What is happening?
- To meet visitor demand for more evening hours, the AGO will be open to the public on three Friday evenings during Bacon Moore.
- These extended hours will be carefully monitored to see if they meet our objective to provide increased access to the Gallery. If results for the first three public Friday evenings scheduled in May, June and July meet our objective, we will add up to six more Friday evenings in the Fall and Winter, for a total of nine in 2014/15.
- This Friday May 9th, will be the first night that we will be testing these new hours (5:30 – 8:30pm).
Why have you decided to hold Friday evening hours?
- One of the objectives in our Strategic Plan is to become the arts and culture destination in Toronto.
- In order to do this, the visitor must be the focus of everything that we do. We know that visitor expectations are changing.
- We have been very successful with our extended public hours during Bowie and our exclusive member nights on Friday evenings. We have heard overwhelmingly from the public and AGO staff that they want more evening hours.
- This initiative will allow us to test the level of programming, advance communication and marketing support needed to drive attendance on these special nights.
What is the difference between our Wednesday late hours and these new Friday hours?
- On Wednesday nights, access to our permanent collection is free and special exhibitions are reduced to $12.50.
- Our Friday evening tickets will cost the same as during our regular hours and will provide prime weekend evening hours for visitors. To drive incremental attendance, we will develop special promotions and discounts as needed. We will assess these in the same careful way as we assess all of our promotional offers and partnerships.
- The new Friday hours will provide better conversion opportunities for our Membership team to convert single ticket holders to members because visitors will not be entering for free.
- Friday nights will also bring value to our other revenue streams such as Food & Beverage and Retail (which will be open until 9pm on these nights).
Does this mean you will no longer have Friday Members evenings?
- We will continue to offer special evening opportunities to our members that will be exclusive to them.
When are some of the next Friday public access nights?
- The next upcoming public Friday nights during Bacon Moore are:
- June 6, 5:30pm – 8:30pm
- July 11, 5:30pm – 8:30pm
- We are looking at our current programming schedule to connect upcoming Friday nights with existing programming opportunities. Stay tuned for more Friday evening hours in the future!
Alicia Vandermeer
Chief, Visitor Experience & Exhibitions