J Cult Econ

DOI 10.1007/s10824-017-9297-x

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

The drowned and the saved: the determinants of success

in the Italian temporary art and cultural exhibitions
market

A. E. Scorcu1 • R. Zanola2

Received: 12 May 2015 / Accepted: 30 January 2017

Ó Springer Science+Business Media New York 2017

Abstract This paper develops an empirical analysis of the determinants of the

length of temporary art and cultural exhibitions. Using a sample of 659 exhibitions
that took place in Italy in the period 2001–2010, a generalized linear model with a
logit link and the binomial family was estimated. We also focus on the subsample of
prolonged exhibitions, using a logistic accelerated failure time model. The empirical
evidence supports the relevance of the subject, location and timing of the exhibition
on duration; however, differences in the estimated impact of explanatory variables
seem to suggest alternative marketing strategies for prolonged exhibitions.

Keywords Temporary exhibitions  Art market  Italy  Duration models

1 Introduction

Recent decades have witnessed an impressive rise of temporary art and cultural
exhibitions, in terms of visitors and economic relevance (Di Lascio et al. 2011; Frey
and Meier 2006). Several factors might have contributed to this trend: the long-term
rise in educational attainment and household income, as well word-of-mouth effect
and development of efficient advertising strategies (Waterfield 2011); crucially, cost,
finance and organizational advantages over museums (Foord 2009; Frey and Meier
2006) might have led policymakers to support temporary exhibitions, considered a

& R. Zanola
roberto.zanola@uniupo.it
A. E. Scorcu
antonello.scorcu@unibo.it
1
Department of Economics, University of Bologna, Strada Maggiore 45, 40125 Bologna, Italy
2
Institute of Public Policy and Public Choice, University of Eastern Piedmont, Via Cavour 84,
15100 Alessandria, Italy

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way of improving social welfare (Vicente and De Frutos 2011) and also an instrument
capable of stimulating the local economy (Di Lascio et al. 2011; Skinner 2006). The
rising popularity of temporary exhibitions and the related changes in the cultural offer
of a city or a region, induced an increased competition in the sector encouraging
museums to offer temporary exhibitions and special events (Castellani and Pattitoni
2015; Frey and Busenhart 1996; Hooper-Greenhill 1994).
Temporary exhibitions have a predetermined finite (and often quite short) life
cycle that is part of an optimal profit strategy. However, sometimes art exhibitions
have their runs extended. Why? Is the prolongation an adjustment to an unexpected
success or a late correction to an inadequate product development strategy? The
issue of the appropriate duration can be analysed from two perspectives: what
visitors want and what the museum/organization is able to offer (Neves 2002).
As in the case of the movie market characterized by the ‘‘nobody knows’’
principle1 (Caves 2000; Walls 2005), the artistic quality of a temporary exhibition can
only be evaluated after its premiere, through the reports of specialized critics and the
word-of-mouth judgement of the public (Elliott and Simmons 2008; McKenzie
2009, 2010; McKenzie and Walls 2013). The response, negative or positive, of the
public and the market outcome of an exhibition is revealed in the few weeks after the
opening. However, whereas unsuccessful exhibitions cannot be closed in advance,
successful ones might be prolonged.2 In fact, museums, art galleries and other
organizations have a strong incentive to meet market demand, by frequently adjusting
temporary exhibitions in order to attract more visitors. Just because of their
uniqueness, exhibitions in each period compete for a given amount of money and
leisure time of potential visitors. From this perspective, the prolongation of a
successful exhibition can constitute a significant source of profits for the organizers
(and to a certain extent, can be likened to the sequel of a successful movie).
The purpose of this paper is to identify the emergence of any differences between
the prolonged and the non-prolonged art and cultural exhibitions. To the extent that
the duration is a crucial part of the profit maximizing strategies, we try to identify a
set of characteristics specific to the two subgroups that can shed some light on the
determinants of the market outcome. In fact, we want to understand if, and possibly
how, the subject, the size, the location and the timing of the exhibition—as well as
additional covariates—influence its success.
In the art exhibition market, the identification of any possible predictor of a
favourable market outcome is crucial to capture attendance and raise profits.
Surprisingly, such an issue has been largely neglected in empirical research; this is
intriguing, because the very success of the temporary exhibition market is leading to
an increased competition and to a quick maturity of these products.
Given the huge variety of art exhibitions, any empirical attempt to capture the
determinants of exhibitions’ success might be considered naı̈ve. Indeed, there is an
1
In its extreme form, the principle suggests that no conditioning variable has a role in explaining the
success of a good or service (Albert 1998). In a weaker form, the principle recognizes that some
conditioning variables might exert an influence on the success of the show, even if the actual market
outcome remains largely unpredictable.
2
Exogenous constraints, like the unavailability of borrowed works of art, can sometimes prevent the
prolongation.

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extensive literature focusing on empirical analysis of the determinants of financially

successful movies, a sector which can be compared to art exhibitions.
In line with the empirical literature on the movie industry, this study attempts to
identify some characteristics of temporary exhibitions that anticipate the market
response. We estimate a generalized linear model (GLM) with a logit link and the
binomial family is tested as a benchmark on a sample of 659 temporary exhibitions
that took place in Italy in the period 2001–2010. Then, we explicitly consider only
the cases of prolongation, an unexpected change in the initially planned duration of
the exhibitions (at least from the visitor’s perspective) using a logistic accelerated
failure time (AFT) model. From this perspective, our empirical results show the
importance of the topic of the exhibition (fine arts, historical, anthropological or
other cultural subjects), as well as location and the attitude of public policies
towards culture, proxied by the proportion of public expenditure spent on culture at
the regional level.
The rest of the paper is structured as follows. Section 2 describes the dataset.
Section 3 presents the main empirical findings for both the full sample and the
subsample of prolonged exhibitions and discusses the results. Section 4 concludes.

2 Data

We collect raw information on the duration and the number of admissions to

temporary shows in Italy in the period 2001–2010 from the website of La
Repubblica, one of the leading and most reputable Italian newspapers.3 In our
dataset, we include both national exhibitions, which are likely to be characterized by
higher artistic standards and significant organizational costs, as well as local
exhibitions, which may be ancillary products developed to increase tourism (rather
than a strategy for the cultural offer of the location) and which often do not have a
market-oriented strategy (Di Lascio et al. 2011).4 In order to reduce the impact of
any possible confounding factor, we discard two types of exhibitions: those
supporting more important permanent exhibitions and exhibitions where a single
ticket allows admission to two or more distinct exhibitions held in the same
location. Many of the variables influencing the length of the exhibition refer to
qualitative characteristics and are therefore expressed in terms of dummies.
Table 1 summarizes the descriptive statistics for the selected dataset of 659
observations.
Total admissions, adm, are on average equal to 79,732 visitors per exhibition,
whereas the average length, days, is equal to 113, giving an average number of
visitors per exhibition per day, dayadm, of 671. Prolonged temporary exhibitions,
prolonged, constitute 20.3% of the sample.

3
http://www.repubblica.it/speciali/arte/classifiche/.
4
In our sample, the exhibitions ‘J.B. Wicar: ritratti della famiglia Bonaparte’ (Naples, 4 May–4 July
2004) registered a low of 711 admissions, while ‘Faraoni’ held in Venice from 9 September 2002 to 7
July 2003, was the most popular, with a total of 619,478 admissions.

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Table 1 Descriptive statistics

Mean (1) Min (2) Max (3)
(N = 659)
adm 79,732 711 619,478
days 113.3 24 327
dayadm 671.3 12.47 5155.5
Internal characteristics
prolonged 0.204 0 1
large 0.282 0 1
old 0.299 0 1
mod 0.300 0 1
cont 0.141 0 1
ethno 0.041 0 1
soc 0.085 0 1
hist 0.064 0 1
photo 0.041 0 1
other 0.106 0 1
External characteristics
north 0.611 0 1
centre 0.317 0 1
south 0.071 0 1
star 0.322 0 1
Xmas 0.425 0 1
GDP 27,702 14,968 32,200
Pop (,000) 5467 128 9872
exp_north 4.899 0 8.8
exp_centre 2.150 0 8.2
exp_south 0.431 0 7.9
Time dummies
d01 0.044 0 1
d02 0.097 0 1
d03 0.129 0 1
d04 0.097 0 1
d05 0.106 0 1
d06 0.064 0 1
d07 0.085 0 1
d08 0.074 0 1
d09 0.135 0 1
d10 0.168 0 1

We group the explanatory variables into internal characteristics and external

characteristics. In the former group, we include the subject of the exhibitions,
identified by a set of dummies: old, which aggregates Ancient, Medieval,
Renaissance, and Classical art exhibitions and accounts for 30.0% of the sample;
mod, for modern art; cont, for contemporary art; ethno, for exhibitions with mainly

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ethnographical content; soc, for exhibitions with sociological content; hist, for
exhibitions with historical content; photo, for photo exhibitions; and, finally, other
(excluded variable), for other types of cultural exhibitions.
As for the external characteristics, the dummy north identifies exhibitions located
in the more populated and affluent northern regions of Italy; centre, those located in
the central regions of Italy (Rome and Florence belong to this area); and south,
those located in the southern regions, less developed but notwithstanding rich in
terms of cultural heritage.5 On average, 61 exhibitions out of 100 were held in the
northern regions, about one-third in the centre (mostly in Rome), and only seven
exhibitions out of 100 took place in the south. Cosmopolitan vocation is very strong
for cities like Venice, Florence, and Rome, the Italian superstar tourist destinations;
these cities have been specifically considered by including a dummy variable, star.
Another dummy variable, Xmas, identifies those exhibitions that were open during
the Christmas holidays, 42.9% of the sample.
Among the quantitative explanatory variables, we consider the real per capita
regional income (measured in thousands of Euros at 2001 values), gdp, and the size
of the domestic market, proxied by the number of inhabitants in the region in which
the exhibition was held, pop. Both variables are expected to exert a positive impact
on the demand for cultural activities. The percentage of annual regional public
expenditure for culture, exp_i, considered separately for the northern, central, and
southern regions (the latter being the baseline case), is also included, to capture the
attitude of the public sector towards culture. Finally, we include a set of yearly time
dummy variables di, i = 2001–2010.

3 Results and discussion

3.1 Full sample analysis

In order to reduce the influence of outliers, the dependent variable days is

nonlinearly transformed using the logistic sigmoid normalization function (Hill and
Lewicki 2006), so that its values fall between zero and one. A GLM with a logit
link6 and the binomial family were tested to deal with the normalized dependent
variable.7 Specifically, following Papke and Wooldridge (2006) we consider the
following specification:
log itfEð yÞg ¼ Zb; y  Bernoulli ð1Þ
where y the dependent variable, is bounded between 0 and 1; Z are covariates that
explain the normalized length of the exhibitions. Table 2 displays the estimates and
the robust standard errors of the GLM method.

5
This is the case of cities like Naples and Palermo.
6
The link test has been performed to test whether the ‘link’ is appropriate. In the test the dependent
variable is regressed on the predicted values and their squares. Since the squares of the predicted value are
not statistically significant, the model is specified correctly.
7
The statistical package Stata 13 is used in the computation.

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Table 2 GLM regression

Coeff. Robust std. err.
results
old 0.105 0.165
mod 0.103 0.163
cont -0.055 0.176
ethno 0.348* 0.212
soc -0.045 0.189
hist 0.511*** 0.210
photo -0.520*** 0.183
north 0.858 0.746
centre -2.624*** 0.859
*, **, *** significance at 0.10, cap -0.130* 0.076
0.05, 0.01, respectively star 0.048 0.092
The dispersion of the deviance is Xmas 0.313*** 0.059
the overall deviance—given by
P 2 GDP -0.432*** 0.143
j wj dj , where wj are weights
2 pop -0.144*** 0.060
and dj is the squared deviance
residual for the jth exp_north -0.080 0.087
observation—divided by the exp_centre 0.387*** 0.121
residual degrees of freedom. The cons 3.171*** 1–157
Pearson dispersion is the
[time dummies included]
Pearson deviance divided by the
degree of freedom. Akaike (1/df) Deviance 0.139
information criterion (AIC) and (1/df) Pearson 0.129
the Bayesian information
Log-pseudolikelihood
criterion (BIC) evaluate the fit of
the models adjusting for the AIC 1.02
number of parameters. In both BIC -4020.7
cases, lower values indicates a N 659
good model fit

Focusing on the role of the internal characteristics, y is influenced by the type of

exhibition: ethnographical and historical exhibitions’ duration is relatively long,
whereas photographic exhibitions are shorter than the baseline class; the length of
all other types do not depart significantly from the baseline case (the ‘‘other subject’’
exhibitions).
Turning to external characteristics, the exhibitions hosted in a regional capital
and in the central regions have relatively shorter durations. The coefficient
associated with the superstar locations is not statistically significant: the length of
the exhibitions is not related to this specific location. The length of exhibitions is
also influenced by seasonality: a positive effect on duration emerges for exhibitions
that are open during the Christmas period.
A higher level of per capita GDP and a larger size of population of the hosting
area tend to reduce the life cycle length of the exhibition. In both cases, the effect is
likely to be a consequence of a more pronounced competition that emerges in larger
(and richer) markets. Finally, the share of cultural expenditure is associated with
longer durations in central Italy, while this effect is not statistically significant in the
other two geographical areas.

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3.2 The duration of prolonged temporary exhibitions

Prolongation is an unexpected extension of the duration of the exhibition. Hence, it

is natural to investigate the survival process specifically for this subsample of
exhibitions. On average, the number of admissions per exhibition in this subgroup is
equal to 114,106, opposed to the corresponding figure of 79,732 admissions
computed for the whole sample.
Whereas for these prolongations we cannot exclude a ‘‘pure demand’’ effect, we
look for any structural characteristic of the exhibition that makes the success and
prolongation more likely. In order to capture the relationship between a series of
covariates and the time to failure for this subgroup of exhibitions, we identify the
best model in the AFT class. An AFT model assumes that the survival function S(t),
is equal to:
0
SðtÞ ¼ ½S0 ðtÞexpðb ZÞ ð2Þ
where Z are covariates and S0(t) is the baseline survival function. The survival
function with covariates Z can be considered as the survival function with covariates
Z = 0 accelerated by a function exp(b0 Z).
These models are parametric and require a specification of the distribution of the
baseline survival function. For the selections of the models, the likelihood ratio or
the Wald tests can be used to discriminate among nested specifications. However, if
models are not nested, these tests are inappropriate and the use of the Akaike
Information Criterion (AIC) provides an appropriate alternative. Table 3 presents
the summary statistics about the selection process in terms of the log likelihood, the
Wald tests and the AIC. The log-logistic model dominates all the alternatives

Table 3 Model selection (prolonged subsample)

Model Statistics Nested models Wald tests AIC

Log-logistic (AFT) (c = 0.1029) LL = 33.447, None -2.935

p = 0.000
Lognormal (AFT) (r = 0.1957) LL = 28.416, None 7.168
p = 0.000
Generalized gamma (AFT) LL = 30.987, H0: k = 1 c2(1) = 3.61, p = 0.0575; 4.025
(j = 0.5434; r = 0.1826) p = 0.000 Reject Weibull
H0: k = 0 ? c2(1) = 5.16, p = 0.0231;
Not reject lognormal
H0: (r, j) = (0,1) ? c2(2) = 777.05,
p = 0.000; Reject exponential

The log-logistic model displays both the lower AIC value and the highest log-likelihood value among all
models. Since it cannot be formally tested against the other models as it is non-nested case, we cannot
reject the hypothesis that it is the best specification (Matias et al. 2009). As expected, lognormal produces
results analogous to the log-logistic model. The likelihood ratio test and Wald test are performed to
discriminate gamma versus Weibull, lognormal, and exponential models. The gamma model dominates
the Weibull model as a special case of the generalized gamma model. It also prevails on the exponential
model as the Wald test yields a p value 0.000. By contrast, the lognormal is preferred to the generalized
gamma model at about the 5% significance level

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Table 4 Results (prolonged

Log-logistic AFT model
subsample)
Tm. ratio (1) P [ Z (2)

old 1.197 0.151

mod 1.146 0.137
cont 1.141 0.171
ethno 1.575*** 0.242
soc 1.311** 0.178
hist 1.477*** 0.208
photo 0.789 0.153
north 1.597 0.788
centre 0.279** 0.164
cap 0.901** 0.048
star 1.059 0.079
Xmas 1.085** 0.044
gdp 0.904 0.223
pop 0.991 0.057
exp_north 0.950 0.056
exp_centre 1.203** 0.096
cons 166.75 123.02
[time dummies included]
Wald chi2 84.13
Prob [ chi2 0.00
Log likelihood 15.63
*, **, *** significance at 0.10, N 134
0.05, 0.01, respectively

considered, returning the overall best fit to the data, the highest likelihood value and
the lowest AIC value.
Table 4 reports the estimates (in time ratio form) and the corresponding P values
of the variables of the selected log-logistic specification for the prolonged
subsample. As the link test does not reject the restriction that the coefficient for
the squared predicted values of the duration is not significantly different from zero,
there is no evidence of model misspecification. The potential existence of an
unobservable random source of heterogeneity among exhibitions is also investigated
by estimating a frailty model. We assume an inverse Gaussian distribution for the
variance of the frailties and estimate the corresponding parameter h, but the
likelihood ratio test cannot reject the null h = 0, suggesting that frailty has no effect
in this case.
Consider now the effects of the covariates on the durations of the prolonged
exhibitions. In the time ratio form, a regression coefficient relates the proportionate
changes in survival time to a unit change in a given regressor, with all other
characteristics held fixed.

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Focusing on the internal characteristics, ethnographical, sociological, and

historical prolonged exhibitions survive longer than the baseline class, while the
duration differences for other types are not statistically significant.
Turning to external influences, prolonged exhibitions held in central Italy have
shorter durations than the baseline case. Hosting the event in a regional capital
(except in the superstar locations) implies that it has a shorter duration. Analogously
to the full sample results, opening over Christmas holidays has a positive effect on
duration. However, all the other external covariates are not statistically significant,
with the exception of the percentage of annual public expenditure for culture in the
centre of Italy, which is associated with shorter duration.

3.3 Discussion

A clear-cut criterion that defines the success of a temporary exhibition has not yet
emerged in the literature and among professionals of the industry. This is not
surprising, as there are several distinct dimensions taken into account by curators,
organizers and stakeholders of these events (Dean 1994). However, observing a
(previously unplanned) prolongation of the exhibitions is an unambiguous signal of
the ex-post success. Therefore, capturing the key characteristics of successful
(prolonged) exhibitions, as well as comparing them with the outcome of the non-
prolonged exhibitions can help to anticipate market response and to inform more
appropriate strategies, all the more important to deal with the growing competition
due to the maturity of temporary exhibition products.
Several scholars have pointed out that this market is characterized by relatively
low organizational, finance and institutional cost (Frey and Busenhart 1996). Low
barriers to entry often characterize the market for temporary exhibitions. As a
consequence, several locations are considered suitable candidates for hosting them.
Obviously, a city must be reached easily, comfortably and cheaply to be considered
a serious competitor in this ‘‘democratic’’, quickly overcrowded, market. Nowadays,
as competitive pressure increases in this market, successful exhibitions tend to rely
on a careful study of visitor tastes and attitudes, rather than on an unplanned offer,
often based exclusively on the local cultural heritage. However, local exhibitions,
even if characterized by a unique offer, in most cases lack exclusiveness, market
power and capacity of attraction. On the other hand, superstar cities (Rome,
Florence, and Venice) do not possess any advantage over the other regional capitals.
This is because even high quality temporary exhibitions are considered by the
visitors as supplementary cultural by-products, not likely to compete successfully
with the main cultural offers of these superstar cities. Hence, the locations at the
extreme of the spectrum (too local or too famous) are not the ideal location for a
temporary exhibition. More precisely, hosting exhibitions in Central Italy and/or in
a regional capital has a positive impact on attendances, but only in the prolonged
subsample.
Other interesting issues emerge from our empirical results. The subject and the
opening period of the exhibition are crucial. Perhaps because of their higher
frequency (and plausibly, stiffer competition), visual arts exhibitions are not the
most successful type of exhibitions; on the contrary, those with historical content

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are more likely to receive stronger empirical support. Opening during Christmas
vacations, and more generally over holidays, has a favourable impact on
attendances.
On the other hand, context covariates (GDP, population) do not exert any
significant effect on duration in the prolonged subsample. In fact, as successful
shows must attract non-local visitors, they are costly to produce, and a likely
consequence is the segmentation of this market, with few superstar exhibitions,
albeit not necessarily held in superstar cities.8
In conclusion, notwithstanding the supposed lack of barriers to entry on the
market for temporary exhibitions, organizers and curators looking for successful
projects have to consider carefully the topic, the timing and the location of the
exhibition. Perhaps even more crucial is the role of local government, that must take
into account the actual position of the city in the cultural tourism market and that,
eventually, must develop a consistent policy that develops a fruitful specialization
of the area. In fact, the regions of Central Italy have gained a strong position among
Italian regions and, perhaps not surprisingly, the public cultural expenditure in this
area exerts a positive effect on attendances. In this case, public financial resources
can contribute to support the high tourist flows characterizing Central Italy and,
consequently, attendances.

4 Conclusions

This paper has developed a preliminary empirical investigation about the influence
of a series of characteristics on the duration of temporary exhibitions. Using a
sample of 659 exhibitions that took place in Italy over the period 2001–2010, a
GLM model with a logit link and the binomial family were estimated. We also
consider the case of an unexpected change in the planned duration. We model the
duration of this subset of prolonged exhibitions using a logistic AFT model. In both
cases, the empirical evidence supports the importance of the subject of the
exhibition (fine arts, or historical or anthropological issues), as well as the location
and public policies towards culture, proxied by the proportion of public expenditure
spent on culture.
In the subgroup of prolonged exhibitions, the regional population size and the
regional per capita real GDP are not statistically significant, suggesting different,
and largely unpredictable, market drivers for this subgroup. In fact, because of their
quality and relevance, prolonged exhibitions are likely to capture mainly national/
international audiences and to be largely unrelated to local socio-economic
characteristics, as we have noted for the previous set of variables.
We are aware of the several limitations of our analysis: the duration and the
number of admissions are likely to be influenced by advertising expenditures and
the press and media coverage, as well as by other variables that are not available in
our dataset. The future agenda for research in this field should therefore aim to draw
more robust inferences on the determinants for exhibitions, also from an

8
A future field could analyse the dynamics of the concentration of the temporary exhibitions.

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international comparison perspective, and to construct a dataset that allows for a

more accurate description of several characteristics of the cultural exhibitions.

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