Capitalizing on museums

Next spring, the International Spy Museum will open in Washington - a sure lure for anyone interested in the secret (soon to be not-so-secret) history of espionage around the world. It will sit a block away from the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery, now closed for an extensive three-year renovation. A short walk away is the Washington Convention Center (soon to be replaced by a more modern facility next door), which in 2003 will be knocked down and the site possibly used for a national music museum.

A museum boom is under way in our nation's capital. At least seven major institutions will be opening in the next few years, adding to the 91 loosely defined museums already in the district (that figure includes the Squished Penny Museum, for example, whose holdings are worth about $30).

Many projects are in the just-dreaming stage, while others are nearing completion. And some old, established museums are being updated with higher-tech exhibitions and that all-important 21st-century-museum requirement: "interactivity."

The Phillips Collection is expanding to create more gallery space, and the Corcoran Museum of Art has commissioned architect Frank Gehry to design its expensive new wing. The National Archives atrium, where the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights are displayed, is now closed for remodeling.

Downtown Washington is attracting the bulk of new developments, since the National Mall is now saturated with memorials, monuments, and museums.

The last available spot on the grassy stretch between the Lincoln Memorial and the Capitol (the hub of tourism in Washington) has been taken by the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, which will tell the native-American story in a 260,000-square-foot structure scheduled to open in 2004.

Future projects are moving northward, and the District of Columbia is thrilled that visitors will be lured into a less tourist-trodden part of the city.

Dennis Barrie, head of the development company that's shaping the Spy Museum, says Washington is giving his $30 million project $22 million in bond financing, in part because "the city is looking for projects that draw people off the National Mall."

It helps that museums today have learned how to market their concepts to the public, promoting stimulation and relevance without being too obviously educational. Message: This is fun time, not schoolwork.

"What you're seeing is museums going in a direction where they're trying to be more entertaining," says Mr. Barrie, who spent a decade with the Smithsonian, and has been consulted on major museum developments across the country. "They're much less scholarly."

They know they're competing for tourist's limited leisure time and dollars, so it helps to be engaging - and to be center stage in a city such as Washington, which sees 20 million visitors a year.

There's been serious talk of building a high-tech National Health Museum and a National Women's History Museum downtown, and Rep. John Lewis (D) of Georgia recently introduced the latest in a series of bills calling for the establishment of a National Museum of African-American History and Culture, under the auspices of the Smithsonian.

Lucy Duncan is the force behind the Museum of the Americas, which intends "to inspire, engage, and educate visitors about the struggles, achievements, and shared experiences of all the peoples of the Americas."

The museum exists only on the Internet, but Ms. Duncan hopes that within five years it will be a solid reality on Constitution Avenue, north of the Washington Monument. The exhibits, she promises, will include "experiential reality theaters" with graphics that will "virtually re-create the lost civilizations of the Americas."

The Newseum, a museum about "how and why news is made," which is now a relative trek from downtown Washington - 10 minutes away, in Arlington, Va. - has spent $100 million for a prestigious spot on Pennsylvania Avenue near the Capitol. It will cross the Potomac in 2005 with, of course, new high-tech interactive exhibitions.

The Smithsonian, meanwhile, seems to have enough confidence in its popular National Air and Space Museum to build a vast, 760,000-square-foot hangar-style outpost farther afield. The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center (guess the name of the museum's major donor) will open in 2003 at Washington Dulles International Airport in northern Virginia. It will show off large aviation and space artifacts that won't fit in the building on the Mall, such as the space shuttle Enterprise, at a cost of $250 million.

And Washington, home to all of these new museums, wants to tell its own story, too. A block from the convention center-to-be stands the old Carnegie Library. This is where the City Museum of Washington will be housed by 2003. Its mission statement includes a promise to "embrace the concept that the entire city of Washington is a museum."

A museum about a city of museums? Why not.

The Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon have shaken the nation, but visitors to Washington's museums can expect business-almost-as-usual.

Less air travel has hurt tourism. The Smithsonian Institution had about 32,000 visitors last Sunday, down from more than 70,000 on the same Sunday a year ago, The Associated Press reports. Hours and exhibition schedules are unchanged. But security is tighter. The Smithsonian now searches visitors' bags. Kristi Dangoia, a spokeswoman for the National Building Museum, says her museum has security guards at every door.

Nobody's sure how long it will be before museum officials will feel comfortable lowering their guard. "We don't have any deadline on it now," Ms. Dangoia says.

Some of the Building Museum's exhibits, meanwhile, are sadly relevant. It has just unveiled an exhibition called "Monuments & Memory," looking at how America has commemorated tragic events in its history.

The Newseum - only about two miles north of the Pentagon - has mounted an exhibition called "America Under Attack," with gripping photographs from The Associated Press and Reuters. The pictures are updated daily, and a 126-foot-long "video news wall" shows visitors how the story is being reported around the world.