Jan. 23--Attendance at a consortium of 15 leading Chicago cultural institutions was down slightly in 2014, in large measure due to the "polar vortex" weather that began the year, but blockbuster year-end exhibitions about a rock star and a year in history kept the numbers from being worse.
"David Bowie Is" at the Museum of Contemporary Art pushed that museum's numbers up to 339,000, a more than 50 percent increase over the previous year. And Chicago History Museum's "1968" exhibition helped that institution tally a 7.4 percent gain for the year, just behind the 8.8 percent improvement at DuSable Museum of African American History. Overall attendance was 14.3 million, a 2.8 percent drop from the previous year.
Overall attendance was 14.3 million, a 3 percent drop from the previous year, which followed a 2 percent drop the year before that. "If you disregard the three months that the polar vortex hit us, our numbers were even with last year's numbers," said Gary T. Johnson, president of the Chicago History Museum and president of Museums in the Park, an association of city museums that issues the annual attendance news release.
Included in the survey are the Adler Planetarium, the Art Institute, the Chicago Botanic Garden, Chicago Children's Museum, Chicago History Museum, Brookfield Zoo, DuSable Museum of African American History, the Field Museum, National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts Culture, Lincoln Park Zoo, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum of Science and Industry, National Museum of Mexican Art, Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum and Shedd Aquarium.
The year's two biggest losers, on a percentage basis compared to 2013, were the Shedd Aquarium (down 9.9 percent to 1.81 million) and the Art Institute of Chicago (down 7.5 percent to 1.4 million).
