THE Beatles might have sung All You Need Is Love but all the Art Gallery of Ballarat needed was visitors - and that's what they got.More than 11,000 people visited the gallery's John Lennon - Imagine! exhibition between February 21 and Easter Monday this year.An Australian exclusive, the exhibition featured rare photographs of the music legend which were on loan from London's Proud Galleries.City of Ballarat cultural development manager Ron Egeberg described the attendance figure as "tremendous"."We had hoped to get 10,000 through but we certainly exceeded that," Mr Egeberg said."And the majority of the people who visited John Lennon _ Imagine! then took the opportunity to visit the permanent collection at the gallery, which was our aim all along."Mr Egeberg said the Easter long weekend in particular had attracted bumper crowds to the gallery."Over Easter, we had three times more visitors than we had during the same time last year, which just shows that special exhibitions do encourage people to make the effort to come and visit the gallery," he said.Mr Egeberg said the majority of the exhibition's visitors came from three areas - Ballarat, Melbourne and regional Victoria."We did have a number of visitors from interstate as well," he said."Not only was it the exhibition that drew people (to the gallery) but also it was the marketing plan which was put in place to really create an awareness of this exhibition."Mr Egeberg said the City of Ballarat's decision to make entry to the gallery free as of August last year had certainly paid dividends."By the end of this financial year, we hope to have had over 90,000 people come through the gallery, which will be more than double what we achieved the year before," he said.