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You Like It, You Really Like It: MOCA's "Art In the Streets" Draws Record Number of Patrons
Photo by Visu_ via the LAist Featured Photos pool
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Street art draws millions of unwitting viewers daily, but put the stuff in a museum and charge admission, and, whadda ya know? The show breaks records! The Museum of Contemporary Art is congratulating themselves on a job well done with the innovative "Art in the Streets" exhibit that ran for 81 days and drew 201,352 patrons, besting the previous record set by their 2002 Warhol Retrospective.
Daily average attendance was at 2,486 for the unconventional museum show, which reflected a vast array of graffiti and street art in an engaging and colorful landscape created at MOCA's Little Tokyo outpost. The biggest week was the show last's, during which time 32,278 people passed through to check out work by artists like Neckface, Fab 5 Freddy, Invader, Mister Cartoon, and Shepard Fairey. Procrastinators flocking in on closing day totaled over 8,000.
But they weren't all ponying up cash; in the rich (giggle) tradition (wink) of street art, a lot of folks got in for free. Of course, they weren't furtively hopping turnstiles under to cover of night (except to maybe "contribute" some art outside) but rather taking advantage of the sponsorship of one of street art's biggest names, Banksy, who covered the cost of "Free Mondays" for the exhibit.
MOCA says they signed up about 2,500 new members, and believe that their annual attendance will have this year's attendance come in at double last year's overall. Nice job, MOCA!
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