Matisse exhibition drew record visitor numbers, Tate says

LONDON (Reuters) - An exhibition of paper cut-outs by the French artist Henri Matisse drew more than 560,000 visitors to London's Tate Modern, making it the most popular show ever mounted at the museum, the Tate said on Monday. The cut-outs were works that Matisse created late in his career and were made with construction paper that he cut into shapes and mounted on canvas, wood or some other support. "It is testament to the power and accessibility of Matisse’s work that the exhibition has captured imaginations of visitors of all ages," Tate Director Nicholas Serota said. The show will be staged next at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where it will be on view from Oct. 12 through Feb. 8. It ran for almost five months in London and was the first exhibition at the Tate Modern, which is housed in a converted electrical-generating plant on the banks of the Thames, to attract more than half a million people. Across its four sites, the Tate said it attracted 7.04 million visitors in the 2013-2014 season. It said Tate Modern retained its position as the most visited gallery of modern and contemporary art in the world with 4.8 million visitors. (Reporting by Michael Roddy; Editing by Crispian Balmer)