🔒Yale Art Gallery returns to pre-pandemic attendance levels

It’s taken more than two years but the Yale University Art Gallery has finally returned to pre-pandemic attendance numbers, a significant accomplishment in the arts industry, which was hit hard by COVID-19 lockdowns that began in March 2020.

“We feel pretty confident saying that after watching the numbers over the last six months, we are now at pre- pandemic levels,” says Stephanie Wiles, director of the gallery since 2018.

Wiles offered the qualified statement because attendance has fluctuated, depending on spikes in COVID infection rates over the past two years.

Museums, with visitors able to move freely in large spaces, were the first arts venues that reopened following pandemic lockdowns, while most live performance arts buildings remained closed until last fall. The Yale Art Gallery first reopened in September 2020 on weekends, with a reduction in hours and restrictions on the number of masked visitors. The museum resumed its regular hours in February.

Strong attendance numbers are expected to continue with the museum’s new fall exhibits.

They include “Bámigbóyè: A Master Sculptor of the Yorùbá Tradition,” the first exhibition dedicated to the Nigerian woodcarver. That exhibit and another — “Fazal Sheikh: Exposures” — run Sept. 9 to Jan. 8. Also new at the museum is a Gallery of Numismatics, which opened in May, covering more than four millennium of currency exchange.

City impact

Attracting more than 200,000 visitors a year prior to the pandemic, the gallery is one of — if not the — leading destination sites for the city and a significant contributor to New Haven’s economic vitality. Since its 2012, $130-million-plus renovation and expansion to a three-building, 192,000-square-foot downtown complex with 80,000 square feet of exhibition space, it has been a leading cultural draw for the city.

(By contrast, the Shubert Theatre in the last regular year of programming, attracted around 130,000 attendees.)

“During the pandemic we saw a dramatic loss in tourism activity and in economic revenue by way of arts and culture,” says Adriane Jefferson, the city’s director of the department of arts and cultural affairs.

Though exact figures of the city’s losses are difficult to ascertain, she says, the gallery’s closing meant that several hundred thousand visitors were not staying at New Haven hotels, visiting restaurants or shopping, and that “a significant economic decline happens when that type of tourism stops. We witnessed the impact of this very clearly during the pandemic and we are glad to see our arts and culture organizations bouncing back after a very rough two years.”

The arts and entertainment industry is a huge driver of New Haven’s economy. The city boasts many venues including the Yale Repertory Theatre, Shubert Theatre, College Street Music Hall and Toad’s Place along with other visual arts venues such as the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Architecture Gallery and Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

(The popular Yale Peabody Museum is closed until 2024, as it undergoes a massive renovation and expansion. Long Wharf Theatre is now in a transition year as it prepares for an itinerant 2023-24 season.)

Yale Art Gallery’s Wiles says she’s hoping her venue returns to annual attendance of 200,000 visits next year.

Gallery finances

Unlike many museums around the country that depend heavily on admission revenue, all Yale museums are free, though donations are suggested at the door.

“Because we’re under the umbrella of the university, we have a safety net that unfortunately other museums do not have,” says Wiles.

The gallery has held steady financially through the pandemic via its endowment, which is part of Yale’s larger investment portfolio.

The June 2021 value of the gallery’s endowment was more than $860 million. That nest egg benefited from being part of Yale’s larger $42 billion endowment portfolio, which saw an extraordinary 40.2 percent investment spike in fiscal year 2021. Endowment income offsets up to 65 percent of the gallery’s annual $30 million general operating budget.

Though the museum saw fewer visitors during the pandemic, donor support and strong endowment returns stabilized the institution and supported other initiatives, including investment in new technology.

As part of Yale’s overall capital campaign, the gallery over the next three years is also planning to merge its three storage facilities to two sites and expand its West Campus facility for students, faculty and the public

It presently stores works at its downtown New Haven complex, a facility in Hamden that houses 20,000 works of art and Yale’s West Campus.

Behind the scenes

Although it might appear there was limited activity during the pandemic, Wiles says the staff was busy behind the scenes and working remotely.

“We replaced roofs and re-did floors but we also recognized the opportunities that were in front of us to reach a broader audience," says Wiles. “The most obvious one was through online connections, which allow the public to connect with the gallery. Those programs will continue. We’re starting to figure out what works best in person and what are the things we want to keep online for people who can’t come to the gallery.”

Wiles says the need to do online outreach made her realize the museum was under-invested in technology. Now a new website is planned for this fall, catalogues and out-of-print publications will be available online, and more public programs will be virtual.

Wiles says following the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements, she and her staff took time during the pandemic to rethink the presentation of the gallery’s permanent collections.

“You’ll see far more women artists and artists of color,” she says. “We do want to broaden ourselves. We want to pick our selections and new acquisitions in particular and start to rotate through our collection.”

Post-pandemic life will not be a return to the status quo, she says, but rather “transformative” on many levels.