There are a LOT of school field trips there...with many schools requiring it as part of their curriculum.  However, I have been there twice and seen families, groups of old people...you know the typical museum crowd.

Freedom Center's future?

http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080613/NEWS0108/306130054

Skirball Foundation gives Freedom Center $1.5M

http://cincinnati.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/stories/2008/06/09/daily52.html

Freedom Center's future?

BY JESSICA BROWN | [email protected]

http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080615/NEWS0108/306150003/1077/COL02

Follow link for additional details.

 

Lincoln exhibit explores his decisions

 

By Lori Kurtzman • [email protected] • October 17, 2008

 

Yes, you'll see the hat. Two of them, in fact, charcoal black and iconic, preserved beneath temperature-regulated plastic and displayed under muted lighting at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.

 

http://news.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/AB/20081017/NEWS01/810170412/

Freedom Center lays off 17

By Lori Kurtzman, Cincinnati Enquirer, December 17, 2008

 

Hoping to cut costs as the economy worsens and attendance drops, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center is laying off 17 full-time employees by year’s end.

Museums must be open on Sundays.  I made the mistake of trying to go the Freedom Center about a month ago on a Sunday afternoon.  The hours posted on the door said they were open, but the doors were locked. In retrospect, I realize they were closed because there was a Bengals game that day. They are closed then, I think because they share parking.

Freedom Center cuts admission 25% in February and March

http://cincinnati.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/stories/2009/01/19/daily51.html

 

The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center is unveiling new “value visit” ticket prices that are 25 percent lower for adults, seniors, students and educators. There will be even lower admission prices for families, the center announced Thursday.

Per the Cincinnati Enquirer:

 

Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory will announce today where the city’s piece of the Berlin Wall will be permanently displayed. The location will be divulged in a 10 a.m. press conference on the southwest lawn at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.

 

Freedom Center To House Piece Of Berlin Wall

 

Per WLWT, the city announced Friday that the slab of stone will be placed at the Freedom Center.

 

 

Thoughts?

Gives me a reason to actually go to the Freedom Center now.

I'm glad to hear about this exhibit, and that it is permanent. I agree with Gordon - it gives more people a reason to actually go to the museum.

 

Since the people of Eastern Europe were essentially slaves to the Communist Party puppet governments set up by the Soviets, I think it's a real shame that the Freedom Center doesn't place more of a focus on it. Especially since Cincy has such a large ethnic German population.

Yeah, I agree that this will increase the diversity of exhibits.  Anyone know how big this section of the wall is?

4-foot-by-12 foot

 

My biggest beef with it's placement inside the Freedom Center is that it was a gift to the city, yet we'll have to pay to see it. I would have preferred that it been placed in it's own area outside the Freedom Center. Maybe even in the Riverfront Park.

 

^they have days where admission is free.  Also you should pay and see all the exhibits.  The Slave Pen is excellent.

I'm not against supporting the museum... I've paid to see it.

 

Wasn't aware of the free days you speak of.

This should be temporary.. move it permanently to Riverfront Park or somewhere more people will get to see it.  No one goes to the freedom center (in comparison to every other museum in the metro area, including the creation museum) and this isn't going to attract many more.  Most Cincinnatians will probably never even know it's in there. 

Maybe it will be placed outside the Freedom Center.  I agree, it doesn't need to be inside.

I don't know what this piece looks like.  Many of the pieces were tagged with graffiti, right?  If this piece were left outside couldn't it be damaged by our own local graffiti artists?

 

Personally, i'd be a little pissed if CRUST was on that piece of the wall.

This will not go down well in certain parts of the African-American community - I wouldn't be surprised to see Smitherman throw a fit.

If they start putting things like this in the museum, then the space should commemorate civil rights fights around the world but tied to American lives--dropping the "National Underground Railroad" part of the moniker entirely.  How would it disenfranchise African-Americans or anyone else if they re-purpose the museum to touch the lives of everyone.

I'm guessing that Cincinnati is getting something that looks almost exactly like this:

 

 

In my opinion, a museum installation is much better than an outdoor monument for a piece like this. A solitary monument would be disconnected and underwhelming. It's far better to include something like this as a supplement to a thoughtful museum exhibit.

Finally there is additional information...

 

Per the Business Courier of Cincinnati

 

The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center will display a 12-by-4-foot piece of the Berlin Wall on its southwest lawn, Mallory said. The Freedom Center will create an outdoor learning exhibit around the wall, outlining its historic importance.

^ Sounds like it will be the best of both worlds then. Outdoors (does that mean free?), but included as part of a larger exhibit of information.

^ Much like in Berlin!

I don't know what this piece looks like.  Many of the pieces were tagged with graffiti, right?  If this piece were left outside couldn't it be damaged by our own local graffiti artists?

 

Personally, i'd be a little pissed if CRUST was on that piece of the wall.

 

 

I'm worried about that, too. 

Hopefully they'll have the sense to enclose it in a acrylic glass box of some sort.

I'm guessing that Cincinnati is getting something that looks almost exactly like this:

 

I was in Berlin over the weekend.  Pieces like the one in the picture are all over the city.  So many in fact, you don't notice them after awhile.  I didn't realize there was one outside my hotel's from door until the last morning.

^Interesting...

 

Were they enclosed in anything or just open to the elements and are people able to touch them?

I'm guessing that Cincinnati is getting something that looks almost exactly like this:

 

I was in Berlin over the weekend. Pieces like the one in the picture are all over the city. So many in fact, you don't notice them after awhile. I didn't realize there was one outside my hotel's from door until the last morning.

 

thats funny, my friend and his spouse are going to berlin today for their honeymoon. they were going to be on the prowl for berlin wall pieces. given how much colorful sections are worth i had no idea they were so all over the place in public like that anymore, but i guess in berlin itself its not surprising.

 

^ They'll be able to take home a pocket-size piece for a few bucks.

Cincinnati isn't specifically mentioned in this article but it's interesting to see how many cities have pieces on display.

 

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-11-03-berlin-wall_N.htm

Funny how COAST's blog today mentions nothing about Issue 9, and they're now back to harping about red light cameras.... Fine, let them obsess about that while the city moves ahead with 3C and the streetcar.

 

COAST was pretty specific about being happy no matter which way it went, because the people got the vote and that was all they were after.  Could be BS, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. 

 

In retrospect, a casino between the stadia would have been a much better idea than the freedom center which isn't exactly bringing in throngs of people. That would have been better at the Harriet Beecher Stowe home in Walnut Hills. Of course, it can only help Broadway Commons, which should have had a baseball park in it already!

 

Can't you guys see the difference between entertainment and serious discussions? Would people really want to listen to pro-streetcar people talk on the radio all day long?

 

Good points.  The Freedom Center has underperformed since it was built, and it's only real clientele are school kids who are bussed in and then bussed right out.  If anything, The Banks will help the Freedom Center stay afloat, whereas I think the center, focal point of the whole development should be the thing bringing people in.  At least a streetcar will be able to circulate the huge amount of people the Casino is going to be bringing to downtown down to The Banks where they can enjoy the retail.

Don't give COAST an inch. If you haven't learned by now that everything they do is a lie you're never going to. 

 

Attendance at large museums, zoos, etc. is driven by children. Not sure why that's cited as a specific characteristic of the Freedom Center and not Union Terminal, the art museum, etc. 

 

  It would be interesting to know the attendance split by school field trip versus non school field trip.

 

  The zoo has a lot of school field trips. You can tell by all the school buses. But the zoo also has a lot of families.

 

  I found out that the zoo has had record attendance this year, by the way. The attribute it to the bad economy. Families are going to the zoo instead of taking longer trips.

 

 

Don't give COAST an inch. If you haven't learned by now that everything they do is a lie you're never going to. 

 

Attendance at large museums, zoos, etc. is driven by children. Not sure why that's cited as a specific characteristic of the Freedom Center and not Union Terminal, the art museum, etc. 

 

I can't find stats to back it up, but I would bet the farm that the Zoo and Museum Center have a much higher percentage of visitors that are families with kids, rather than school trips.  Not to mention they have a lasting appeal that the Freedom Center just does not have.  The Zoo and Museum each do around a million in annual attendance, the Freedom Center does less than 200,000.  For comparison sake, the Creation Museum does almost 350,000 per year, very few of which are school provided trips.

 

The point I was trying to make is that it seems like a bad fit to me.  I think that both downtown and the Freedom Center would be better off if some more thought would have gone into the arrangement. 

 

 

 

No.  The vote they wanted the people to have was the vote on any expenditure on any rail project in Cincinnati.  Not the vote that happened yesterday, which is what you implied.  I mean, that's just nonsensical - if they just wanted the vote they got yesterday, the result would have never mattered, and they would have succeeded just by gathering 6000 signatures.

 

No, COAST lost yesterday.  They care, and yes, anything else is BS, and not deserving of any benefit, from doubts or otherwise.

 

I heard from a number of COAST and other Issue 9 supporters that they would be fine with either outcome.  Of course they prefer that it passed, but half their platform was built on the "we demand a vote" concept, and if the people vote that they really don't want a vote, then they have spoken.  I always try to see things from neutral ground with an open mind, and then make my decisions.

 

Before you go all up in arms against me, know that I spent the last 3 Saturday's knocking on doors asking people to vote no on 9!

The Freedom Center did not exist before the Freedom Center, and it used faulty justification for its construction. 500,000 visitors a year! Appease the black population in Cincinnati post-riots! Educational experience! Fiscally responsible and nearly self-sufficient. Except that it draws fewer than 200,000 a year, NAACP is still ticked and they are asking for more money with each coming crisis. If the Freedom Center had existed before, and was looking for newer facilities due to its popularity, then it could be justified. Right now, it is one giant copper boondoogle on the riverfront.

^

 

The Freedom Center was conceived well before the "riots" of 2001.

The Freedom Center isn't quite water under the bridge. Perhaps in 20-30 years it will evolve into a significant institution and everyone will forget its bleak beginnings.  Typically an institution moves to a high profile location after having established itself; here the cart was in front of the horse.  This happened in part because the push to build the freedom center came along at the same time as the stadium projects.  There was and still is a ton of land to fill between those stadiums, and the Freedom Center had first dibs and so naturally they chose the center parcel. Who could have survived politically who demanded the Freedom Center not be located on the riverfront? Nothing else was competing for that location. 

 

Further, the value of a museum/zoo/whatever shouldn't be gauged by attendance alone.  We have a nice zoo, but it's also over 100 years old and has had generations to evolve into what it is.  I don't think the museum center museums are particularly good museums.  The new cave is definitely not as good as the old cave, most Omnimax movies are hopelessly cheesy, etc.   

 

 

Sorry, going off-topic here, will recreate in another thread if desired.

The Freedom Center is such an odd mix of history and political correctness. Driehaus and others are looking to get it swallowed by the national park system and become a part of a emancipation museum that some Congress folks are pushing.

 

If the casino folks are willing to pay to bring (or at least sponsor) the streetcar over to the east that would be great, but yeah it has to be planned through to Gilbert even if it takes a while to get up Gilbert - though even stopping at Channel 9 would be very useful - put an escalator up to Mt. Adams and you've got a great tourist-resident connection.

The Freedom Center did not exist before the Freedom Center, and it used faulty justification for its construction. 500,000 visitors a year! Appease the black population in Cincinnati post-riots! Educational experience! Fiscally responsible and nearly self-sufficient. Except that it draws fewer than 200,000 a year, NAACP is still ticked and they are asking for more money with each coming crisis. If the Freedom Center had existed before, and was looking for newer facilities due to its popularity, then it could be justified. Right now, it is one giant copper boondoogle on the riverfront.

 

This isn't true at all.  Also, if speak with the director of the Museum Center, he will tell you that they lost a million dollars off base revenue after the 2001 riots and have not recovered those lost base revenues to date.  They've been able to make up the shortfall by having more special exhibits (Bodies, etc.) but the riots lost them the average parent who asked their kid "Do you want to go to the Natural History Museum today?"  It's not surprising that the Freedom Center never got off the ground, since its opening coincided with folks avoiding downtown.

There are receptions and other events at the Freedom Center all the time.  B&B Riverboats has a catering contract with them and they often cater two or more events per week there.  An obvious way for The Freedom Center to accumulate unique objects (museums tend to be built to house unique, fragile objects) is to start building a large art collection.  It's never going to be able to fill the place with exhibits consisting of relics from the slavery era and pre-Civil Rights era because what little of that stuff that survived is already accounted for.

 

Newer cities have major art museums that lack antiquities, especially Houston and Los Angeles. We've got a few mummies and urns and a bunch of mediocre 19th century paintings of American landscapes, but Houston and LA crush our 20th century collections.  There's no reason why the Freedom Center can't start a collection and get more aggressive in its staging of traveling exhibits. Obviously, it could build a collection distinct from what general art museums have. 

 

^I think they were trying to build it on the same lines as the incredibly popular Holocaust Museum in DC, but it just didn't work out as well, for whatever reason.

I feel like if they springboard off of the installation of the piece of the Berlin Wall and use it to stage exhibits of all sorts of freedom from various oppressions then they will do better.

 

Of course, this is a very different and very necessary museum.  Of course it's not going to do as much business as an art museum because it is slapping us in the face with the ugliness of humanity.  It shows us what atrocities we are capable of but also shows how the human spirit can overcome all odds.

 

It's a lot nicer to go look at a few Monets than to see real horror.  Can we really say which one is more important?

^I think they were trying to build it on the same lines as the incredibly popular Holocaust Museum in DC, but it just didn't work out as well, for whatever reason.

 

The DC Museums feed off each other's traffic, which doesn't exist for the Freedom Center.  Seems you could get some traffic from those Bengals games though.  Maybe they should try opening on those Sundays.

They'll do okay when the banks are built - that's it.  Museums need strong foot traffic and just strong ease of access, which they haven't had because they are kind of stuck in an oasis.

Installation has begun... It looks as if our piece of the Berlin Wall is actually "pieces".  :?

If they start putting things like this in the museum, then the space should commemorate civil rights fights around the world but tied to American lives--dropping the "National Underground Railroad" part of the moniker entirely. How would it disenfranchise African-Americans or anyone else if they re-purpose the museum to touch the lives of everyone.

 

Wholly agreed. Maybe it can prop up its lagging visitor count and funds while it is at it...

I saw a lady walking in today carrying one of those over-sized checks.  It looked like it was for $10k. Not sure who it was from though.