Saturday, April 30, will mark the end of the Etruscans' six-month reign at the Brigham Young University Museum of Art. But whereas the Etruscan culture was absorbed by the Romans 2,300 years ago, the Etruscans are leaving BYU with a bang.
"We are having very many capacity days," said Charlene Winters, media relations coordinator for the museum. "It's doing very, very well right now."The exhibit, which began Oct. 18, 1993, displays the lost civilization of the Etruscans as exemplified through 178 artifacts on loan from the Gregorian Museum of the Vatican Museum.
"We're really excited that it's such a success," said James Mason, museum director. "It's a world-class museum and a world-class show."
Although attendance was light for the first 21/2 months, Mason said he knew things would pick up toward the end of the exhibit's run. Ten days before the exhibit's close, 150,000 people had taken the audio cassette-guided tour of the forerunner of Roman civilization. The exhibit attracted about 75,000 people at its previous site in Morristown, N. J., said BYU spokesman Brent Harker.
The exhibit is doing so well that several hundred people were turned away one weekend, Winters said. The museum has expanded its hours until 11 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays to accommodate the large crowds.
On one weekend day 3,100 people took the Etruscan tour. The museum can handle 280 people an hour, Winters said.
The exhibit is popular because it offers something for everyone, Winters said. Besides the artifacts, the museum also offers Etruscan food, toga-tying demonstrations, an Etruscan bazaar and the opportunity for children to learn to write their names in Etruscan. The museum created educational programs that ran the gamut from preschoolers to post doctorates, Mason said.
The museum accurately focused on the West as its target market, Winters said. Exit polls showed 29.1 percent of the visitors came from the Provo/Orem area; 11.1 percent came from other parts of Utah County; 27.8 percent visited from Salt Lake County; and rest of Utah accounted for 14.7 percent of the museum's visitors. The Etruscans attracted quite a few people from neighboring states, including visitors from as far away as New York and Delaware and from foreign countries, Winters said.
An estimated 200,000 will have seen the exhibit by the end of April, Mason said.
That's good considering "only a handful" of people had heard of the Etruscans before the exhibit was unveiled in Provo, Winters said.
The Ramses exhibit, which was at BYU for six months in 1985 and 1986, pulled 522,000 visitors but it already had name recognition, said George Bowie, assistant vice president for advancement at BYU.
For those who haven't seen the Etruscans yet, mid-afternoon is the best time to come, Winters said. Mornings are normally busy with schoolchildren, 50,000 have seen the exhibit.
The Etruscans was the inaugural exhibit for the Museum of Art, and it will become the standard by which all other exhibits are judged, Winters said. The success also proves that the BYU museum can host any kind of exhibit, she said.
The museum will close for several months after the Etruscans leave in preparation for future exhibits.
This is the only time the museum will close between exhibits, Winters said. However, there will be special shows, such as a dinner opera in June, while the other exhibits are being prepared, Mason said. The entire museum should reopen around the first of August, he said.
The museum will replace the Etruscans with parts of its own 14,000-piece collection. One of those exhibits, 150 Years of American Art, will stay for three years, Winters said.
"That's the best of our collection," Mason said.
An exhibit of American musical instruments from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York will compliment the art exhibit, he said.