Cornell & Hopper, By The Numbers

I finally made it to the Peabody Essex Museum today for a quick shuffle - as much time as my deadline-driven lifestyle would allow - through the Joseph Cornell exhibition. Believe the hype. It's still hard for me to accept that Cornell made this stuff in the '30s and '40s. A true master craftsman, creator, and comic. (I love the collages made up of old magazine clippings.) My tight schedule made me even contemplate a return trip to PEM before the show closes in 11 days.

Being unable to disconnect pleasure from profession, I had to ask, before heading out of the Globe for my jaunt, for the show's attendance figures. And once I queried the PEM, I figured it only made sense to check in with the Museum of Fine Arts, which closes its Edward Hopper exhibition the same day, August 19.

And the drum roll, please...

Cornell: So far, the retrospective has pulled in 71,000 visitors as it moves closer to ending its four month run. The show hasn't been quite the draw of last summer's blockbuster, "Painting Summer in New England," which drew 150,000 visitors over five months. But who would expect it to be?

Hopper: As of Tuesday, the show, which runs May 6 through August 19, had drawn 190,643 into the galleries. To put that into context, the final draw for the "Fashion Show" (November 12, 2006 - March 18, 2007) was 121,994 and "Americans in Paris" (June 25 - September 24, 2006) was 139,355. And the best attended Gund gallery exhibition in MFA history remains "Monet in the 20th Century" (September 20 - December 27, 1998) with 565,992 visitors.

The Peabody Essex Museum's Joseph Cornell retropsective includes "Untitled (Tilly Losch)" (left) and "Untitled (Tamara Toumanova)" (right). (Mark Gluezian/Thew Robert Lehrman Art Trust (left)/ Lea Christiano/Smithonian American Art Museum (right))