More than a million people, 1,064,835 to be exact, visited the permanent collections and temporary exhibitions at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum over the course of 2016, amounting to a 10% increase compared to 967,908 visitors in 2015.
This is the third record-breaking year for visitor numbers in the museum’s history and the fourth year that numbers have exceeded the million mark. Visitor figures for the permanent collection are also up by 28%, exceeding the 474,199 recorded in 2015 to stand at 606,576 in 2016.
Madrid Realists was the year’s most visited exhibition, with 188,980 people coming in through the door, followed by Renoir: Intimacy, which has already had 153,875 visitors and stays open until 22 January. As for the museum’s other exhibitions, Caravaggio and the Painters of the North had 144,733 visitors; Caillebotte, Painter and Gardener, 95,127; Wyeth: Andrew and Jamie in the Studio, 66,724; while Bulgari and Rome, open until 26 February, has already had 27,498 visitors.
In February 2016, the museum introduced a single entrance ticket, giving access to permanent collections and temporary exhibitions, meaning that total figures refer to the number of tickets sold, no matter which exhibitions they were for. Exhibition visitor numbers are also counted at the access points for each of them.
2017 Programme
Masterworks from Budapest. From the Renaissance to the Avant-Garde is the exhibition with which the museum kicks off the 2017 year, the 25th anniversary of being open to the public. A few weeks later, Rafael Moneo. Theory through Practice. Archive Materials (1961-2017) offers a major retrospective of work by the architect responsible for remodelling the Palacio de Villahermosa as the venue to house the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection in Madrid. In the summer, Renaissance Venice. The Triumph of Beauty and the Destruction of Painting invites visitors to appreciate 16th-century Venetian painting, which will be followed by Sonia Delaunay-Terk. Art, Design and Fashion, an exhibition on this multidisciplinary artist and the period during which she and her family lived in Madrid. In October, Picasso / Lautrec will analyse the relationship between the early work of Pablo Picasso and that of French artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and to close the year, Art Lesson, an exhibition organised by the Education Department and involving artistic and educational activities all over the museum.