A great success for the SCHIRN, despite the Corona forced break and restrictions after the reopening: the major survey exhibition "Fantastic Women. Surreal Worlds from Meret Oppenheim to Frida Kahlo" ended last weekend with over 100,000 visitors. The exhibition opened on February 13, 2020, was temporarily closed from March 14 as part of the Covid-19 shutdown, and reopened from May 6 with a comprehensive hygiene and security concept and extended until July 5. Part of the hygiene concept included severely restricting visitors with timed tickets. In order to nevertheless enable as many people as possible to visit the popular exhibition safely, the opening hours were extended to include Monday from 7 May and to 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily during the last week of the exhibition. On the last Saturday, the exhibition was also open until midnight and bid farewell with a final online event, the SATURDAY BEFORE CLOSING. In this way, as many interested visitors as possible were able to visit the fascinating exhibition.
Dr. Philipp Demandt, Director of the Schirn, is pleased that this was possible despite the difficult circumstances, as he emphasizes: "The exhibition "Fantastic Women" was not only one of the most elaborate and groundbreaking exhibitions in the history of the SCHIRN, but its accompanying circumstances were also more than unusual. The fact that we nevertheless succeeded in welcoming more than 100,000 visitors to the exhibition and also in increasing the number of accesses to our digital accompanying and educational offers to such a significant extent, for this I thank all colleagues at the SCHIRN from the bottom of my heart."
During the closure, the Schirn successfully further intensified its communication and mediation offerings on all digital channels and expanded them to include new content and educational topics, especially for children, parents, and teachers. The AUDIOGUIDE to the exhibition, spoken by actress Pegah Ferydoni, was offered as a free app for download with the reopening. The established Schirn format of DIGITORIAL® has also proven its worth, with 65,538 page impressions to date, and can be accessed in German and English at www.schirn.de/digitorial beyond the duration of the exhibition. The various moving image formats, including the exhibition film, the new episode "What is Surrealism" of the SCHIRN SHORTCUT film series, a digital guided tour with curator Dr. Ingrid Pfeiffer, the FANTASTIC FAVORITES, and a new animated film offering from the MINISCHIRN, were particularly popular. With currently 2,452,483 page views, the Schirn YouTube channel is at the top of comparable institutions nationwide. The SCHIRN MAGAZINE was relaunched during the closure period and doubled its page views compared to the previous year. Since it was not possible to offer mediation services on site, the Schirn realized online events such as the SCHIRN AT HOME with a live tour through the exhibition with 2572 online visitors, or a SURREALISTIC MOVIE NIGHT with 519 visitors. Finally, in the last weeks of the runtime, introductions to the exhibition in small groups by art educators could again take place at the Schirn.
More info can be found at: www.schirn.de
