TRAVEL / A MUSEUM FOR NEWS HOUNDS

The main atrium of Washington DC's The Newseum, where visitors can view archives and artifacts of several centuries of journalism.  Exhibits run the gamut of meaningful to the mundane, an example of the latter being an image of this blog's founder on the huge screen that scans the lobby for known tourists.                 Pillar to Post image.

NEWSEUM BY THE NUMBERS--One of the best early morning decisions made at the deco pie-shaped Starbucks on Dupont Circle was to stroll from afternoon tea at the Willard Hotel over to the Capitol.  En route along Washington DC’s Pennsylvania Avenue a rainstorm chased us into the nearest museum, which happened to be the relatively new Newseum (opened 0000).  Stunned by its creativity, architectural appeal and overall excellence we stayed the entire afternoon and left only because they closed the doors for the day.

Even if you’re not a news junkie tear yourself away from the richness of the vast Smithsonian realm to visit The Newseum, a 250,000-square-foot museum of news, which offers visitors an experience that blends five centuries of news history with up-to-the-second technology and hands-on exhibits.

Give yourself an entire day to explore.  It is well worth the time.  The Newseum is located at the intersection of Pennsylvania Avenue and Sixth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C., on America's Main Street between the White House and the U.S. Capitol and adjacent to the Smithsonian museums on the National Mall.

The Newseum features seven levels of galleries, theaters, retail spaces and visitor services. It offers a unique environment that takes museum-goers behind the scenes to experience how and why news is made.

The mission of the Newseum is to champion the five freedoms of the First Amendment through education, information and entertainment.

Newseum by the Numbers

How many words, images, artifacts and videos does it take to fill up a museum of news? Here’s the math.

643,000 – Total square footage of the Newseum complex at Pennsylvania Avenue and Sixth Street, N.W.

250,000 – Newseum square footage.

146,000 – Residential square footage.

145,460 – Pounds of artifacts moved into the building before the April 2008 opening, including a CONUS 1 satellite truck and the Berlin Wall guard tower.

35,000 – Total number of historic newspaper front pages in the Newseum collection, going back nearly 500 years.

8,861 – Number of artifacts in the Newseum collection (excluding newspapers and photographs).

3,800 – Images (cartoons, comics, front pages, photographs and other graphic elements) on display in the permanent exhibits.

3,264 – Age, in years, of the oldest artifact in the Newseum collection, a Cuneiform brick from Sumeria. The oldest artifact currently on display in the Newseum is a 1416 letter relaying news of the Battle of Agincourt.

2,386 – Press passes in the Newseum collection.

1,000 – Historic newspaper front pages and magazine covers accessible through 10 interactive kiosks in the News Corporation News History Gallery.

456 – Total investment, in millions of dollars, by the Freedom Forum, generous families, foundations and corporations.

367 – Historic newspapers and magazines on display in the News Corporation News History Gallery.

137 – Height, in feet, of the building at its tallest point.

130 – Interactive stations in the Newseum, featuring more than two dozen different interactive programs.

90 – Height, in feet, of The New York Times–Ochs-Sulzberger Family Great Hall of News atrium (compared with the 68-foot-tall Sistine Chapel and the 96-foot-tall hall of Washington, D.C.’s Union Station).

74 – Pulitzer Prize-winning photographers interviewed for the Pulitzer Prize Photographs Gallery. The Pulitzer kiosk features more than 15 hours of content and more than 1,000 photographs.

50 – Tons of Tennessee marble used to create the First Amendment tablet on the building’s Pennsylvania Avenue façade.

48 – Number of 32-inch monitors embedded in two walls of the 28-foot-tall theater in the Bloomberg Internet, TV and Radio Gallery.

27 – Hours of video in the Newseum.

15 – Theaters.

15 – Major galleries.

8 – Sections of the Berlin Wall, each weighing approximately three tons and measuring 12 feet high and four feet across.

7 – Levels.

2 – Television studios.

1 – Architect: Polshek Partnership Architects, LLP. In addition to the Newseum/Freedom Forum headquarters project in Washington, D.C., Polshek Partnership has teamed with Ralph Appelbaum Associates on several projects, including the critically acclaimed Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock, Ark. Other major Polshek Partnership projects for cultural institutions include the Carnegie Hall renovation and expansion in New York, the Santa Fe Opera Theater in New Mexico, the Brooklyn Museum Renovation and Expansion, The American Center for Wine, Food and the Arts in Napa, Calif., the Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University in Stanford, Calif., the Queens Borough Public Library in New York, and Scandinavia House in New York. 

One of the cool features of The Newseum is the ever changing display
of front pages from newspapers around the world.  If you click the Newseum.org
web page an app is available, which will allow you to view the day's front pages