Elisabeth Warsinske
2/23/12
Location, Location, Location:
How the Museum of Flight and Washington State Affect Each Other
The fact of the matter is, the Museum of Flight has made the right choices, has a
successful reputation, and is an attraction for the aviation industry and the city of Seattle.
Despite the museum’s good fortune, there remain factors such as attendance and
international popularity that are difficult to control. No matter what the Museum of Flight
did to renovate itself, locale was the one factor that it could not change and because of this,
it suffered a setback. There are advantages and disadvantages to the location of a museum
and the Museum of Flight has dealt with the issues and celebrated the history that comes
with residing in Washington State.
It all began with a group of aviation devotees realized that the progression of flight
was being lost with the destruction of its artifacts. They came together in 1964 to create the
Pacific Northwest Aviation Historical Foundation and preserve the history of flight while
educating the public about the significance of aviation. The foundation wanted to reach a
larger audience so in 1965 they displayed their collected objects and artifacts at the Seattle
Center; that was the beginning of the Museum of Flight.
In 1975, the Port of Seattle (the authority, managing international trade and travel)
leased a plot of land to the PNAH Foundation for a museum. The Boeing Red Barn was
restored and moved from Duwamish Waterway to Seattle where it became the first
building to house the Museum of Flight in 1983. The additional buildings to join the
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museum would be the Great Gallery, the Library and Archives building, and finally the J.
Elroy McCaw Personal Courage Wing and Airpark in 2004.
The Great Gallery was a $20 million dollar asset for the museum when joined the
Red Barn in 1987. It held thirty airplanes, half of which would be hanging in the air,
surrounded by a glass ceiling and windows. It was the addition of this gallery that gave the
Museum of Flight recognition as an attraction for Seattle.
Ten years later, another attraction to the Museum of Flight was unveiled. In 1997,
the air traffic control tower was added on Boeing Field. In the tower, patrons can listen to
live communication broadcasted amongst the Boeing tower and pilots, helping them to
navigate the skies. From the spacious window in the tower, patrons have a view of the King
County International Airport and see the airplanes that are taking off and landing.
In August of 2003, the Museum of Flight debuted its 5,000 square foot exhibit, The
Birth of Aviation. The exhibition, which included artifacts, photographs and replica’s of the
Wright brothers was unveiled just in time for the museum’s celebration of the 100-year
anniversary of the brother’s first flight.
One of the most exciting prospects for the Museum of Flight was the opportunity to
house and display one of NASA’s retiring space shuttles. In the early spring of 2011, NASA
offered its retiring space shuttles, Discovery, Endeavour, Enterprise and Atlantis to NASA’s
Space Johnson Center in Houston, Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum in Manhattan, The
Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the California Science Center in Los Angeles, the Museum
of the United States Air Force near Dayton, Ohio, The Smithsonian Institution in
Washington D.C. and last but not least, the Museum of Flight in Seattle. All of the museums
in the running made different bids for the coveted space shuttles from collecting names on
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a petition to hiring a marketing firm and setting up a website. The Museum of Flight’s bid
was building a 15,500 square foot Space Gallery.
Another bid was made for the space shuttles by U.S. Senators, Patty Murray and
Maria Cantwell along with nine U.S. representatives wrote a letter to the Boeing
administrator, Charles Bolden in April 2011, showing their support for the Museum of
Flight receiving one of the space shuttles. They wrote, “The Museum of Flight is truly first in
class in reputation and museum leadership, and has an unwavering dedication to its
educational mission. The facility has been an outstanding curator to some of our nation's
most significant aerospace accomplishments.” The senators and representatives kept their
message clear throughout the letter, that the Museum of Flight was the best home for a
retired space shuttle.
Though it put up a good fight, the Museum of Flight lost out on a space shuttle.
Discovery went to Washington D.C., Endeavour ended up in Los Angeles, Enterprise
traveled to New York and Atlantis was received by Florida. The deciding factor for NASA
about who would receive the shuttles was international visitors. The 2007 government
statistics were used to make this evaluation. The fact is that Washington does not have as
many global tourists as Los Angeles or Florida nor does the Museum of Flight have high
enough attendance numbers. In 2007, Washington State had 406,000 international tourists
in comparison to the millions that L.A. and New York attracted. The lower population of
Washington State also contributed to this loss. In this way, Washington has held the
Museum of Flight back, not only from receiving a space shuttle but also from further global
popularity.
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Tourism in Washington has fluctuated during the state’s history. The Gold Rush of
1897 brought 100,000 gold explorers to Seattle. The 1962 World Fair at the Seattle Center
attracted 10 million visitors between April and October. Washington is a popular state in
the U.S. but it cannot compete with the coastal states in popularity or tourism. There are a
number of contributing factors for occurrence.
In 2011, Washington State became the only state to close its tourism office due to a
lack of state funding to promote travel. The decision to do so was a short-term solution for
providing funding to the public education system. The other factors that make drawing
tourists difficult for Washington is that international tourists don’t know the geography of
the Northwest as well as the rest of the United States. Additionally, the name Washington is
easily confused with Washington D.C., famously known for the White House and the
President. Had Washington State been called Columbia (after the Columbia River), this
issue might have been avoided.
On the other hand, Washington offers the Museum of Flight something that no other
Aviation museum has. It is in the state that saw the beginning of the worlds leading
aerospace corporation and the largest producer of commercial jetliners and military
aircraft collectively. The Boeing Company began with William E. Boeing in 1916 in a Red
Barn in Washington State. It was here that William Boeing made the first test flight of the
first Boeing airplane, the Bluebill B&W Model 1. That was the beginning of what would
become largest aerospace company in the world.
Despite the disappoint about the loss of the space shuttle, the Space Gallery wasn’t a
total loss because the Museum of Flight received a full-fuselage space shuttle trainer from
NASA. The trainer is a one of a kind shuttle orbiter without wings that was built in 1970 at
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the Space Johnson Center in Texas. The Charles Simonyi Space Gallery is attached to the
museum by a sky bridge. This addition brought the Museum of Flight to a new level, both
architecturally and as a state attraction. The gallery opened early with an exhibit about the
future of human spaceflight. When the full fuselage trainer arrives, a permanent exhibition,
titled Spaceflight Academy will take its place. Spaceflight Academy will make its debut in
June 2012 and will show how astronauts train for space missions and will be accompanied
by the interactive space trainer.
Whether or not a museum’s content relates to the state or city it resides in, it is still
connected to its place of origin. Museums inevitably change the history of its city. Without
the Museum of Flight, the birthplace of Boeing (an integral part of Seattle’s history) would
have been destroyed but the museum preserved the Red Barn and brought it back to life.
The Museum of Flight could be in a more popular city but then it wouldn’t have the history
of Washington State. Not only is the museum in the same state as Boeing headquarters, but
also it has 250 local docents who lend their personal history about life and flight each and
everyday to patrons of the museum.
In the end, museums should not base their worth on popularity or international
visitors. A museum ought to take pride in the fact that they are an institution that preserves
culture and its city’s history and in return, its city provides it a community. The Museum of
Flight has grown from a group of aviation enthusiasts in a small barn, to a vital piece in the
history of aerospace, the history of museums and the history of Washington State. This is
because Washington and the Museum of Flight have worked together, using their resources
to make each other more cultured and beloved.
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