The National Gallery of Victoria’s Yayoi Kusama has become the best attended ticketed art exhibition in Australian history, with “easily more than half a million people” visiting the 96-year-old Japanese artist’s show in four months.
On Monday the Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, announced the milestone by saying that the NGV’s exhibition had “brought five MCGs worth of visitors to the heart of Melbourne” – or more than 480,000 people since it opened in December; about 40% were from interstate or overseas. This smashes a record the NGV set in 2017 with its exhibition Van Gogh and the Seasons – which was visited by 462,262 people.
