Cover Story During the past decade the
city also has morphed into a din- ing and breweries powerhouse, with 900 independent, non-chain restaurants and more than 30 craft breweries. The city’s three- day Richmond Folk Festival every October typically draws about 200,000 people per year. And city officials recently announced that in 2020 Richmond will play host city to the international Menuhin Competition, billed as “The Olympics of the Violin.” It used to be that Wednesday
nights in Richmond were the highest occupancy night for hotels due to business travel. Now, on Saturday nights “you cannot find a hotel room in Richmond. And we
“Terracotta Army,” the
VMFA’s recent traveling exhibit of archaeological treasures from the reign of the first emperor of China, drew more than 204,000 visitors and brought in about $3 million in ticket sales and museum gift shop purchases alone, along with $500,000 in new memberships. “Someone told me friends of
theirs from Dallas, Texas, have come twice, flying here just to see the [Terracotta Army] show,” VMFA Director Alex Nyerges says. “And obviously [museum tourists] stay in our hotels, they eat in our restaurants. They are adding to the economy in a material and direct way when
museum also is renovating and expanding the 19th-century Robinson House on its grounds into a regional tourism center and offices.
A ‘good investment’ According to the nonprofit
group Virginians for the Arts, arts patrons in Virginia spend 34 cents more per dollar on arts-related tourism expenses than average tourists.
Ed Harvey is president of the
group, which lobbies the legislature on behalf of the 680 arts, educa- tion and cultural organizations that receive financial support from the taxpayer-funded Virginia Commission for the Arts. Giving to the arts, Harvey
says, “grows our economy. It’s a good investment. There are a little over 17,000 businesses that are arts-related in Virginia and they employ 70,000 people. So the arts are a vital part of each community and do help the economy.” Harvey also is president of
The "Terracotta Army" exhibit at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts drew more than 204,000 visitors.
have 18,000 rooms,” says Berry. He recalls with amusement
how one Richmond restaurateur was complaining to him that his local customers couldn’t get a table. “It was a fabulous problem,” Berry says. “His locals were get- ting pushed out and displaced because there are so many people from out of town coming in to see the exhibits.”
28 JUNE 2018
we do these exhibitions. We are obviously creating an economic engine.” The VMFA expects to draw
a “huge crowd from throughout the mid-Atlantic and beyond,” Nyerges says, when it premieres an upcoming exhibit on the works of “Nighthawks” painter Edward Hopper. Perhaps in anticipa- tion of those future crowds, the
The Arts Center in Orange, a small nonprofit community arts center that hosts local exhibits and educational programs for children and the elderly. He’s seen firsthand how this arts center, supported largely by individual local donors, has revitalized Orange, a town with a population of about 5,000. “For quite some time,” Harvey says, “it was the only business open on Saturday afternoons on Main Street. And since then a lot more things have opened up.” The economic impact of a
thriving destination arts venue on a small city can be seen in Staunton. There the American Shakespeare Center sells 65,000 tickets per year to its performances of the Bard of Avon’s works at its Black- friars Playhouse, a re-creation of a 16th-century indoor theater in London. Annual tourism expenditures
in the picturesque Shenandoah Valley city have risen by 91 per- cent, or about $24.6 million since
Photo by David Stover, courtesy Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
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