Dali delights, drawing 40,000 visitors to Winnipeg Art Gallery

The Winnipeg Art Gallery is celebrating the close of one of its most successful exhibitions, the dual display of Dalí Up Close and Masterworks from the Beaverbrook Art Gallery.

The WAG set an attendance record in September at the debut, drawing 4,000 visitors — the most ever for the opening day of an exhibition.

Attendance remained strong throughout the run, resulting in an extension of four more weeks before it finally closed on Feb. 22.

​“This was Manitoba’s first major exhibition of Salvador Dalí and the response from the community has been amazing,” said Stephen Borys, WAG director and CEO.

“The attendance exceeded 40,000 people and the related programs and events were spot on."

All five Flavours of Art programs sold out, as did the annual fundraiser Art & Soul: The Lucid Dream,inspired this year by Dalí.

Nearly 5,000 children explored the stories behind the art through school tours and membership at the gallery increased by 25 per cent during the run of the exhibition.

Dalí Up Close included 68 works by the surrealist master: paintings, watercolours, drawings, jewellery, and sculpture, as well as the celebrated photographs produced with Philippe Halsman.

Masterworks from the Beaverbrook Art Gallery featured an uncompromising selection of 75 international paintings by such artists as Gainsborough, Turner, Sargent, Carr, Thomson, Freud, Dalí, and more.

The WAG hopes to keep the momentum rolling with several new shows opening in February, including Elisapee Ishulutaq; Wanda Koop’s new suite of paintings, VIEW from HERE; L.L. FitzGerald’s Impressionist Decade, 1910-1920; and Arctic Adaptations: Nunavut at 15; as well as the monumental Olympus: The Greco-Roman Collections of Berlin, opening on April 26.