FRANKFURT.- With over a quarter of a million visitors (252,148), the major highlight exhibition “Monet on the Normandy Coast. The Discovery of Étretat” came to a successful close yesterday. This makes the exhibition, following “Making van Gogh. A German Love Story” (2019/20), the most successful Städel exhibition of the past ten years and one of the five most-visited exhibitions in the history of the Städel Museum. With “Monet on the Normandy Coast”, open from 19 March until 5 July, the Städel Museum explored the artistic discovery of Étretat. The former fishing village on the Normandy coast had a significant influence on modern painting: its impressive cliff landscape captivated numerous artists in the 19th century. Depictions of the coast by artists including Claude Monet, Gustave Courbet, Eugène Delacroix and Henri Matisse made this remote place famous beyond the borders of France. The exhibition brought together around 170 outstanding paintings, drawings, photographs and historical documents, including twenty-four works by Claude Monet alone, and highlighted the enduring fascination that Étretat continues to exert to this day. Due to high public demand, the exhibition was open daily from 23 June with extended opening hours until 9 pm.

“The exhibition ‘Monet on the Normandy Coast’ proved a real crowd-puller and was a resounding success throughout. We are delighted that, with more than 250,000 visitors, the exhibition will go down as one of the most successful in the history of the Städel Museum. My special thanks go to our visitors from near and far, as well as to all the generous patrons and supporters who made this project possible. The Städel Museum has once again demonstrated its ability to captivate audiences by offering diverse approaches to previously unexplored themes in art history. With our major autumn exhibition ‘Mary Magdalene. Sin. Pray. Love.’, we are continuing to examine extraordinary art-historical themes”, said Philipp Demandt, Director of the Städel Museum.





The huge success of the exhibition “Monet on the Normandy Coast. The Discovery of Étretat” is also reflected in the accompanying educational programme: during the exhibition’s run, more than 27,000 people participated in 1,771 guided tours and workshops.The free digital offers were widely used: the accompanying Digitorial® was viewed over 65,000 times, the audio guide app was downloaded more than 55,000 times, and the exhibition film was viewed over 53,000 times.

Alongside “Monet on the Normandy Coast. The Discovery of Étretat”, the five most successful exhibitions in the history of the Städel Museum are “Making van Gogh. A German Love Story” (2019/20, 505,750 visitors), “Monet and the Birth of Impressionism” (2015, 432,121 visitors), “Botticelli” (2009/10, 367,033 visitors) and “Albrecht Dürer: His Art in the Context of Its Time“ (2013/14, 258,577 visitors).