Varley Art Gallery to maintain peak visitorship from 2024, says director
By David Yin, Local Journalism Initiative reporter
The Varley Art Gallery may reach its highest annual visitorship – or number of visitors – by the end of this year, said gallery director Niamh O’Laoghaire.
This is despite all the heavy construction work from the nearby Main Street Unionville Restoration Project this year.
O’Laoghaire said that the construction work may have led visitors to explore the gallery due to the lack of other activities.
“That’s not what we anticipated at all,” she said. “Maybe we’ll have to wait and see next year if we are able to maintain it for a third year in a row.”
The gallery reported achieving its highest annual visitorship to date of over 62,000 people last year in its 2024 Annual Report.
O’Laoghaire said that there were many factors that could explain last year’s peak in visitorship, such as the public’s desire to reconnect after COVID-19 lockdowns, exhibitions that reflected diverse stories, collaborations with other organizations and events, and improved web and social media communications.
She said that many tracking methods contribute to determining the gallery’s annual visitorship, including walk-ins, program registrations, visits to the McKay Art Centre, visits to online sessions, and visits to the outdoor courtyard during public events.
She also said that tracking visitorship not only helps staff understand the current state of the gallery, but it is also required to receive grants from both the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts.
“For us, [high visitorship] implies a kind of healthy organization that people are attending and coming to,” she said. “It kind of implies that we are providing services that the community is interested in.”
The Varley Art Gallery features diverse artists from across York Region. Admission is free thanks to a sponsorship from TD Bank Group.
To learn more about the gallery, head to https://varleyartgallery.ca.
Photo: Niamh O’Laoghaire said that exhibitions that featured diverse stories may have contributed to the gallery’s high visitorship. A current exhibition is Kejie Lin: A Garden of My Own. (David Yin photo)