Baltic to get pounds 2m increase.

Byline: By Nick Whitten

Visitors drop by 200,000

A Tyneside art gallery is to receive nearly pounds 2m in extra grants despite visitor numbers plummeting by nearly 200,000.

The Baltic on Gateshead Quayside has seen visitor numbers fall from 641,314 in 2003 to 454,535 in 2004 according to its latest set of accounts.

But despite this the gallery will benefit from an extra pounds 1.815m worth of grants from the Arts Council of England (ACE) by 2008.

However, the gallery's chiefs are quick to point out that the increase in grants and the fall in visitor numbers are not linked.

The Baltic says visitor numbers in 2003 were at a peak largely due to the impact of the gallery's high-profile opening that year and the enormous interest created by Antony Gormley's show in the summer of 2003.

The gallery in fact set out with a long term aim of attracting 350,000 visitors a year and is therefore around 100,000 ahead of its target.

The extra ACE grants are to help the estimated Lottery annuity of pounds 1.5m over a five-year period "live a bit longer".

A Baltic spokesman said: "There has been an above inflationary increase in the Arts Council of England's mainstream grant since it started in 2003/04 as a significant way of anticipating the running down of the Arts Lottery Annuity.

"But there's no link between this increase and visitor numbers falling.

"As part of Baltic's business plan in September 2000, visitor attendance was expected to reach 350,000 per annum based on a detailed analysis of the potential market.

"On this basis, at the three-and-a-half-year mark, Baltic could have expected to have received 1.2 million visitors, where as actual attendance was at this point more than two million ( about 66% higher than the original ambition."

Its latest set of accounts show the gallery's trading income fell from nearly pounds 1m in 2004 to pounds 781,353 in 2005.

It's sponsorship and fundraising fell from pounds 228,954 in 2004 to pounds 199,772 in 2005.

But the Baltic's grants increased by nearly pounds 200,000 from 2004 to pounds 2,857,345 for 2005.

The gallery's main outgoing is on salary expenses, which rose by more than pounds 200,000 to pounds 1,443,053 last year.

Property expenses also rose from pounds 621,488 to pounds 699,264 last year.

However, trading expenses and marketing expenses both fell by around pounds 150,000 between them.