Tauranga Art Gallery is reporting a surplus and a visitor number increase of 9000 people in the 2010/2011 financial year.

Gallery director Penelope Jackson says the visitor numbers increased from 47,539 in the previous year to 56,000 – and this has helped to achieve a surplus.

Tauranga Art Gallery director Penelope Jackson.

'Having surplus means we had to be fiscally aware and we've had to reduce staff and a few other things like that.

'It's a combination of repeat and new (visitors), but at the moment a lot are visitors to the country for the Rugby World Cup.

'It changes, so over the summer you get a lot of people who are holidaying and during the winter you do get repeat visitors.”

Penelope believes another reason for the gallery's success is a new website.

'We've updated our website and it's more interactive. In the last year we had over 68,000 page views.

'I don't have the figures from last year, but it's probably double.”

She says it's valuable as they have interactive schools with teachers visiting the site.

'Another measure of success is the programmes we offer around the exhibitions we have, and one of them is our education programme – 9500 children visited in that (2010/2011) financial year.

'They all came on the Art Bus, which we find sponsorship for.

'No-one has to pay for that bus. So no school and no children are left out.”

The Tauranga Art Gallery is a not-for-profit organisation and relies on council for 80 per cent of funding.

At its annual presentation, Penelope showed other examples of the gallery's success.

'We have a whole lot of targets that we met and in terms of success, one of the things I guess is the quality of exhibitions and we actually offered 27 exhibitions in the 2010/2011 financial year.”

Those exhibitions included Reuben Paterson's Whakapapa; Get down on your knees and Frances Hodgkins' works from Dunedin Public Art Gallery.

'An exhibition we have put together was the retrospective of Lynley Dodd and that was hugely popular.

'That's now gone on to Rotorua Museum and now it's at Te Manawa at Palmerston North, and then it's going to continue to around the country.”

Penelope says this exhibition is another major success story because it's not just putting Lynley Dodd's name on the map, but it also gets Tauranga Art Gallery out there and inspires people who haven't heard of the Tauranga Art Gallery.

'We're not even four years of age yet, so we're still very new.”

She says a successful art gallery is beneficial for the community.

'It means that we are well and truly established in the community.

'I think like any new organisation you have that initial period where you're finding your audience and trying to offer a balance.

'We have exhibitions that bring in families and then we have other exhibitions that will bring in photographers and people interested in current affairs.”