Cincinnati Ohio Economic Development

Museum Center gets industry 'Oscar'

By Peter Urban • Cincinnati.com

WASHINGTON - When Cincinnati advertised the vacated Union Terminal for lease at just $1 a year in 1975, no one could have foreseen its return as a thriving, yet different hub.

More than 1.4 million people were drawn to the terminal last year to visit the Cincinnati Museum Center, which has blended together the city’s history, science and children’s museums.

“They have taken a real landmark building and transformed it,” said Marsha Semmel, deputy director for museums at the Institute of Museum and Library Services. “It was a transportation hub, and it has become a learning hub.”

The museum received the 2009 National Medal for Museum and Library Service award at a ceremony Tuesday. It was one of five museums from across the nation to receive the award, which Elizabeth Pierce, vice president of the Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal, described as the Emmy or Oscar of the museum world.

“It’s highly competitive,” said Pierce, a native of Mansfield, Ohio. “There are 17,500 museums in the country, and they had 70 top nominations. They picked just five winners.”

The museum, which is just 20 years old, was up for the award in two of the last three years. The winning difference, Pierce said, were the “great national partnerships” the museum has developed.

In 2008, it created the Freedom’s Sisters traveling exhibit, along with the Ford Motor Co. Fund and the Smithsonian Institution, which celebrated the roles of 20 African-American women in the struggle for equal rights, Pierce said.

Semmel said the Cincinnati museum also stood out for its efforts to draw youths to the museum and its willingness to tackle timely issues. When racial tensions threatened to divide the city, the museum developed a program within months to bring people together, she said.

Douglass McDonald, director of the museum, said that the award really belongs to the residents of the greater Cincinnati area. Indeed, McDonald plans to parade the plaque with its gold medallion around the city as if it were the Stanley Cup or World Series trophy.

“I’m going to carry it around the community and show it to all the people who have helped us over the years,” McDonald said. “The Cincinnati community earned this medal.”

The museum has also ordered 500 replicas of the medallion from Cincinnati’s Osborne Coinage Co., which will be handed out to supporters, he said.

Four other museums were also honored with 2009 medals from the Institute, which is the primary source of federal support for the nation’s 123,000 libraries and 17,500 museums. The other winners were the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, the Indianapolis Art Museum, Florida’s Museum of Science & Industry at Tampa, and the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga.

View the Cincinnati.com article here.