The Newseum (News Museum) in Washington DC, just off the Mall, is closing today after being open for only 11 years.
I finally got a chance to visit (if only for a few hours) a couple of months ago. A gorgeous building in a prime location, and a fascinating museum. When I visited, though, the display of current newspapers was down – I assumed forever.
Damn it-That was on my “To Do” list for my trip in May.
I gather part of the problem was that “gorgeous building in a prime location” bit. Those things cost money!
Well, that’s why the entrance fee was $25 (really!)
But it kept them going for 11 years.
And the article gives it sale price: $372.5 million to John Hopkins University.
It’s too bad. But the price was a hard sell in a city with too many free museums to see even on a longer visit. I went and enjoyed it. IIRC the ticket was good for a return visit the next day, which we didn’t follow up on.
I got to visit back in November. I’m glad I did. I had a discount from my hotel and only paid about $20. That’s not bad by big city standards but D.C. has a wealth of free museums and a trip to D.C. isn’t cheap. So, it’s easy to understand why it didn’t quite work. The Museum of the Bible is also a paid museum but I imagine they get a lot of business from Republicans and evangelicals who visit. I’ve been to the Bible museum and it was fine and didn’t seem preachy.
The Newseum could work in another location. How about the area where the Lucas museum was supposed to go in Chicago?
I was there in November and they still had the front pages displayed. Think I was there the Thursday before Thanksgiving.
I wonder if it would be possible for the museum to continue, in virtual form. The front page display, for example, could continue online.
And I believe the head of it was paid $650K/year. If all that money…building, stuff, salaries…were spent on journalism instead, would newspapers be in better shape today?
I can’t understand the logic behind this question. Why would money that otherwise have gone to a museum go to a newspaper instead? Different pots of money are not fungible; this is no more sensible than asking if all the money spent on doggie toys were spent on journalism would newspapers be in better shape. Even if the answer is yes, there is no feasible means of transferring the money from one pot to the other.
And $650K for the head of a major museum in Washington is utter peanuts. The job of a museum head is to get money from high-end donors. They have to be seen as equals. In a world where football coaches are normally the highest paid individuals on a college campus, the idea that a museum head should be paid like a fast food worker is ludicrous.
A long time ago, on some NPR program I listened to, the Newseum was an underwriter. The quote was “… and by the Newseum, the first interactive museum of news, located in Arlington, Virginia”. I wasn’t aware it had moved to the Mall until I read about its imminent closing.
I am ashamed to say we visited Washington while I was still working for a newspaper and did not get around to going there. But I think the stiff entrance fee may have kept us away if we had tried to go. Didn’t know about that.
Ah, this explains my confusion! I know that I have visited the Newseum, but I was sure it was more than eleven years ago. Now I realize that it must have been the original in Arlington that I went to.
In any case, I’m sorry to hear of its closing. It was an unusual and very interesting museum.
At one point the ABC Sunday morning program This Week with George Stephanopoulos filmed the show at the Newseum but they haven’t done that for years.
ISTM part of the challenge of a place like Newseum is that it “feels right” if it is in or around one of the newsmaking “capitals” e.g. Washington or New York; but at the same time, the bulk of visitors to those areas tend to stick closely to the core of DC or Manhattan where the other legacy Big Attractions are, rather than somehere where they have to deliberately hop on a train ride across the rivers. That creates pressure to site it somewhere astronomically expensive and compete with the established giants of the museum world, especially in DC the free-admission Smithsonians.
I visited a few times at the old location so more visits at that price was a hard sell. The International Spy Museum is another pay museum in DC. It relocated recently.
the only museum in DC I have ever paid to visit was the Phillips collection art museum because my GF at the time wanted to go and it’s only $10 on weekends. It’s free Tue-Fri.
I visited and enjoyed it - I think it was included in a visitors’ pass or with an open-top bus tour ticket I bought or something like that. The free museums close at around 5 and we wanted to go to museums after that, so it had that advantage. Cities like London that have lots of free museums also manage to keep a few large paying museums going, so I’m not sure that’s the reason.
Possibly it’s part of changing attitudes towards the press in general - so many people don’t trust it at all, or only want one version of events that suits their bias.
We visited the International Spy Museum when we were there and really enjoyed it. We did not visit the Newseum, but mostly because I was the only one really interested and it’s hard to justify paying that much when 2/3 of your party isn’t interested.