Flying is stressful. Airports are thick with intense emotions –frustration at delays, anxiety about making connections, fear about yet again challenging the law of gravity. Museums, on the other hand, are places of quiet thought and gentle reverie.
The antithesis of the airport environment, right? Well, maybe not.
In San Francisco, an unusual museum, operating at the city’s airport for the last two decades, has been mounting well-conceived, beautiful exhibits about everything from shoes to surfing, weather vanes to lunch boxes, providing thoughtful insights into the human experience as an antidote to the angst of flying.
The institution, called the San Francisco Airport Museums (plural because of the multiplicity of its programs), is the first and consummate example of a growing trend at U.S. and world airports to bring culture, and a bit of serenity, to harried air travelers. Indeed, so well has it done its job that it won accreditation last year from the American Association of Museums, becoming the only airport-based museum ever so honored.
“Airports are realizing that people like this,” says Mark Hall-Patton, the administrator of the Howard W. Cannon Aviation Museum, which has been mounting exhibits throughout McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas since 1993. Similar museums now operate in such cities as Philadelphia, Phoenix and Honolulu, where curators use the opportunity to showcase their communities’ culture as well as provide balm for the spirit.
“When you’re traveling, it’s a pretty intense experience,” notes Edward H. Able, president of the American Association of Museums, who especially cites the museum exhibits at San Francisco International Airport as bringing “a measure of reflection, of contemplation, and that has a calming effect. That kind of attribute, I think, deflects people from that [airport] intensity.”
John Hill, a veteran curator with the San Francisco airport museum, which itself was inspired by a similar museum at the Mexico City airport, puts it another way. A primary goal of the exhibits, he says, is “to humanize the airport environment.”
And that they do.
Indeed, the San Francisco exhibits, mounted in nine galleries throughout the three terminals, seem like islands of real life amid the relentless plastic, chrome and glass of the regulation airport setting.
For example, now on display in an alcove in the airport’s central terminal is an exhibit featuring more than 30 African shields from Kenya, South Africa, Sudan, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Contrasting sharply with the mass-produced nature of virtually everything else in the terminal, the shields are defiantly human-made, formed from wood and tightly braided palm leaves, reeds and rattan. And each is fashioned in its own design, some in geometric patterns, others in more fanciful ways, such as in the shape of a tortoise shell.
Although the shields are behind glass, the warp and woof of their woven reeds is so pronounced that looking at them seems almost like touching them — and somehow touching the hands of the artisans who created them.
This is a far cry from buying a pack of gum at the concession stand.
Of course, there’s more to the museum exhibits than simply anesthetizing San Francisco Airport’s annual 42 million travelers to their ennui and terror.
“You have a lot of exhibits at airports that are, excuse the expression, not much more than a marketing arm of the local industry,” says Able. “What’s happening [in San Francisco] is truly an education experience. They’ve committed to the basic ethic of being a museum, and that is education.”
Sophia Shaw, director of exhibitions at the Field Museum in Chicago, remembers her astonishment at seeing the San Francisco museum exhibits for the first time earlier this year:
“I was stopped in my tracks at the visual and content quality of the exhibits. The exhibition I saw was called `Something Borrowed, Something New: A World of Bridal Attire,’ and it consisted of these mannequins that were dressed in the bridal attire from Bhutan, China, Guatemala, India, Japan, Palestine, etc. — all over the world. It was quite beautiful. I liked it so much because it was around a concept that we had thought of doing here.”
In Western culture, museums have tended to be repositories of important artifacts and documents, contained in freestanding, usually impressively looming buildings, almost like churches of learning. The museum at the San Francisco airport turns that idea inside out. Rather than being isolated in some out-of-the-way place, its exhibits are smack-dab in the middle of churning humanity.
“It’s a simple idea,” says Hill. “It’s where the people are. It’s where the objects should be.”
Established in 1980 and modeled after a program at the Benito Juarez International Airport in Mexico City, the museum in San Francisco has been followed by others at airports in U.S. cities such as Las Vegas, Philadelphia, Phoenix and Honolulu.
At McCarran International in Las Vegas, the Howard Cannon Aviation Museum is supplemented by a separate gallery space in the C-Gate area for temporary exhibits of the work of local artists. “We’ve timed people in front of the [exhibit] cases. They will spend five minutes in front of one of our cases. The average time in a [traditional] museum is 30 seconds,” Hall-Patton says.
Many exhibit curators at airports see themselves as ambassadors for the local region.
“Part of our mission,” says Leah Douglas, director of the 2-year-old exhibition program at Philadelphia International Airport, “is to showcase the culture we have here in Philadelphia.” So, Douglas displays almost entirely the work of regional artists and items on loan from regional institutions and collectors.
It’s a good deal for the artists, she says, and the air travelers. “I tell artists, on a slow day, you’re going to have at least 2,000 people walking by your work,” she says. “And, for people passing through, they get some sense of Philadelphia.”
Lennee Eller, the curator of the 11-year-old changing exhibits program at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, says it makes sense for airports to spotlight cultural treasures. “We’re like the gateways to our community,” she says. Yet, airports are also businesses, and Eller notes, “The big controversy — the classic airport rivalry — is that our programs take up very valuable space that’s prime real estate.”
“There’s a lot of economic pressure not to be there,” says Tracey Boutelle of the Chicago Children’s Museum, which is one of the few Chicago-area institutions to exhibit at O’Hare International Airport.
In San Francisco, the airport museum takes a more universal approach to its shows, selecting themes and items that highlight the diversity (and similarity) of the world’s cultures and peoples.
With no permanent collection of its own to stock the changing exhibits, the institution borrows extensively from a wide array of institutions and collections, such as the local California Academy of Sciences and New York City’s American Museum of Natural History. “We’re starting to draw from around the world,” says Hill. “We’ve had loans from Japan and Europe.”
The museum, which has an annual budget of $2.3 million, is a unit of the city government. Its staff of 25, all city employees, mounts 40 exhibits a year, containing a total of about 4,500 items.
And, unlike most other airport museums, the San Francisco institution doesn’t deal with the fine arts per se. Decisions on what paintings and sculptures to buy, borrow and display at the airport are made by a separate organization, the San Francisco Art Commission.
That doesn’t mean, however, the museum’s exhibits aren’t beautiful. For one thing, paintings and sculptures do work their way into exhibits when appropriate. A display now on in the central terminal of items from flea markets around the world, for example, features highly competent paintings discovered at open-air sales in Paris and London.
For another, the items often have an intrinsic beauty. The African shields, for example, aren’t just weapons of war, but also highly crafted artifacts. The bridal gowns in the exhibit earlier this year, not surprisingly, showed a common elegance from nation to nation, even while displaying a wide range of colors from white to red and a similar array of patterns and styles.
Yet, even the most mundane items take on a new allure when placed in one of the museum exhibits.
Consider the toy cars, trains, boats and rocketships, made from wood or die-cast metal, that were on display in “Toys from the Attic,” a recent exhibit in the airport’s south terminal. These, for the most part, were cheaply made, inexpensive playthings of the mid-20th Century and earlier, but, when gathered from the U.S., Japan and Europe, they reflected a fascination of children — and of manufacturers — with the unfolding mysteries, power and potential of transportation.
There was also a childish innocence about them, particularly piquant given their placement in a post-millennium transportation hub.
In December, the museum will branch out in another direction when the airport’s new international terminal opens. Not only will the new terminal have additional gallery space for the temporary exhibits, but it will also include a permanent museum and library dedicated to the history of commercial aviation.
Modeled after a passenger lounge from the airport’s 1937 terminal, the facility will house more than 10,000 books, photographs, documents and artifacts, including what is described as the world’s most complete collection of airsickness bags.
But, even with the new facility, it is the exhibits scattered throughout the terminals that will be most visible to — and will remain the chief antidote to airport-itis for — the 100,000-plus travelers who move through the airport each day as well as the 30,000 who work there.
“You’re caught unawares,” Hill says of the surprise and delight that the exhibits prompt. “It can take you right out of the get-me-out-of-here experience.”
CULTURAL ANTIDOTES TO TERMINAL BOREDOM
Trying to kill time during a long layover? Stuck in the terminal because your flight’s delayed? Well, depending on the airport, here are some things you could do to while away the hours:
– Golf–At the Denver International Airport, you can tee off between flights at the 18-hole Wingpointe Golf Course across the street from the main terminal.
– Watch a flick–Forget about truncated airline movies. Airline passengers can rent DVD movies and even DVD players from InMotionPictures.com a recently inaugurated service now available at airports in Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Seattle, Denver, San Jose, San Diego and Portland, Ore.
– Swim–Air travelers can take a few laps or simply dog paddle in place in the pool on the roof of one of the terminals at the Singapore Airport.
– Work out–The McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas boasts a 14,000-square-foot, 24-hour fitness center, complete with showers, lockers, a steam room and a sauna.
– Gamble–McCarran also has more than 1,000 slot machines.
– Pray–In Denver, the airport has a mosque. At O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, there’s an interfaith chapel with a regular schedule of Catholic, Protestant and Islamic services.
CHILDREN’S MUSEUM FULFILLS CHILD’S FLIGHT OF FANCY
`It’s a lifesaver,” Kelly Lockwood says, as she watches her 2-year-old daughter, Ashlyn, clamber around on the large, brightly colored, child-size airport exhibit of the Chicago Children’s Museum at O’Hare International Airport.
“Once, we were flying to Knoxville, and there was a nine-hour delay,” says Lockwood, who lives in Denver with her husband, who is an airline pilot. “This was the only thing that saved us. It’s the greatest thing ever. I think all airports should have it.”
The exhibit, which opened in 1996, is one of the few museum-sponsored displays at O’Hare. Unlike San Francisco International Airport, which has millions of dollars in paintings and sculptures in the terminals and 40 exhibits of accredited museum exhibits annually, O’Hare is fairly anemic when it comes to culture.
True, there are a dozen or so art pieces here and there in the airport’s four terminals, but about half are the work of children and teens from the Gallery 37 program, the pet project of Maggie Daley, the mayor’s wife.
True, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Science and Industry and the Brookfield Zoo are represented by colorful displays. But, on closer inspection, these all turn out to be advertisements for the institutions.
True, towering over the entryway to Terminal 1, just past the security posts, is a four-story reproduction of a brachiosaurus on display from the Field Museum since January. But, as visually stunning as it is, the imposing skeleton cast is supplemented only by a couple of lines of explanation on a placard. Much more space and information is devoted to the museum’s store.
The Museum of Broadcast Communications has a fairly dusty exhibit of old-time radios and televisions in Terminal 2, and a few other small cultural or artistic displays, such as those from the Illinois Artisans Council and the Little Black Pearl Workshop, can be found in odd corners around the airport.
The Children’s Museum exhibit in Terminal 2, co-sponsored by the city’s aviation department, is, by far, the most elaborate museum program at the airport.
Lockwood says she thinks of the exhibit as a playground, and so does Ashlyn. “She recognizes, when we are in Terminal 2, which way to turn,” Lockwood says. “She’ll say, `Let’s go play on the airplane, Mommy.'”
But it’s more than a playground, says Tracey Boutelle of the Children’s Museum, because it helps children learn as they play. “Kids learn best by touch and sight,” she says. “It’s some place where parents can bring the kids to burn off some of that excess energy and maybe reduce their fears.”
The idea of such facilities is catching on. Similar programs are now in place at airports in Boston, Denver, San Jose and Paris.
And such exhibits — or playgrounds — aren’t just for children, Lockwood says.
“The day we were here for nine hours, it wasn’t just the kids who made friends. All of us adults did too. We even shared diapers.”
