Blockbusters, Inc - three upstart art museums specialize in megashows

Art in America, June, 1997 by Lee Rosenbaum

Inspired by major museums' crowd-pleasing megashows of masterpieces, a new group of museum wannabes is muscling in on the blockbuster business. Best described as a cross between an art museum and an entertainment theme park, these new-style art venues have sprung up in three midsized cities. The first, which opened in 1991, is Wonders: The Memphis International Cultural Series in Memphis, Tenn.; Florida International Museum in St. Petersburg, Fla., is two years old; and the Mississippi Arts Pavilion in Jackson, Miss., opened last year. With no collections of their own, they borrow high-quality or historically important art and artifacts from foreign institutions. Then they surround the objects with mystery, drama and romance through atmospheric installations and lively audio-tour narrations. "We use blood, guts, gold and sex to get people in the door and then we show them the world's greatest works of art," explained Jon Thompson, executive director of the Wonders Series, which is now planning a show with the tabloid title "Death and Gold in Ancient Peru."

The undeniably high quality of many of the objects in the blockbuster-mill exhibitions is evidenced by the fact that well-respected, established museums sometimes pick up the shows on tour. Wonders's "Imperial Tombs of China, (in Memphis Apr. 18 Sept. 18, 1995) subsequently appeared at the Denver Museum of Natural History and the Portland (Ore.) Art Museum. Serious Egyptologists around the country were abuzz at the chance to see the treasures of Germany's Roemer- und Pelizaeus Museum at the Florida International Museum in St. Petersburg. "It's a very important collection, which many people in this country don't know about," observed Dorothea Arnold, curator-in-charge of Egyptian art at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The Hermitage Museum in Russia and the Vatican Museums in Italy are among the prestigious participants that have received increased American exposure and anywhere from $250,000 to several million dollars for loans of their treasures. Lenders regard these shows not only as fundraisers but also as instruments of international goodwill and, of course, commerce: at the opening of Wonders's "Imperial Tombs of China," the People's Republic of China's ambassador to the United States touted the show as giving "fresh impetus to building the relationship" between the two countries.

Although organized as nonprofits, these upstart institutions have objectives that appear more commercial than scholarly. They exist (and receive local-government support) to promote tourism and economic uplift in their communities while bringing culture to a broad audience. Traditional museums paved the way by hyping the civic image enhancement and economic impact of blockbusters. Now everyone wants a piece of the action, even cities that don't have major museums. With no art experts on staff and no aspirations to make a serious contribution to art history, the blockbuster mills are variously housed in convention centers or buildings that have been converted from former uses -- a department store, a county courthouse. Their cavernous spaces are elaborately transformed for each show to evoke the appropriate time and place -- pharaonic Egypt, czarist Russia, Napoleonic France. From the scenes-setting film at the show's entrance to the obligatory gift shop at the end, these extravaganzas are high on promotional pizzazz and showmanly savvy.

Among the directors of traditional museums who have hosted touring shows initiated by these organizations is Peter Marzio of the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, which recently presented a Florida International show, "Splendors of Ancient Egypt." Marzio believes that old-line museums are going to have to adapt to the challenges posed by the new presenters: "Many museum trustees are saying, `Gee, how do they in Memphis get this crowd of 500,000 people and here you've just spent $2 million on this exhibition of Joe Blow and we've got no one in the gallery?'" The blockbuster impresarios, he said, "have brought entrepreneurial skills into what have traditionally been museum activities and I think that, in some cases, they have outperformed the traditional museums in terms of the breadth and popularity of their shows -- often with very good works of art."

Impressed by the success of Wonders and its younger offspring, officials of several midsized cities, including Wilmington, Del., and Topeka, Kan., have expressed interest in setting up their own blockbuster operations. But the high-cost blockbuster startups do present potential economic perils, of which more later.

Masterpiece Theater

To attract a mass public, the blockbuster mills all follow the same basic script -- a scenario first devised by Wonders, two of whose former employees developed the Jackson and St. Petersburg venues. One particularly striking object or historic setting gets star billing and is heavily promoted as a must-see: the Topkapi Dagger in Wonders's "Splendors of the Ottoman Sultans" (1992); the re-creation of the historic council chamber of the Chateau de Malmaison in Wonders's "Napoleon" (1993). A brief, dramatically narrated orientation film sets the mood for a journey through architecturally enhanced galleries that re-create tombs, temples or palaces to give visitors that "you-are-there" feeling. The cost of these elaborate environments (called "theatricals" by Thompson) can run to $1 million or more. The Wonders Series constructed a circular stone tomb to house the star object from its China show -- a Han dynasty emperor's jade burial suit sewn together with gold thread. The show also recreated a Qing dynasty emperor's throne room, complete with a massive dragon-embellished, gold lacquered seven-panel screen and 6-foot-tall carved throne. Organized under the auspices of China's State Bureau of Cultural Relics, the still-touring "Imperial Tombs of China" displays more than 150 objects spanning 2,500 years -- everything from bricks of the Great Wall to four of the spectacular life-size terra-cotta warriors from the tomb of the first Chinese emperor.