A LIFE-SIZE "bouncy Stonehenge" has helped Glasgow's art festival to become the most successful to date.
More than 200,000 visits were recorded at this year's Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art (GI), one-third more than in 2010, with 30,000 visits to Sacrilege, by Jeremy Deller – the inflatable Stonehenge on Glasgow Green – alone.
New figures show this year's festival also experienced a 100% rise in attendees, up from 16,237 to 33,945, showing many people went to more than one event.
A new director for the biennial festival has also been announced with Sarah McCrory, a curator at the leading Frieze Art Fair in London, taking over from Katrina Brown. Ms McCrory will curate the festivals in 2014 and 2016.
The GI festival was this year worth £1,715,986 to the Glasgow economy and £436,878 to the Scottish economy in net expenditure, figures show.
Ms McCrory joins after two years curating the projects and film pro-gramme at the Frieze Art Fair, and was curator of Studio Voltaire in London.
She said she was moving to Glasgow in November, and backed calls for the Turner Prize exhibition to be shown in the city to reflect Scotland's success in the leading art prize.
This week, the Turner Prize show opened in London, featuring among its four artists the Glasgow-based artist Luke Fowler, who, if he wins, will be the fourth Scottish artist in a row to win the award and the seventh since 1996.
Ms McCrory said: "I am very interested in expanding the international element of the festival as well as still showcasing emerging Scottish artists.
"I hope to further add to Glasgow's rich wealth of contemporary art with bold innovative exhibitions, events and performances by both home-grown and international artists."
This year's GI, from April 20 to May 7, showed work by more than 130 artists across nearly 50 venues.
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