POMPEII - The Most Successful Exhibition at the MMFA in the Past 15 Years, with 310,000 visitors!

The exhibition POMPEII, which closed on September 5 at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA), welcomed 310,000 visitors. It was the most successful exhibition at the Museum in the past 15 years, and a record for attendance since the exhibition Renoir to Picasso, which drew 327,644 visitors in 2000. POMPEII now ranks fourth among the MMFA’s most-visited exhibitions in the past 30 years, after Renoir to Picasso with 327,644 visitors, Leonardo da Vinci, Engineer and Architect (1987) with 436,419 visitors, and Pablo Picasso: Meeting in Montreal (1985) which attracted 502,476 visitors.

The MMFA continues to be a must-see cultural destination for Montrealers and visitors from farther afield. Again this year, its summer programme attracted numerous tourists. In July and August, 39% of Museum visitors were tourists, including 27% from abroad, primarily from the United States and Europe. This was one of the best tourist seasons in recent years. Attendance figures for the Montreal presentation of POMPEII surpassed those for Toronto. When it was presented at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in 2015, it drew 273,000 visitors.

“I would like to offer my heartfelt thanks to all of our VIP members and visitors who turned out in record numbers for this unique immersive experience. We owe this historic success to the teams that create unique exhibitions for and with the Museum, with exclusive, sophisticated and original layouts. I congratulate them all!” said Nathalie Bondil, Director and Chief Curator of the MMFA.

The MMFA enjoys the highest attendance of any museum in Quebec, with close to one million visitors annually. With the Michal and Renata Hornstein Pavilion for Peace set to open in a matter of weeks, numerous visitors are expected to flock to see the new facilities and the reinstallation of its collections of international art from the Middle Ages to contemporary works, hinting at new attendance records for 2016.