Extended opening times at National Gallery

With just under a week to go before the hugely popular exhibition Impressionist Gardens draws to a close, the National Galleries of Scotland is delighted to announce that it will be extending its opening hours, for visitors hoping to grab a last chance to see this ground-breaking show. The gallery will open from 10am until 6pm from Monday to Wednesday and on Sunday, 7pm on Thursday and 8pm on Friday and Saturday.

Over the last two months Impressionist Gardens has drawn crowds of around 1000 visitors per day on average, with attendances over recent weekends surpassing even the busiest period of the Edinburgh Festival. Edinburgh is the only UK venue for this fascinating exhibition, which has been organised by the NGS and Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, and the visitor figures are expected to approach the ambitious target of 80,000 this weekend, ahead of the final week. If the exhibition attracts more than 84,000 visitors it will be the third most popular exhibition in the last 25 years.

John Leighton Director-General of the National Galleries of Scotland commented: “We are absolutely delighted by the way that the public has responded so enthusiastically to this show; The high volume of visitors to ambitious exhibitions such as the Glasgow Boys at Kelvingrove and Impressionist Gardens here is not only a sign of a vibrant cultural life in this country it is also good news for our economy at a time when we must do all we can to boost revenues from tourism.”

This major international exhibition of around 100 works is sponsored by BNY Mellon and is the first ever to be devoted to this fascinating subject, with spectacular loans from collections around the world. Impressionist Gardens has been the highlight of the 2010 summer season at the National Gallery Complex, bringing together spectacular paintings by the famous names of Impressionism, including Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Manet and Sisley.  Lenders to Impressionist Gardens include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the National Gallery of Art, Washington; the Musée d’Orsay, Paris; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart; the Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen; Tate, London; and the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome.
Impressionist Gardens is curated by Michael Clarke, Director of the National Gallery of Scotland and organiser of many exhibitions on Impressionism, and Dr Clare Willsdon, Reader in History of Art at the University of Glasgow and a world expert on the subject.

More details on the National Galleries website