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Courting the Cultural Tourist
Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh knows its place in the effort to
draw cultural tourists to Pittsburgh: out in front.
At The Andy Warhol Museum, there’s a well-worn guest
book in the entrance gallery where visitors can jot down their
impressions. Recently, one visitor
wrote, “We had a really nice time with Andy’s art and now it is hard to
leave.” She added, “I’m glad that I
came ‘just’ from Slovakia!”
Preceding pages of the book are dotted with enthusiastic comments
from other visitors who came from South Africa, Australia, and other
far-flung regions of the world.
These visitors are “cultural tourists”—those who travel
primarily to see arts events or cultural sites—and what they find in
Pittsburgh is a diverse and often surprising blend of the old and the new,
the contemporary and the traditional.
And at the center of that cultural treasure chest are the four
distinctive museums that make up Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.
From the day it opened, The Andy Warhol Museum has been
a tourist attraction. Today, a full
34% of The Warhol’s visitors come from outside Pennsylvania, with six
percent of those coming from other countries. “The name ‘Andy Warhol’ is known the
world over,” says Tinsy Lipchak, executive director of the Greater
Pittsburgh Convention and Visitors Bureau’s Office of Cultural Tourism. “That kind of name recognition is what
cultural tourists are interested in.”
Adding to that built-in recognition is the international
reputation The Warhol is gaining by featuring brave, edgy exhibitions such
as Without Sanctuary: Lynching
Photography in America, as well as by mounting traveling exhibitions
that have already reached nearly three million people worldwide.
But before there was Andy Warhol, there was Andrew
Carnegie. “The name ‘Carnegie’ also
is internationally known,” adds Lipchak.
We’ve found that people have an expectation that they’ll see great
exhibitions and world-class collections—cultural attractions of the highest
quality— if the name Carnegie is attached to them.” [POSSIBLE PULL QUOTE.]
Building Blockbusters
Lipchak adds that that fact that Carnegie Museums is a
collection of four distinctive museums makes it “always part of the story
and part of the package” when her office is courting cultural
tourists. Actually, Carnegie Museums
has been an important part of the Office of Cultural Tourism’s story since
it was founded in 1998. President
Ellsworth Brown, then chairman of the Greater Pittsburgh Convention and
Visitors Bureau, served on an advisory committee to establish the new
office, and museum directors and marketing and group sales personnel have
been working closely with the Office of Cultural Tourism ever since.
According to Brown, attracting more tourists fits into
the museums’ vision of contributing to the advancement of the region. “When tourists go back home, they spread
the word about what Pittsburgh has to offer,” he says “This, in turn, helps attract new
residents, employers, and investors to the region.”
Early initiatives by the Office of Cultural Tourism
capitalized on major exhibitions at Carnegie Museum of Art, including the
triennial Carnegie International
and shows such as Aluminum by Design:
From Jewelry to Jets. “Cultural
tourists are drawn to ‘blockbuster’ events,” says Lipchak. “The International
and Aluminum were the kinds
of events we could build tours and packages around.”
That “blockbuster” strategy paid off in full in 2001,
when Carnegie Museum of Art’s Light!
The Industrial Age, 1750-1900: Art
& Science, Technology & Society became the centerpiece of a
campaign by the Office of Cultural Tourism called “Pittsburgh Shines!” The campaign promoted the exhibition and
related cultural events to prospective tourists from the tri-state
region. An estimated 23,000 regional
visitors came to Pittsburgh to see Light!
and, according to the Office of Cultural Tourism, they generated $2.5 million
in revenue for the city.
Carnegie Museums is again playing a central role in the
Office of Cultural Tourism’s current initiative, “Kidsburgh.” The promotion
includes a number of family-oriented packages that prominently feature the
dinosaur exhibits at Carnegie Museum of Natural History and the latest
exhibition at Carnegie Science Center, Busytown,
based on the work of children’s author Richard Scarry.
Creating first-day attractions
Like The Andy Warhol Museum and Carnegie Museum of Art,
Carnegie Museum of Natural History and Carnegie Science Center have proven
track records for attracting tourists and are poised to attract even more
in the future. Currently, about 26
percent of the Science Center’s visitors—more than 175,000 people—are
tourists. The Science Center’s new UPMC SportsWorks exhibition—the
world’s largest science and sports exhibition in the world—is earning a
reputation among sports enthusiasts.
In addition, the Science Center’s many traveling exhibitions and
Henry Buhl Jr. Planetarium shows are drawing international attention.
When the Science Center’s expanded facility, which is
being designed by French architect Jean Nouvel, opens in 2008, it will give
the city of Pittsburgh an exciting new
architectural icon that defines its skyline in the minds of
tourists. “Carnegie Science Center
will be a ‘signature building’ that brings attention to Pittsburgh the way
the opera house in Sydney, Australia, or the new Guggenheim museum in
Bilbao, Spain, have done for those cities,” says Allegheny County Common
Pleas Judge Frank Lucchino, who chairs the Science Center board. In fact, the project already has
attracted tourists—from Bilbao. This
June, more than 40 people from Bilbao visited the Science Center for an
exhibition and conference comparing the Science Center’s expansion and
other redevelopment plans in Pittsburgh with similar efforts in their city.
Meanwhile, at Carnegie Museum of Natural History, plans
to use the museum’s world-class fossil collections to create the world’s
premier dinosaur exhibits already have city leaders thinking about the
impact that such a project could have on tourism. In the April 16, 2001,
edition of the Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette, the editors wrote:
“For a city that has long debated what can make a decent ‘first-day
attraction,’ this expansion may provide an answer. Andrew Carnegie would be proud.” The redesign will place the Museum of
Natural History’s much-vaunted collection of actual dinosaur fossils “in
their world,” alongside the fossils of other species who lived at the same
time. “We expect to draw dinosaur
enthusiasts from around the world,” says museum director Bill DeWalt.
To further clinch Pittsburgh’s reputation as the
dinosaur capital of the world, the Museum of Natural History is planning
“DINO-mite Days” for the summer of 2003.
The project will place about 100 large dinosaurs, all distinctively
painted by different artists, on street corners throughout the city. The museum is developing plans with the
Office of Cultural Tourism to promote “DINO-mite Days” to tourists.
The Jewel in the Crown
In addition to ongoing collaborations with the Office of
Cultural Tourism, Carnegie Museums continues to court tourists by
advertising in travel guides for the region and through the efforts of its
Group Sales Department, which cultivates visits by groups that include
motor coach tours from neighboring counties and states. For example, the Group Sales Department
arranged for 566 groups—some as large as 200 people and from as far away as
England and France—to tour the Museum of Art’s Light! exhibition. Last
year, the Group Sales Department reported a nine percent increase in visits
by tour groups.
Overall, of the more than 1.67 million people served by
Carnegie Museums last year, about 30% were tourists. And many are discovering Pittsburgh
through the musings of travel reporters and art critics who themselves have
been drawn here by the world-class exhibitions and collections at Carnegie
Museums.
In a front-page story that appeared in the April 15,
2001, edition of the Fort Worth Star
Telegram, reporter Gaile Robinson
described Pittsburgh as a “steel magnolia” that is “blooming anew by
producing museums as it once did steel.”
The Hartford Courant and
the Salt Lake Tribune also
weighed in with travel pieces raving about Carnegie Museums in particular
and Pittsburgh in general. Even the
British travel agency Travel Telegraph posted an essay on its Web site
about Pittsburgh, titled “The Stainless Steel City.” In it, writer Peter
Taylor opined, “Pittsburgh boasts museums and galleries that a national
capital would be proud of” and described Carnegie Museums as the “jewel in
Pittsburgh’s cultural crown.”
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