Picasso Exhibit Worth Nearly $29 Million to Virginia

Financial validation for VMFA exhibit

7/8/11 12:02 PM

Content

Do you like this?

Picasso self-portrait

The Picasso exhibit at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond has been and gone and is now being enjoyed by West Coasters at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. But the exhibit has left behind a success story, with economics research and consulting firm Chmura Economics and Analytics reporting that the exhibit had an economic impact of almost $29 million in Virginia.

Museum director Alex Nyerges is understandably happy. ""Any way you look at that number, that is a lot of money," says Nyerges. "You're talking about a $5 million exhibition for which we had zero funding the day we said yes."

It's also a validation of the VMFA's recent $150 million expansion, which increased the museum's gallery space by nearly 50%. The next big exhibit at the VMFA is Fabergé Revealed, the largest collection of Fabergé in the United States with over 500 items. That runs from July 9 to October 2.