel Museum, and the Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung. This means that the Frankfurt art institutions, which have been managed by Philipp Demandt for more than a year, closed 2017 with a very successful audience response. With 401,514 visitors, the Schirn recorded one of the highest attendance years in its history (previous year: 352,285). The Städel Museum recorded 390,532 visitors, significantly more than in 2016 (311,138 visitors). The Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung, which attracted attention with projects on provenance research and restoration, recorded 41,979 visitors (previous year: 72,804).
Special visitor magnets in 2017 were the exhibitions "Magritte. The Betrayal of Images" (190,120 visitors) at the Schirn, "Photographs Become Pictures. The Becher Class" (80,888 visitors) and "Matisse-Bonnard. ‚Long Live Painting!'" which had already attracted 162,787 visitors by December 31, 2017. The Städel show is on view through January 14, 2018.
Philipp Demandt, director of the three Frankfurt museums is delighted with the visitor success:
"In 2017 we were able to inspire a total of 834,025 visitors with our internationally oriented exhibition programme and a contemporary communication and outreach work. This is both a success and an incentive. I am particularly pleased about the growing popularity of our digital collection, which is very close to my heart. We are now excited to start the new year with highlights such as the Rubens show at the Städel, the Basqiuat exhibition at the Schirn, and William Kentridge at the Liebieghaus."
The importance and relevance of Frankfurt's three art institutions was also evident in the extensive and highly frequented educational and outreach programs as well as the numerous events held last year. Particularly noteworthy at the Schirn are the new free workshop offerings for children and young people "Schirn Studio. Die Kunstwerkstatt," the exhibition accompanying WiFi special, the Children's Art Nights (a total of 6,904 visitors), the Schirn at Nights (a total of 3,751 visitors), and the Summer Hang Outs. MINISCHIRN, the unique, permanent play and learning trail for children aged three and up, celebrated its third anniversary in December 2017 and has already been visited by around 30,000 children. In 2017, the Städel and Liebieghaus once again hosted a large number of events, with around 4,500 guided tours, workshops and special events: Among them, in the Städel, an international Welcome Day with guided tours in 17 languages (2,810 visitors), the Education Week for children and young people (3,063 participants), Artemis tours for dementia patients, a Wandel concert with the HR Symphony Orchestra, or the Städel party "Salon des amis". The Liebieghaus offered a large children's festival (1,216 visitors), the "Christmas Magic" as well as the new event series "Liebieghaus Live", whose three dates were each completely booked out.
In addition to on-site visitors, the Schirn, the Städel, and the Liebieghaus also reach numerous people in the digital space with their various online activities and digital measures, thus carrying their educational mission far beyond the houses' borders. The Schirn reached around 2.7 million users with its website (<link http: www.schirn.de _blank>www.schirn.de). The popular Schirn Magazine (<link http: www.schirn-magazin.de _blank>www.schirn-magazin.de) has a readership of around 35,000 readers a month. The Schirn's social community continued to grow in 2017 and currently boasts 155,000 fans and followers. The websites of the Städel Museum (<link http: www.staedelmuseum.de _blank>www.staedelmuseum.de) and the Liebieghaus (<link http: www.liebieghaus.de _blank>www.liebieghaus.de) were accessed a combined total of around 4 million times last year.
On all social media channels combined, Städel and Liebieghaus are followed by around 158,000 fans to date. A special focus in 2017 was on the production of film and moving images, to which the three art institutions will also increasingly devote themselves this year. As part of the digital expansion of the Städel Museum, the initiatives and projects launched since the anniversary year 2015 were also successfully developed further. At 300,000, the Digital Collection was able to triple its page views compared to the previous year, and the number of users of the online course on modern art has currently risen to 25,000. The award-winning digital educational offering, the Digitorial, was expanded in 2017 for the Städel Museum to reflect specific collections and themes. In the last three years, the Schirn, Städel, and Liebieghaus have produced a total of 17 Digitorials, which - with an above-average dwell time - have counted 800,000 page views to date.
Outlook 2018
Visitors to the Schirn, the Städel Museum, and the Liebieghaus can expect a diverse program with numerous highlights in 2018. At the Schirn, the exhibition Glanz und Elend in der Weimarer Republik. From Otto Dix to Jeanne Mammen, which features 190 works by 62 artists and takes a look at art in Germany from 1918 to 1933.
More than 30 years after his last solo presentation in a public collection in Germany, the Schirn is dedicating its first exhibition of 2018 to the work of Jean-Michael Basquiat (1960-1988)-organized in cooperation with the Barbican Art Gallery, London. From February 16 to May 27, 2018, Basquiat. Boom for Real, the artist's relationship to the music, texts, film, and television of his time will become clear for the first time in an overarching cultural context in over 100 works. To this end, the Schirn has assembled outstanding paintings, drawings, notebooks, and objects from both public and private collections, as well as rare films, photographs, music, and archival material. The diversity and dynamism of this exceptional artist thus becomes impressively visible.
As its first special exhibition, the Städel, in cooperation with the Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, is showing from 8 February to 21 May 2018 Rubens. Power of Transformation. Using important loans from international museums, the creativity and inventiveness of the world-famous Baroque artist will be comprehensively revealed to the public for the first time. The show provides a direct and fascinating insight into Rubens' (1577-1640) creative process.
From 22 March to 26 August 2018, the Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung presents William Kentridge. O Sentimental Machine, an exhibition project as comprehensive as it is extraordinary, in collaboration with one of the most internationally significant contemporary artists. At home in many artistic disciplines, William Kentridge (* 1955) is invited to bring his works into dialogue with the holdings of the 5,000-year Frankfurt Sculpture Collection
