AS the Inca gold exhibition at the National Gallery packs up they’re celebrating a bumper year of three blockbusters and the hundreds of thousands of visitor which came to see them.

“Toulouse-Lautrec: Paris & the Moulin Rouge”. “Turner from the Tate: The Making of a Master”, and “Gold and the Incas: Lost worlds of Peru” brought in an accumulated visitation of 484,475 attendees.

“The Gold and the Incas exhibition attracted over 160,000 visitors from across Australia and overseas, with almost 68% travelling from interstate to Canberra, and injecting an estimated $33.5 million* into the ACT economy,” Gallery Director Ron Radford said.

“Holding three back-to-back blockbuster exhibitions has been a challenging but rewarding experience for the Gallery and for Canberra. The total estimated economic impact for the ACT from the staging of Toulouse-Lautrec and Turner from the Tate and Gold and the Incas amounts to over $103 million, and we are very pleased these world-class exhibitions have delivered so much value to the ACT economy”.

ACT Treasurer Andrew Barr said the numbers justified the financial support to the Gallery from the ACT Government.

“The ACT Government’s ongoing partnership with the National Gallery of Australia continues to deliver an outstanding return on investment and reinforces the value that major events play in providing reasons for people to visit Canberra,” Andrew said.

[Photo: INCA culture
Centre, south and north 1400–1533 AD
Llama
gold; 6.2 x 5.5 cm
Museo Oro del Perú, Lima
Photograph: Daniel Giannoni]