Newseum
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| Established | April 18, 1997 |
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| Location | 555 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, D.C., USA |
| Director | Joe Urschel, Exec. Director |
| Public transit access | Archives–Navy Memorial–Penn Quarter (Washington Metro) |
| Website | www.newseum.org |
The Newseum is an interactive museum of news and journalism in Washington, D.C. It opened at its first location in Rosslyn, Virginia, on April 18, 1997, where it admitted visitors without charge. Its stated mission is "to help the public and the news media understand one another better." In five years, the Newseum attracted more than 2.25 million visitors. The Newseum's operations are funded by the Freedom Forum, a nonpartisan foundation dedicated to "free press, free speech and free spirit for all people."
History
In 2000, Freedom Forum decided to move the Newseum from its location in Arlington, Virginia, across the Potomac River to Washington, D.C. The original Newseum was closed on March 3, 2002, in order to allow its staff to concentrate on building the new, larger museum. The new museum, built at a cost of $450 million, opened its doors to the public on April 11, 2008.[1][2]
Tim Russert, a Newseum trustee, said, "The Newseum made a pretty good impression in Arlington, but at your new location on Pennsylvania Avenue, you will make an indelible mark."
After obtaining a landmark location at Pennsylvania Avenue and Sixth Street NW, the Newseum board selected noted exhibit designer Ralph Appelbaum, who had designed the original Newseum in Arlington, Virginia, and architect James Stewart Polshek, who designed the Rose Center for Earth and Space with Todd Schliemann at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, to work on the new project.
This design team had the following goals:
- To design a building that would be an architectural icon, easily recognized and remembered by visitors from around the world;
- To create a museum space three times as large as the original, with the capacity for more than two million visitors a year; and
- To celebrate the First Amendment to the United States Constitution — in particular, its freedom of the press and free speech protections.
Highlights of the building design unveiled October 2002 include a façade featuring a "window on the world", 57 ft × 78 ft (17 m × 24 m), which looks out on Pennsylvania Avenue and the National Mall while letting the public see inside to the visitors and displays. It also features the 45 words of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, etched into a stone panel facing Pennsylvania Avenue.
The museum currently maintains a website, which is updated daily with images and PDF versions of newspaper front pages from around the world. Images are replaced daily, but an archive of front pages from notable events since 2001 is also available. Hard copies of the front pages are featured in a gallery within the actual museum. [3] Unlike its original museum in Arlington, the new Newseum charges admission fees to the general public.[4]
Building
The 643,000-square-foot (60,000 m²) Newseum includes a 90-foot- (27 m) high atrium, seven levels of displays, 15 theaters, a dozen major galleries, many more smaller exhibits, two broadcast studios, and an expanded interactive newsroom.
The building also features an oval, 500-seat "Forum" theater; approximately 145,500 square feet (14,000 m²) gross of housing facing Sixth and C streets; 75,000 square feet (7,000 m²) of office space for the staff of the Newseum and Freedom Forum; and more than 11,000 square feet (1,000 m²) of conference center space on two levels located directly above the Newseum Atrium. The building also features glass hydraulic elevators that are the tallest in the world.
This Week with George Stephanopoulos made its inaugural broadcast from its new studio in the Newseum on April 20, 2008.[5]
Critical response
Thomas Frank criticized the Newseum's original location in his 2000 book One Market Under God:
Maybe Arlington is where journalism has come to die, in a place as distant as could be found from the urban maelstrom and the rural anger that once nourished it, within easy reach of the caves of state, sunk deep in the pockets of corporate power, here where busloads of glassy-eyed, well-dressed high schoolers from the affluent suburbs of Virginia can play anchorman on its grave.
The New York Times' Architecture Review panned the second Newseum building as "the latest reason to lament the state of contemporary architecture in" Washington, D.C.[6] Of the Newseum's actual content, the Times stated that "a good portion of the museum’s earnestly sought attention is well deserved",[7] but "the museum’s preening does call for some skepticism".[8] USA Today repeated "mixed" reviews of the building's architecture and cited the number of visitors as a sign that the Newseum is a "success as a destination in the museum-rich national capital".[9]
References
- ^ Gaynair, Gillian (2008-02-07). "Newseum Sets Opening Date". Washington Business Journal.
- ^ Zongker, Brett (2008-04-10). ""Newseum to Open in New Home Friday"". Associated Press. Retrieved 2008-04-11.
- ^ "Archived Pages". Newseum. Retrieved 2008-06-22.
- ^ "Tickets". Newseum. Retrieved 2008-04-30.
- ^ Venkataraman, Nitya (2008-04-10). ""New Museum Tells Media Story"". ABC News. Retrieved 2008-04-11.
- ^ Ourousoff, Nicolai (2008-04-11). "Get Me Rewrite: A New Monument to Press Freedom". Architecture Review. The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-04-24.
- ^ Rothstein, Edward (2008-04-11). "Chasing the News: Mark Twain's Inkwell to Blogger's Slippers". p. 1. Retrieved 2008-04-24.
- ^ Rothstein, Edward (2008-04-11). "Chasing the News: Mark Twain's Inkwell to Blogger's Slippers". p. 2. Retrieved 2008-04-24.
- ^ Puente, Maria (2008-04-03). "Massive Newseum opens window on journalism". USA Today. Retrieved 2008-04-30.