Almost 23,000 people visited the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands in 2025 – just a few thousand below pre-pandemic levels – with several hundred thousand more thought to have seen the gallery’s artwork at key venues across the Islands.
The National Gallery’s annual report for 2025, which was recently tabled in Parliament, revealed a total of 22,879 people visited its George Town location as well as its venues in the Sister Islands, an increase of a third up on last year’s total of 17,213. The Gallery estimated that a further 250,000-300,000 more people saw its art exhibitions while visiting Owen Roberts International Airport, the Health Services Authority and the Government Administration Building.
Art outreach
In addition to visitors, health workers and civil servants, the National Gallery’s artwork was also seen by Cayman’s schoolchildren, with 1,275 students taking part in 65 school tours of the gallery and 560 more attending its weekly after-school clubs and other events.
The National Gallery also held special outreach initiatives for groups including seniors, the Family Resource Centre, Frances Bodden Girls Home and HMP Northward and HMP Fairbanks.
During the year, the National Gallery acquired nine new artworks for its collection as well as 69 thatch work objects from collector Virginia Foster, and works by its artists were shown at national events throughout the year, including Red Sky at Night, Pirates Week, Cayman Art Week and Cayman Arts Festival, which was rebranded CayMusicA in September 2025.
At the National Gallery, the year started with “Island Underground”, a celebration of the work of Caymanian artist and designer Jawara Alleyn, and continued with the TimeBack initiative in collaboration with Compass Media and Dart. The TimeBack exhibition drew upon 60 years of journalistic photographs and was extended twice due to popular demand, breaking footfall records for the summer months. At the event launch, the gallery’s collections curator, William Helfrecht, said it had been a huge challenge to choose just 70 or 80 photos for the exhibition from the 330,000 images available.
The gallery is 45% funded by government, but has to raise the remaining 55% itself, supported by private and corporate sponsors, as well as revenues from events, private tours, bequests and fundraising activity.
Plans for 2026 include the building of a new hurricane-proof storage facility for the National Gallery’s permanent collection, which supplies its exhibits on a regularly rotating basis.
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