Capitalizing on museums

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.

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