Art gallery plans to build on 2005 success

ONE of the success stories of Cork's reign as European Capital of Culture (CoC), the city's Crawford Art Gallery, has every intention of carrying the momentum on into 2006.

Having staged a series of enormously successful exhibitions as part of the CoC programme throughout 2005 - with the last of those, the James Barry exhibition, continuing until March - the gallery recorded a 40% increase in visitor numbers with a total of 250,000 passing through its doors last year.

Curator Peter Murray yesterday said, "we are delighted with the increase and unlike some other venues, visitor figures are not massaged or manipulated: there is a clock which counts every person who enters but we discard those coming in to use the restaurant or anyone coming in after 5pm to lectures or other evening events."