Art exhibition extended by two weeks

trevar said :

For an extra $4 you can pre-purchase your tickets and skip the queue. At least, that’s what I’ve been told.

That’s just so you can avoid queuing twice, once for tickets then again to get in.

i’ve heard the extended hours on friday nights are a good time to get some quiet viewing in; my out-of-town relos related this advice, but not sure its veracity now. they also thought only the first couple of galleries worth seeing, but that may be personal choice as much as anything, what.

and anyway, what’s all the fuss? lots of fantastic public art round canberra on display in all weather at all times, with no queue; for free!

We tried to go on Saturday, but gave up at the sight of the 3 hour long queue, but we bought tickets (managed to get them cheaply off other patrons who had given up waiting) then arrived at 8am on Sunday morning, armed with coffees, food and the paper, and were in the first group to go in at 10am when doors openend. May sound a bit extreme, but if you only have wknds to go, its well worth it.
My thoughts (no offence to the National Gallery), but maybe a venue in Sydney (or melbourne) that could handle bigger capacities of people would have been a better option…

hmmm so you are saying I definately have to take a day off to see it? Yes Gunghalin Al is right – lets have “late night viewing” at the gallery if they are going to have such a high level exhibition.

I’m resigned to not seeing it. Tried once and gave up.

Damn shame the gallery can’t see it’s way clear to just plain extending the opening hours until say 9pm, without that involving ways to milk more money out of people.

I mean – if they were serious that it’s not about the money but about making the works available to more people…

Lined up on Saturday for almost 3 hours arrived at 2:30 and got into exhibition at 4:50. Yes I know Saturday was always going to be busy but had inter state visitors and had bought tickets dated that day, many months ago. The wait was not an issue we expected to wait, it was waiting in the hot sun with no shade and being charged $4 for a bottle of water that annoyed us. Don’t mind buying water, but the gauging was a bit unfair, it was hot on Saturday and the start of line was out the front of the portrait gallery. Definitely can not pay $4 to avoid queue. Everyone in the queue had pre purchased tickets. Problem as I see it is that they are letting people use tickets of any date, or no date, so the number of tickets sold for a particular day do not reflect the potential number of people who plan on going in. I understand after seeing this happen while waiting close to the gallery front desk that you can become a member of the gallery, get a free ticket to the exhibition, and get to the front of the cue. I think that is inherently wrong also as it is not well publicised on the website that you can do this. A few people caught on and left their families waiting in the line, became a member, chose another exhibition as their free ticket, got their special pants bag and tickets, went back and picked up their family members and strolled passed all those in the queue….. Clever, but the gallery has this wrong I reckon.

For an extra $4 you can pre-purchase your tickets and skip the queue. At least, that’s what I’ve been told. I have tickets for next Wednesday, and I’m taking the kids out of school for it…

It was fairly quiet the day I went a couple of weeks ago, of course it was mid week.
Take an extended lunch and head over, or use some flex or annual leave and take the afternoon or morning off.

…”everyone else” except of course the infuriating NGA honcho who, with a wave of a hand, said on the news “it’s perfectly normal and OK to make people queue three hours for a major exhibition”. Said honcho would of course, never have to queue for a nanosecond for any exhibition, anywhere in the world.