30 June 2008
Most-Visited U.S. Museums Are Family-Friendly Destinations
Americans increasingly plan vacations around museum visits
Washington -- With a shortage of surplus cash, many American families are finding vacations centered around visits to museums to be an educational and economical solution to the annual “Where do we go for vacation?” question.
The American Association of Museums estimates that there are 600 million visits annually to museums across the nation. The most-visited museum complex in the United States is the Smithsonian Institution, in the nation's capital, with three of the top five most-visited museums under its umbrella.
Number 1 is the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, which contains more than 125 million natural science specimens and cultural artifacts, including a huge collection of dinosaur fossils, famous gemstones and 35,000 meteorites. In September, the museum will open its renovated Ocean Hall, which teaches visitors about the connection between marine life and their own lives.
The second most-visited American museum is the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. Interactive exhibits, flight simulators and a touchable moon rock are some of the reasons the Air and Space Museum is a big favorite with youngsters.
“Kids just love looking at the aircraft and rockets,” says Isabel Lara, the museum’s public affairs specialist. “It’s a very kid-friendly museum. You get to actually see the spaceships that landed on the moon, and going to the moon is every little child’s dream!” Adults’ dreams are stirred, too, when they see the Spirit of St. Louis, the plane Charles Lindbergh piloted in the first solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927, or the Wright Flyer, which made the first powered flight in 1903.
The National Gallery of Art is the third most popular museum in the United States and the most-visited U.S. art museum. It houses one of the finest collections of Western painting and sculpture in the world.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, also known as the Met, is the fourth most-visited museum in the United States. Its collection contains more than two million works of art, including Medieval, the European masters, American, African, Asian, Byzantine and Islamic art.
The museum includes fascinating recreated interiors, ranging from the style of first-century Rome through the 20th-century “organic architecture” of Frank Lloyd Wright. Children particularly love the Met’s Department of Arms and Armor, with collection pieces ranging in period from dynastic Egypt through the 20th century.
The Ellis Island Immigration Museum, also in New York, makes it into the top 10 of most-visited American museums. From 1892 to 1954, this depot processed nearly 12 million immigrants to America. Kids often find this symbol of America’s heritage fascinating, not least because the museum has computer and multimedia technology available for investigating the stories of their own ancestors’ journeys to America. There are three floors of self-guided exhibits, including personal artifacts of travelers such as baggage, clothing, passports, and steamer and railroad tickets.
For most children, visiting Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute Science Museum is a great adventure; the museum offers hands-on exhibits including a giant, walk-through heart and a 350-ton steam locomotive. Everything at the Franklin Institute is designed to inspire scientific curiosity, such as the model space-research station, which intrigues children and adults alike. On exhibit until November is “Real Pirates,” the world’s first exhibition of authenticated pirate treasure, culled from the Whydah, a British pirate ship that sank off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in 1717.
One of the most popular Midwestern museums is the Children’s Museum in Indianapolis, with 1.2 million visitors in 2007. Interactive exhibits include the dinosaur-themed “Dinosphere: Now You’re in Their World,” a model of an Egyptian pyramid and the largest planetarium in Indiana.
Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History has delighted children since 1893 with its diverse zoological collections and cultural anthropology exhibits. “Sue,” the largest and most complete skeleton of Tyrannosaurus rex ever found, is a favorite, as are other specimens from an enormous collection of dinosaur fossils. The American Indian exhibit intrigues visitors with its collection of totem poles and its Pawnee Earth Lodge, created to explain the traditional ways of the Pawnee Indians, a Nebraska tribe. On exhibit until September is “Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns, and Mermaids,” a big hit with visiting children.
“In our new Crown Family Play Lab, children can dress up like animals and play in a woodland setting, create their own works of art, play musical instruments from around the world, examine real fossils, learn how dinosaurs lived, and much more,” says Nancy O’Shea, public relations director at the Field Museum.
Moving even further west, the Exploratorium -- a public science museum -- is one of San Francisco’s most popular museums, with over half a million visitors annually. The Exploratorium is dedicated to the teaching of science through interactive features, such as the Tactile Dome, a three-dimensional, pitch-black labyrinth through which visitors must navigate using only their sense of touch. Other notable exhibits include “Faultline,” which teaches visitors about the science of earthquakes, and “Journey to Mars.”
Increasingly, museums are hiring well-known architects to create innovative designs for their buildings, and one of the most striking examples is the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, which opened in 1997. Set on a hilltop in the Santa Monica Mountains, the Getty Museum draws as much attention for its modern architecture (designed by Richard Meier) as it does for the art it contains. In 2007, more than 1.3 million visitors saw the museum’s collection of European sculpture, paintings, illuminated manuscripts and decorative arts, as well as European and American photographs. The Getty also houses an extensive collection of Greek, Roman and Etruscan antiquities.
A vacation centered around a museum visit leads families to remember the past, understand the present more deeply, and educate for the future -- all while having a great deal of fun.
