The 2019 Exhibit Columbus architectural exhibition of “Good Design and the Community” is built on far more than numbers of visitors to its 18 installations. But the just-released figures for the latest three-month run that ended Dec. 1 tally another success for the event focusing on art, architecture and design.
About 30,000 people took in the temporary creative installations done by some of the more successful designers across the globe, plus works by noted professors of architecture and their students and even creations of area high school students.
That compares to an estimated 40,000 who saw the inaugural 2017 exhibition — one that organizers have acknowledged was helped from its new and novel status at the time. Richard McCoy, among the organizers of Exhibit Columbus, recently said that it’s tough for any event to duplicate that first-time curiosity among the public.
But the 2019 exhibition exceeded the first in the number of people who took organizers’ tours of the structures, organizers said. Organizers were especially pleased with tours for elementary and high school students, including those from Hauser Junior-Senior High School in Hope.
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“It is difficult to estimate the exact number of visitors to the exhibition or any of the installations, but based on the number of maps given out, we estimate (a number),” said Hannah Brokenshire, Exhibit Columbus’ operations and communications director.
Figures that paint a picture of the exhibition go substantially beyond an overall total.
Brokenshire said audience tallies include volunteer engagement, student engagement — K through 12 and universities — number of event attendees, online engagement through newsletters, social media, and website, local/regional/international media recognition, as well as the number of tours given by the Exhibit Columbus team and Columbus Area Visitors Center.
More than 500 volunteers contributed 1,400 hours of work, for instance — well beyond the 2017 event.
Exhibit Columbus is a project of Landmark Columbus and a program of Heritage Fund — The Community Foundation of Bartholomew County. The pop-up architecture every other year is meant to somehow comment or offer a new perspective on well-known, classic, Modernist structures where the installations are located.
Anne Surak, artistic director for Exhibit Columbus, mentioned that the just-completed exhibition unfolded quite differently than the first one.
“These installations probably were less sculptural and more functional,” Surak said. “They were intended to be more practical.”
She added that that difference made the pieces more user friendly for everything from casual lunches to weekend picnics and such at downtown works such as Thank U Next at Seventh and Washington streets.
But Surak mentioned that she isn’t quite sure if that means that 2021 exhibition needs to follow that pattern, necessarily.
“It’s exciting, though, as we continue to look forward and to push the project in new and creative ways, both to be more impactful in the community, but also to be more engaged in the global conversation about architecture and design,” Surak said. “So we have continued to think a lot about how we can be locally responsive and globally engaged as an organization.”
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30,000 — Overall estimated attendance
5,200 — Family activity guides distributed
27 — Tours hosted by the Columbus Area Visitors Center
12 — Organizations that planned programs related to the exhibition
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