SFMOMA BOASTS RECORD NUMBERS FOR FRIDA KAHLO

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is proud to announce its record-breaking success with the three-month Frida Kahlo exhibition, which closed on September 28, 2008. Attendance during the show was the museum’s highest ever, totaling 412,244—an average of 4,530 visitors per day. The record was previously held by the 2003 Marc Chagall exhibition, which brought a total of 363,641 to SFMOMA.

The popularity of SFMOMA’s presentation of the exhibition also exceeded that of its two previous stops in the United States combined: 115,405 visitors attended Frida Kahlo at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (October 27, 2007 through January 20, 2008), and 194,322 people viewed the exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (February 20 through May 18, 2008).

SFMOMA broke another significant record as a result of the exhibition: 22 percent of visitors to Frida Kahlo were from the Latino community. As it has long been an objective of the museum to create and bolster long-term relationships with Latino visitors, SFMOMA considers this new record to be a highly significant achievement.

SFMOMA wishes to acknowledge Contemporánea for their role in our outreach efforts to the Latino community.

IMAGE: Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird (Autorretrato con collar de espinas y colibrí), 1940; oil on canvas; 24-5/8 x 18-7/8 inches; Nikolas Muray Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin; © 2007 Banco de México, Trustee of the Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust. Av. Cinco de Mayo No. 2, Col. Centro, Del. Cuauhtémoc 06059, México, D.F.