Gallery lags behind visitor target
A high profile New Plymouth art gallery is more than 90,000 people behind its target in terms of yearly visitor numbers.
In the New Plymouth District Council’s (NPDC) half-yearly performance review it revealed the target for annual visitors to the GovettBrewster Art Gallery/Len Lye Centre was 116,000 people.
However, only 25,334 people – slightly less than one quarter of that goal – had visited in the first half of the year, meaning 90,666 were needed through the doors in the next six months if the goal is to be achieved.
By comparison, in its first year of operation, the gallery attracted
151,000 visitors. In the following 12 months, which only had a target of
105,000, it had reached 100,000 attendees at the nine-month mark.
NPDC chief operating officer Kelvin Wright said it was ‘‘premature to speculate’’ on the significant lack in patronage at this stage.
‘‘It’s important apples are compared with apples, or, that a whole year of data is used for comparison, including the summer events season peak with Womad and Angus and Julia Stone still to come in March.
‘‘We’ll be reviewing the data in the middle of the year and making recommendations to Elected Members,’’ he said.
In August NPDC imposed a $15 entry fee to the gallery for visitors who lived outside of the district, which saw numbers drop off.
During August-December 2017 there were 33,651 visitors through the door, whereas from AugustDecember 2018, 20,289 people visited, a drop of 39.7 per cent.
In response to not being on track for the targets NPDC set itself, Wright said: ‘‘it is premature to speculate without a full year of data and it’s important to also realise the visitor target KPI (key performance indicator) was selected before Elected Members decided to introduce admissions.
‘‘It’s also important to note admissions created almost $83,000 of extra revenue from August to December last year.’’
John Matthews, one of the gallery’s biggest supporters as well as critics, said the current visitor numbers were certainly disappointing.
‘‘I don’t think they’re going to be able to improve the situation dramatically but of course the new directors are about to be in business there and take command and they might have some ideas.’’
This month new international duo Aileen Burns and Johan Lundh take over as co-directors of the gallery.
Matthews added he always said charging to see the gallery was a ‘‘killjoy type of philosophy’’ and also contrary to Len Lye’s philosophy of making art accessible to everyone.
‘‘It’s a cultural thing in New Zealand people don’t like paying for art galleries, it’s part of our history. So I think it will be very difficult to change if they continue to charge.’’
The half-yearly performance review also showed the gallery sat at 66 per cent in terms of customer satisfaction, which is behind a target of 82 per cent for the year but it was on the rise.
It was also on target to reach the seven exhibitions put on every year.
When asked what would be done to try and increase visitor numbers, Wright said there was a great upcoming programme of both Kiwi and international artists.
‘‘Mikala Dwyer (AUS), Shannon Novak (NZ), Peter Wareing (NZ/ UK), Ana Iti (NZ), Yuichiro Tamura (JAP) and Brett Graham (NZ) are coming to the Gallery over the next year. It’s also a cultural hub offering a range of programmes for schools, babies and toddlers and seniors along with a great venue for corporate hosting and a boutique retail shop.’’