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Van Gogh breaks records at National Gallery
Show was the London museum's most popular ticketed exhibition ever
A final weekend of 24-hour opening has helped Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers become the National Gallery’s most popular ticketed exhibition ever.
The show, which ran from 14 September 2024 to 19 January 2025 at the London gallery, attracted 334,589 visits. The exhibition stayed open through the night from Friday 17 January to Saturday 18 January to accommodate the high demand for tickets.
The number of visits to the Van Gogh show overtook the previous first and second most visited ticketed (or paid) exhibitions – Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan (9 November 2011 to 5 February 2012) which totalled 323,827 and Velázquez (18 October 2006 to 21 January 2007) with 302,520 visits.
Van Gogh attracted an average of 2,676 visits per day over its 125-day run. It was the seventh most-visited show at the National Gallery (paid or free) since 1991.
National Gallery director Gabriele Finaldi said: “I am delighted that there have been over 330,000 visits to Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers. Van Gogh has become a talisman for passion, authenticity and commitment to his art. The paintings in this exhibition are among his most striking works and have a freshness and immediacy about them.”
The Van Gogh show was curated by guest curator Cornelia Homburg, and Christopher Riopelle, the Neil Westreich curator of post-1800 paintings at the National Gallery, with Julien Domercq, associate curator (post-1800 paintings), who is also from the gallery.
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The exhibition featured more than 50 works and loans from museums and private collections around the world, including pictures from the Kröller Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands; the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam; and the Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers is the first of two of the gallery’s ticketed exhibitions celebrating its 200th anniversary. The second, Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350 (8 March to 22 June 2025), will reunite paintings from museums, churches and private collections around the world by 14th-century Italian artists. This exhibition is currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum, New York.
Among the NG200 celebrations this year will be the reopening of the Sainsbury Wing on 10 May together with the unveiling of C C Land: The Wonder of Art, the gallery’s most extensive rehang of the collection for several years. A new Learning Centre will open on 3 March, with a new Supporters House, for Members and other supporters, also opening in 2025.