Museums as ‘Flagships’ of Urban Development

Chris Hamnett 
(King’s College, London) 
and 
Noam Shoval 
(The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

Quote as:

Hamnett, C. and Shoval, N. (2003) 'Museums as 'Flagships' of Urban 
Development', in L. M. Hoffman, D. Judd and S. S. Fainstein (eds.), Cities 
and Visitors: Regulating People, Markets, and City Space. Oxford: Blackwell.

Museums as ‘Flagships’ of Urban Development

Chris Hamnett 
(King’s College, London) 
and 
Noam Shoval 
(The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

Once it [the museum] was a place that had instruction and the propagation of a particular view of the world as its underpinning. Now it [the museum] has come to be seen as an urban landmark – a replacement for the missing agora, a place devoted to spectacle. (Sudjic, 1993, p. 143).

I. Introduction: The growing importance of the cultural economy of cities
The late twentieth century has seen a dramatic transformation in the structure of western capitalist economies. The era of large scale manufacturing production and employment in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has increasingly given way since the mid-1960’s to a ‘post-industrial’ services dominated economy. While industrial production is still important, employment in this sector has fallen sharply and employment growth has been in financial, business and personal services and what are termed the ‘cultural’ industries. The scale and importance of this transformation has been most marked in old nineteenth century cities which have been a locus of large scale de-industrialisation and economic restructuring. While some of these cities are still struggling with the legacy of economic and physical decline, others have been successful in transforming themselves into centers of post-industrial production and consumption. In the process, the structure of their economies and their employment base has shifted away from manufacturing to a more strongly service and culturally based economy. 
The significance of these developments has not gone unremarked. While considerable attention has been devoted to the growing financial importance of global cities (Sassen, 1990), Zukin (1995) suggested in The Cultures of Cities that: ‘With the disappearance of local manufacturing industries and periodic crises in government and finance, culture is more and more the business of cities: the basis of their tourist attractions and their unique competitive edge’ (p.1). Similarly Scott (2000) argues in The Cultural Economy of Cities that: ‘capitalism itself is moving into a phase in which the cultural forms and meanings of its outputs are becoming critical if not dominating elements of productive strategy’. He states that: ‘the cultural economy is coming to the fore as one of the most dynamic frontiers of capitalism at the dawn of the twenty-first century’ and he sees this as ‘especially evident in a number of giant cities representing the flagships of a new global capitalist cultural economy’ (pp. 2-3). We are seeing a shift to an economy where stress is more on the production and consumption of experiences rather than physical products. As such the symbolic economy has become more important.
Given these trends it is not surprising that cultural industries and ‘cultural strategies’ have become important elements in urban policies. As Harvey (1989) perceptively pointed out, there has been a reorientation in attitudes to urban governance in the last twenty years whereby: the ‘managerial’ approach so typical of the 1960s has given way to initiatory and ‘entrepreneurial’ forms of action in the 1970s and 1980s (p. 4). Harvey identified four main options for urban entrepreneurialism. The first involves the development of a competitive edge in the international division of labour, the second is the attempt to gain control over the key control and command functions in business and finance and the third focuses on competitive edge regarding the redistribution of central state spending. It is the fourth one which particularly concerns us here. Harvey argued that the urban region can ‘seek to improve its competitive position with respect to the spatial division of consumption’. More specifically, he argued that: 
Gentrification, cultural innovation, and physical upgrading of the urban environment (including the turn to post-modernist styles of architecture and urban design), consumer attractions (sports stadia, convention and shopping centres, marinas, exotic eating places) and entertainment (the organisation of urban spectacles on a temporary or permanent basis) have become much more prominent facets of strategies for urban regeneration. Above all, the city has to appear as an innovative, exciting, creative, and safe place to live or to visit, to play and consume in (p. 9).
In this passage Harvey identifies a number of different, but related, ways in which cities can seek to gain a stronger competitive position in the spatial division of consumption.  Similar arguments regarding the use of culture to market cities hav been made by Mellor (1997) in the context of Manchester which is promoting itself in terms of its role as a centre of youth music, night life and popular culture. This strategy has also recently been deployed in a number of other old industrial cities in Britain such as Newcastle, Nottingham and Glasgow with a variable degree of success. Boyle and Hughes (1994) point out that this shift has tended to be associated with the move of local government ‘away from the provision of items of collective consumption to the speculative use of local funds for local economic development’ (p.467) which can lead to a legitimation crisis. One way in which the local state may seek to restore legimacy is by high profile place marketing events which  ‘help to consolidate support for entreprenurialism by cultivating a new sense of place identity rooted in the idea of inter-locality competition for inward investment’ (p.467). But, as Boyle and Hughes (1994) have argued in the context of Glasgow’s 1990 designation as a European City of Culture, attempts to justify entrepreneurialism are not always without conflict. 
 In this chapter we are concerned with just one form of cultural consumption that of the prestige museum or art gallery. Though there is now a considerable literature on the museum as a cultural phenomenon (refs needed), there is little specifically in the urban literature (but see Zukin 1995 for her analysis of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art). While our approach is based, in part, on the transformation which has taken place in the post industrial economy of cities, and interprets the recent growth in the number of museums and visitors in terms of the growing importance accorded by city governments to new forms of cultural consumption, we also argue that changes in the social structure of advanced capitalist societies, particularly the growth of a new educated middle class with specific cultural demands, have also been important in enhancing the role of the museum. While museums may play a valuable function as a tool for modern urban development, they also serve other social and cultural functions, and their growing importance cannot simply be ascribed to the needs of urban governance. Rather it can be seen as a coincidence of events between the ‘cultural logic of late capitalism’ (Jameson, 1989), the growing development of urban tourism, the search for cultural capital by the new middle class, a desire for spectacular architecture and the growth of place promotion by cities 
II. The Emergence and Transformation of the Modern Museum
The establishment of the British Museum in 1753 and the transformation of the Louvre into a museum in the beginning of the 19th century marked a new era in urban cultural development in which museums of art, archaeology and natural science began to appear in most major cities in Europe and North America (Feldstein, 1991, Thomkins, 1973). Museum construction in this period was part of a strong national and municipal desire to establish the cultural credentials of cities and put them on the map in cultural terms. In this explosion of national and metropolitan cultural pride no city was complete without its prestige art galleries and museums, 
Until relatively recently, however, these museums tended to be elitist in outlook, and saw their main tasks as the promotion of scholarship and conservation with exhibitions and displays mounted for a relatively small number of culturally knowledgeable visitors who would generally know what they were viewing and its wider significance Richards (1996a, p. 8). Such an audience did not need stylish displays or signposting. For other visitors who were not members of the cultural elite, museums were generally seen as boring, dull and old fashioned, full of badly laid out and badly lit dowdy display cases (Burt, 1977; Bourdieu and Darbel, 1991). The last ten years, however, have seen a dramatic change in both the role, character, nature and design of museums and the museum visitors. In the late twentieth century, a growing number of museums have become centres of style and design, blockbuster exhibitions, corporate patronage and cultural distinction. Museums are places to go: they are places to see and be seen. In addition, in the search for social distinction in a more populist age, marked by the expansion of a wealthy professional and managerial middle class, art and patronage of art museums have become powerful new sources of cultural distinction (Bordieu, 1994). Today museums are more customer-oriented since they frequently have to rely more on admission charges, corporate sponsorship and other commercial activities than shrinking public funding. Finally, given the success of some spectacular new and refurbished museums in attracting large numbers of visitors, and generating jobs and visitor spending, museums now have a growing role as “tools” for urban regeneration.
The growing importance of culture in contemporary society together with the rising importance of tourism in the economic base of post-industrial cities has led in recent years to the construction of new “Flagship-Museums” (in terms of both their size and spectacular architecture) in cities and the expansion of many existing museums. There are a number of well-known examples of such new museums such as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Musee d’Orsay in Paris, and the newly opened Tate Modern in the former Bankside power station in London. The Louvre with its glass pyramids designed by I.M.Pei; the British Museum with its spectacular new glazed Great Court by Richard Rogers are examples of this tendency to expand or redevelop museums to capture the public imagination.
This new phase of museum construction is frequently characterised by a spectacular architecture, which is frequently referred as “signature architecture”. The emergence of architecturally spectacular new urban museums have now given rise to a new form of urban cultural consumption incorporating architecture, art and spectacle. This trend is not unique. Ley and Olds (1988) pointed to the importance of landscape as spectacle in their paper on world’s fairs and the culture of heroic consumption. What is new, however, is the quantitative scale of the phenomenon in the last decade, which has transformed the centres of many cities. Because of the radical, dramatic and spectacular nature of the architecture of these buildings they arguably function as tourist attractions in their own right in addition to, or even ahead of, the art they contain. Sudjic (1993, p.145) comments that: ‘The collection has clearly taken second place to the idea of the museum as a place to be’. We would also add ‘or to see’.
III. Urban cultural tourism and museums
The view that cities perform an important function as centres of urban tourism is now well established (Ashworth and Tunbridge, 1990; Law, 1993; Page, 1995; van den Berg ET al., 1995; Law, 1996; Mazanec, 1997; Judd and Fainstein, 1999). There are various reasons for the growing importance of urban tourism in cities, Shachar (1995) suggests the four most important ones are: (1) The rapid globalisation of the world economy is leading to growing numbers of urban business tourists as cities are the key nodes of global economic activity. (2) The change in the age structure in developed countries (the “greying” of the population) results in a higher demand for cultural consumption that is mainly located in cities. (3) Higher incomes enable individuals to afford relatively expensive vacations in urban areas. (4) Higher levels of education in developed countries in the last decades created an increasing demand by individuals for cultural consumption. 
Put more generally, we would argue that the expansion of the professional/managerial educated middle class in western capitalist economies, which has been documented by Myles (1988) Wright and Martin (1987), Butler and Savage (1995), Ley (1996) and others, has been crucial in underpinning the emergence of a expanded new interest in culture and the arts. In part, the interest can be seen as reflection of the growth of liberal arts education, and the greater attention devoted to the arts in the media, but in part it can also be interpreted as a search for a source of social distinction. Bourdieu (1984, p. 2) has argued that the socially recognised hierarchy of the arts ‘predisposes tastes to function as markers of class’. Arguing that ‘taste classifies and classifies the classifier’, he concluded that ‘art and cultural consumption are predisposed, consciously and deliberate or not, to fulfil a social function of legitimating social differences’ Bourdieu (1984, p. 6). The formation of private collections, the endowment of museums and the distinction conferred by art appreciation and philanthropy has a long history. It can be seen in the endowment of individual pictures, whole collections and new wings or buildings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Tate and elsewhere (Thomkins, 1973; Burt, 1977). Jowitt (2000), writing of the Art Institute of Chicago, claims that: 
Right from its inception in 1879, the Institute was a showcase for Chicago’s artistic social climbing. The super-rich of this rambunctious and disreputable midwestern city wanted cultural recognition from the snobbier East Coasters -and they wanted it quick. Within 30 years of assiduous collecting by Chicago’s elite, it was already achieving its ambition of being ‘Paris on the Prairie’ and had started a local tradition of bequeathing those collections to the Art Institute that is unbroken today.
These trends have consolidated a major new segment in urban tourism; that of cultural tourism. Visiting cities for the purpose of cultural consumption is not new of course; the aristocratic European‘Grand Tour’ of the 17th and 18th centuries was mainly an urban phenomena (Towner, 1985, 1996), It was elitist and small scale, however, whereas today the quantitative expansion of the demand for new forms of cultural consumption has changed the character of tourism to cities, enabling localities to initiate strategies for urban development based on the cultural consumption of tourists as well as the local population. In the process, visiting museums has become something of a mass consumption activity for many tourist parties. Rembrandt’s The Night Watch at the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam are now part of the mass tourist experience along with Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa at the Louvre.  Indeed, the French authorities are now considering locating the Mona Lisa in a separate room to speed up visito flow (The Times, April 4th 2001). As Zollberg (1981) has pointed out, although ‘the self proclaimed goals of art museums are aesthetic: to accumulate, preserve and display art works as a value on behalf of society, and to educate the public in their appreciation’ (p. 103), art museums have long had conflicting visions of their purpose. It appears that the role of museums is now being redefined in favour of increasing their popular appeal.
The rapid growth in urban tourism in recent decades has led some cities to adopt tourism as a central tool in their strategies for achieving urban regeneration  (Frieden and Sagalyn, 1989; Owen, 1990; Law, 1992; Page, 1993; Robertson, 1995; Judd, 1995; Jauhiainen, 1995) as well as using arts and culture for the same purpose Whitt (1987). Newman and Smith (2000) suggested that:
Cities have been the places where cultural institutions and facilities are located but also where our notions of cultural expression have been forged. However in the past twenty years, the relationship between cultural expression and the city has been turned on its head as cultural expression is thought of less as a socioeconomic practice that follows in the wake of urban life, but is regarded instead as the motor of the urban economy. As such a motor, modes of cultural expression have been identified as a quality of a city that allows it to compete within the global economy (Scott, 1997, 2000).

Law (1992, 1993) has indicated that many European cities in the 1980’s adopted an urban tourism strategy following the examples of such strategies in American cities such as Baltimore and Boston in the 1970’s, and within such an urban tourism strategy, urban cultural policy has become increasingly important. Museums have been seen as especially important in such strategies for several reasons: First, a “Flagship Museum” usually becomes a must-see attraction for visitors to the city and by extending their average stay in the city it results in more money being spent in the city. Second, a museum with constantly changing exhibits helps to attract repeat visitors; unlike monuments such as the Eiffel Tower which tend to be consumed on a one-off basis. Galleries such as the Louvre can attract the same tourist again and again as “blockbuster” exhibits (discussed later in this chapter) create a constant attraction to potential visitors. Third, in addition to the cultural importance of the museum collections, spectacular museums have become an attraction in themselves and often become icons for the city as a whole.  Last but not least, museums also serve the local population and are not just geared towards visitors to the city. This helps justify  funding of these costly institutions by the public. The importance of these large-scale museums in the overall tourist offerings of cities is reflected in table 1, which shows the ten most visited tourist sites in London, Paris and New York respectively.
The table shows that of the top ten attractions in London and Paris, five are museums or galleries, as are eight of the ten in New York. This suggests that museums are now a key part of urban cultural tourism.  The limited evidence in the literature suggests that in the key urban destinations, tourists form a relatively high proportion of the total number of visitors to the large museums.  The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam attracts about one million visitors a year, about two-thirds of whom are foreign tourists (Richards, 1996b, p. 243). 

Table 1: Ten most visited attractions (mn) in London, Paris and New York, 1997

	
       London
		
       Paris		
        New York		
1	British Museum	6.1	Notre Dame	12	Ellis Island & Statue of Liberty	5	
2	National Gallery	4.8	Montmartre	6	Metropolitan Museum of Art	5	
3	Madame Tussauds	2.8	La Tour Eiffel	5.7	American Museum of Natural History	3.5	
4	Westminster Abbey	2.5	Musee du Louvre	5.2	Empire State Building	3.5	
5	Tower of London	2.6	Centre Pompidou	4.4	World Trade Center Observation Deck	1.8	
6	Tate Gallery	1.8	City of Science, La Villette	3.4	Museum of Modern Art (MOMA)	1.7	
7	St Paul’s Cathedral	2	Versailles	2.7	Guggenheim Museum	0.9	
8	Natural History Museum	1.8	Musée D’Orsay	2.3	Brooklyn Museum of Art	0.6	
9	Science Museum	1.5	L’Arc de Triomphe	1.2	National Museum of the American Indian	0.4	
10	Chessington World of Adventure	1.8	Natural History Musem	1.1	Museum of the city of New York	0.4

Sources: Trew (1999, p. 59), Citrinot (1999a, p. 56), Citrinot (1999b, p. 72).  

IV. The changing nature of the museum
 The transformation of art museums in the 1980s from purveyors of a particular elite culture to fun palaces for an increasing number of middle class art consumers has to be seen has to be seen within the dual perspective of government policies and business initiatives (Wu, 1998, p. 30).
The last several decades have witnessed a dramatic re-orientation of museums throughout the world. Museums traditionally focused on collection of artefacts, creation of scientific catalogues and the display of as much as possible of their collections. Museums were mostly funded by the state or by wealthy individuals as a philanthropic activity, but as a result of shrinking support of the state and the need to find new sources off income for their activities. Museums face the inherent conflict of being rich in art and poor in operating budgets (Feldstein, 1991, p.2). This, together with the greater interest of the public in art and culture has led museums to a change of attitude in many respects. New ways of display have been introduced, more entrepreneurial strategies have been adopted, new sources of funding such as corporate funding have appeared, there has been a growing use of blockbuster exhibitions, and in general museums have become more and more consumer oriented. Januszczak (1988) has described Nicolas Serota’s task at the Tate as being to make it, ‘the biggest funpalace in Europe’. Similarly, Wu (1998) states regarding the tenure of Thomas Hoving as director of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, that Hoving:
‘deliberately ventured into costly undertakings – new wings, blockbuster exhibitions and expensive acquisitions, forcing the museum into a desperate search for new sources of income. Hoving’s regime at the Met successfully transformed the traditional operation of the art museum from a warehouse of art artefacts into that of an entrepreneurial undertaking’ (p. 40). 
The conversion of many museums into entrepreneurial undertakings has had several dimensions which we discuss below. 
Museum shops and Restaurants 
Museum shops have turned from small places for selling books and artifacts related to the museum to a key retail attraction and a central component of the museum, selling a wide range of products, many of them not directly related to the museum itself. The leading museums have even developed chains of museum shops in different locations outside the museum. The same could be said regarding museum coffee shops or restaurants which were originally designed to offer modest meals or refreshment to tired visitors but which have become an increasingly important element of the museum experience. Even old museums that were not built originally with large spaces for commercial activities such as shops and restaurants have used recent expansion schemes to create additional areas for shops and  restaurants – for example the British Museum’s Great Court and the New Louvre. As Sudjic (1993, p. 138) has cynically commented: “At the Louvre, one of the primary results of I. M. Pei pyramid has been to create an elegant means of providing natural light for an underground shopping centre”. 
 Hiring out the museum 
An integral part of the trend towards the commodification of museums, has been their use for private and corporate events and entertaining at the evening and weekends. Museums offer an unparalleled range of both spaces and exhibits and the possibility of hiring them for a party; a reception or meeting can raise the profile or exclusivity of the event. In addition, it offers a cultural cachet and private access to a cultural display, which would not be otherwise available. The opportunity to wander round a gallery of famous, rare or beautiful exhibits without being buffeted by milling crowds of people is a rare opportunity and contrasts with the old style repugnance for anything crudely commercial. As Thomas Messer, former director of the Guggenheim museum in New York said in 1980, ‘we would never rent out the museum’ (Wu, 1998) 
Corporate sponsorship
Wu (1998) outlines how corporate capital is playing a growing role in the financing of art museums today. The focus on art museums is, according to Wu, because their visitors rank higher in socio-economic terms than those visiting other museums, even though museum audiences in general are already disproportionately privileged in socio-economic terms compared to the population as a whole (Wu, 1998, p. 36-7). The parallels with Bourdieu’s analysis of distinction are strong and corporate sponsorship is also very prominent in prestige cultural events such as Covent Garden opera, and classical concerts at the Barbican and the Royal Festival Hall in London. 
There are two motives behind corporate sponsorship. First, for companies whose products or service can make the ‘right’ connection with the sponsored show or the institution, the sponsored event is a sales promotion, however well disguised it may be. Second, for companies whose products lacks a direct link to exploit the sponsored event, association with the arts is more geared toward advertisement of their corporate image (Wu, 1998, p 37). As Sudjic (1993) states: ‘For the newly wealthy, benefactions for the right museum are now the price of entry for polite society’ and as Thomas Hoving, a former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has commented: ‘Art is sexy! Art is money-sexy! Art is money-sexy, social-climbing-fantastic’ (Wu, 1998). Art patronage in general and patronage of museums in particular have become a pathway to the purchase of social distinction in recent decades. 

Blockbuster exhibitions
The most significant effect of the shift in funding from public to corporate funding is the new emphasis being placed on ‘blockbuster exhibitions’ (Wu, 1998, p. 39). These exhibitions area central theme of contemporary museum management and curatorship. These exhibitions reduce vast and complicated museums to a defined and easily understood product, thereby making museums more accessible to the average visitor. Since they attract repeat visitors both locally and from abroad, they help the museum to increase the numbers of visitors. These exhibitions generally charge a separate and relatively high entrance fee, and the exhibitions are usually backed with corporate sponsorship. In the process, the publicity surrounding such shows helps create a ‘must see’ cultural ethos among the museum going public and helps to ensure their success aided by exclusive previews and viewings for the social elite. The Harley-Davidson and Armani shows at the Guggenheim are examples of the broadening of the notion of  museum culture in the search for visitor numbers.
Branding and franchising
There is a small but growing trend for museums to open branches in new locations. This is a result of a several factors: ), Because museums generally have much more art than they have the space to exhibit. They are are keen to solve some of their problems due of lack of storage space and the high costs of preservation of artifacts in storage (Clarke, 1991, p. 305). In Britain an official commission found that only about one-third of art collections are on display at any time (Lord et al., 1989). As in other nonprofit organizations, it is often far easier to raise funds for a major building than for operating expenses (Feldstein, 1991, p. 3). 
For small places outside the major global or national nodes of tourism and cultural production a branch of an existing museum may seem to be more prestigious than a local museum, without name recognition. Using the name of a successful museum is valuable in terms of name recognition (branding). Another form of branding is the use of a world famous architect, so the museum is branded by its spectacular architectural design and not by the character of the display.
A new commercial strategy that has been adopted among museums recently is the idea of franchising. The most prominent example of this strategy is the Guggenheim museum of New York which, under the leadership of its chairman Thomas Kren, has for several years been involved in franchising the Guggenheim name and collection to different cities in the world such as Berlin, Bilbao and, most recently, to Las Vegas (The Economist, April 21, 2001). Kren’s plans to create the ‘museum of the 21st century’ involved the Guggenheim selling itself as a brand, allowing local operators to pay for new premises in their locality, to pay for the curatorial skills offered, and to benefit from a continuous circulation of the museum’s stock (the central branch can display less than 5% of its total holdings at a time) (McNeill, 2000, 480). In the case of the new Guggenheim in Bilbao the Basque regional government was convinced by the Guggenheim foundation to pay $100 million for a landmark building in Bilbao, a fee of $20 million for the services rendered and in addition to create a fund of $50 million to build up the museum’s own collection (McNeill, 2000, p. 481). Critics have  termed this process McGuggenisation, suggesting both global franchising strategy and the extreme commodification of art (McNeill, 2000, 474).

V. Creation of spectacle: museums and signature architecture
Nineteenth and early twentieth century galleries and museums were built on monumental neo-classical lines. They embodied solidity and respectability. The last decades of the twentieth century have, however, seen the construction of what is arguably a wholly new phenomenon: the art gallery as futuristic architectural spectacles. Because of the radical, dramatic and spectacular nature of the architecture of these buildings they arguably function as tourist attractions in their own right in addition to the art they contain. It is possible to identify a series of such key futuristic buildings in major cities. The first was Frank Lloyds Wright’s Guggenheim Museum in New York. This building broke the mould in terms of the architecture associated with museums and art galleries. The new museums such as the Guggenheim in Bilbao, the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Musee d’Orsay in Paris, the New Tate in London, and the Reine Sophia in Madrid, designed in architecturally spectacular or sometimes controversial new or converted buildings have given rise to a new form of urban cultural consumption incorporating architecture, art and spectacle. Also existing museums that have chosen to redevelop have done so in a dramatic way; creating the famous glass pyramids of the Louvre, the Great Court of the British Museum or the “bird in flight sculpture” of the Milwaukee art museum. A prototype of the use of spectacular architecture in regard to cultural buildings is the Sydney Opera House designed by JØrn Utzon in the late 1950’s and the early 1960’s, which has become one of Sydney’s and Australia’s symbols. The opera house became a must-see sights for tourists visiting Sydney not because of the cultural performances to which just a small minority of the tourists will attend but a site of tourist gaze (see Urry, 1990 on the importance of the gaze in tourist experience) upon a building with a spectacular location and architecture. More importantly, these new urban landmarks can present an image of innovation and excitement like the newly built Guggenheim in Bilbao. The creation of new images of culture and novelty is even far more important for the city, since even people that have not visited Sydney, Bilbao or Milwaukee link the city through the image of the building. Indeed, the role of architecture and architects has become steadily more important. It is no longer sufficient merely to construct a large building to accommodate a collection. On the contrary, the buildings are now sometimes as important, if not more important, than the collection they are designed to house. These ‘signature’ buildings function as both statements of aesthetic taste and modernity and as tourist attractions in their own right. In this sense, they provide a bridge between the requirements of city governments for high visibility, prestige cultural projects, and the needs of museums to generate greater public awareness and attendance. In figure 1, two sets of process are depicted, one is regulation external to the museum and the second is regulation that is internal. The linkage between the two processes is the spectacular architecture which can be seen to serve the requirements of museums, their sponsors, visitors and city governments.
 
VI. Flagship museums as anchors of regeneration
Museums are pump primers, their presence can be compared to the opening of a subway station, or even an airport: an investment which has the effect of raising property values. They have the ability to raise the profile of a development, bringing life into an area (Sudjic 1993, p. 141).

The new wave of museum buildings also highlights  a new phase of location policy of museums in cities. The first phase emerged during the second half of the 19th century when museum clusters in cities like London and Washington were established. These examples were later followed by many other cities such as Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Jerusalem, Cleveland, Stockholm and Rotterdam. The concentration of attractions increases overall attraction of each institution and enables shared marketing (Law, 1993; Jansen-Verbecke and van Rekom, 1996). It also increases the possibility that tourists will visit any museum in the cluster, since the agglomeration of these institutions creates a critical mass that turns this cluster to be of greater attraction than its parts. Many cities have adopted policies of grouping attractions, although it is not always possible when some of the major existing ones are scattered in the city in historic buildings and could only be moved at great cost, if at all. 
The second, and more recent, phase of museum location in large cities is characterized by building of large museums outside the traditional clusters to enable regeneration and spatial expansion of the Tourist City towards new areas. In large cities where these clusters already are established and effective – new large museums are being built in new areas of the city in purpose of creating an urban change towards regeneration and turning the character of that part of the city. In London the new Tate in Southwark serves as an anchor for regeneration and cultural production on the south bank of the Thames for a series of cultural institutions such as the Shakespeare Globe Theatre, the London Eye, London Aquarium, National Theatre, Hayward Gallery and the Museum of the Moving Image. The highly successful London Eye and the Tate Modern (3.5 and 5 million visitors, respectively in their first year of operation) create two anchors of activity that links the cultural attractions of the south bank and foster the expansion of the Central Tourist District of London through the new Millenium bridge and Westminster bridge to these parts of the city. Most recently, the New York Times (2001) reported that: ‘Lower Manhattan has become a cultural destination in its own right capitalising on the growing popular interest in heritage and history. A dozen museums are now operating, and several important ones will be arriving in the next few years’. In addition to the change in image these large cultural complexes are frequently said to have a direct impact on the regeneration on nearby areas where secondary tourism services such as restaurants, hotels, shops and art galleries will emerge. The extent to which these secondary developments become a reality is, of course crucially important in evaluating the success of museums in urban regeneration. In our view, this remains an open question. 

VII. The growing role of Museums in Inter-urban competition 
Given the decline of major cities as traditional centres of manufacturing production and the growing importance of the cultural industries and consumption in the economy of major cities (Pratt, 1997; Scott, 1997, 2000), it is not surprising that the business community and government have taken a stronger interest in the promotion of cities as centres of cultural production and consumption. In the new era of mobile international firms, investment and visitors, the image of a city is becoming increasingly important, as is place promotion (Philo and Kerns, 1993; Gold and Ward, 1993; Ward, 1998). As a result, different levels of government have become increasingly proactive in place promotional activities. The range of activities now take a number of forms, ranging from competition for key international sporting and exhibition events such as the Olympics (Roche, 2000; Whitelegg, 2000; Burbank et al. 2001) through to the cultural primacy manifested in the development of opera houses, symphony orchestras and museums.
It is difficult, however, to identify any simple or consistent model of regulation which accounts for the variety ways in which museums are founded, funded and promoted in different cities. In some cases, the key actors are wealthy individuals or philanthropic trusts whereas in others the central or local state has been pivotal. Although there are a number of privately funded museums or galleries in Europe, the state has traditionally been more significant than in North America. The new Getty museum and the Armand Hammer gallery in Los Angeles and the Rock and Roll museum in Seattle are unusual in a contemporary European context where state patronage is far more important, directly or indirectly, through state funded art organisations.
In Britain the Arts Council, a quasi-governmental organisation for the development of arts policy and funding distribution has traditionally played a key role. More recently, the National Lottery Commission has distributed large amounts of money to the arts, particularly to assisting the construction of new museums. These have included a £50 million grant toward the cost of the New Tate, funding the rebuilding of Covent Garden Opera and for the new Scottish Museum of Modern Art in Edinburgh and, for the construction of new galleries in Salford and Wolverhampton. In general, however, central government in Britain has not taken on responsibility for planning the location for new galleries and museums, but has instead, responded to requests from below. In France, however, perhaps unsurprisingly, given its strong statist legacy and the strong political links between Paris and central government, central government has taken a stronger role. Sudjic (1993) comments of the plethora of new museums in Paris that:  ‘To Mitterrand, it is the duty of the French state to build museums, for a variety of reasons, only one of which is the enlightenment of its citizens. An even stronger…factor is the recurring French mission of making Paris the unchallenged centre of European culture” (p. xx)
Intervention on the regional level is usually typical in federal states such as the United States, Germany, Australia and Canada where competition exists between different states or provinces for resources allocated by the central government or by the private sector. Each state has usually a leading city, which serves as its financial capital and sometimes as the administrative capital as well. Since this city is in most cases the “engine” for economic growth in the region, the state often tries to promote different urban development schemes in the city, and today more and more of these are related to culture and tourism. In the case of museums, the hope is that their establishment will attract visitors from outside the region and thereby contribute to both the city and the regional economy. 
Intervention at the local level is the most common practice among the three levels of regulation and this reflects the shifting of the balance from the nation to the city and its region in terms of economic development and image (Bianchini and Parkinson, 1993; Harvey, 1989) Attracting international investment has become more important in the contemporary global economy and cities have to create a civic image that will be attractive for investment. The creation of flagship museums are one potential tool for generating this image. They hopefully serve to convince prospective investors that the city has all that is good in civic life, including  art, culture and general quality of the social milieu (Robertson and Guerrier, 1998, p. 218). 
However, due to different systems of municipal organization, financial and legislative forms, not all cities have similar possibilities for promoting museum development in their jurisdiction. New York, for example, is considering donating land and money for a new $678 million Guggenheim Museum in Lower Manhattan (The Independent, 29 November, 2000). The mayor of Paris has also been active in initiating major projects. In contrast London has lacked an overall governing body since the Greater London Council was disbanded in 1987. A mayor for Greater London was recently elected, but his ability to promote major initiatives is restricted due to the limited budgets of the new established body. However, notwithstanding the conventional wisdom of cultural regeneration, the degree to which such developments have proved successful appears very variable, particularly outside the major cities. In some cases, such as the Museum of Rock Music in Sheffield and the Royal Armories museum in Leeds, visitor numbers have proved disappointing. In general, it seems that a critical mass of attractions is essential for visitor numbers.
There remains, however, a question over who benefits from the creation of new urban ‘cultural’  policies. Cities may now be ‘places to play’ (Judd and Fainstein, 1999), but Eisinger (2000) argues that ‘Building a city as an entertainment venue is a very different undertaking than building a city to accommodate residential interests. Although the former objective is often justified as a means to generate the resources to accomplish the latter aim, the two are not easily reconciled’ (p. 317) and he suggests that: ‘the city as a place to play is manifestly built for the middle classes, who can afford to attend professional sporting events, eat in the new outdoor cafes, attend trade and professional conventions, shop in the festival malls, and patronise the high and middlebrow arts’ (p317). In Eisinger’s view, courting the middle class as visitors may mean the creation of a very different sort of city to that designed to bring the middle classes back as residents or to serve the needs of the  resident population. These issues were highlighted in the conflicts over the designation of Glasgow as European City of Culture in 1990 (Boyle and Hughes, 1994). In our view, these issues have not yet been systematically addressed by city governments who seemingly tend to see all cultural development as inherently beneficial. 

VIII. Conclusion.
Art gallery construction and conversion is a major activity today. No self-respecting city is now complete with a major new gallery, preferably designed by a world famous  architect which functions as a statement about its cultural pride, attraction and status. In our view, the promotion of art and cultural visibility more generally is now a key component of urban policy in a wide range of major cities. To be without a symphony orchestra, opera house and art gallery effectively condemns a city to the second rank. Culture is now a key element of urban competition, both in terms of civic pride and image and also in terms of its ability to attract both visitors and footloose national and multinational companies via the quality of urban life on offer to the large new class of educated professional and managerial workers. It is also an important prospective tool for urban regeneration, though how feasible or realistic it is to successfully translate this from major cities to smaller, older industrial cities with little in the way of cultural assets or existing visitors remains an open question. With a few exceptions opening or relocating a new museum in a city far from existing centres of population and where there are few significant existing attractions is unlikely to prove successful as the visitor volume will not be there. But opening new museums in cities like Edinburgh or York (which already has York Minster, the medieval city, the National Railway Museum and the Jarvik Viking Museum) can build on the existing critical mass. 
We have argued in this chapter that urban cultural tourism is now a significant element of urban tourism in general, and that the role of spectacular museum architecture, new museums and ‘blockbuster’ exhibitions are now a key element in this. In the process, the viewing of art has become an important social marker and source of cultural distinction. These trends can be argued to have met the needs of museums themselves, their sponsors and city governments. To the extent that promoting the cultural image of cities is important in increasing tourist numbers, promoting the image of the city as a place to live and work and in urban regeneration is increasingly important (Gomez, 1998, p.110) as an element of interurban competition. It reflects the growing role of art, sport and culture within modern society (Hannigan, 1998). More and more cities appear to be using tourism, culture and sport as a major tool and strategy to regenerate and also to create an alternative economic base for cities. The current wave of museum building should be seen in this context.

References

Ashworth, G. J. and Tunbridge, J. E. (1990) The Tourist-Historic City. London and New York: Belhaven.

Bianchini, F. and Parkinson, M. (1993) Cultural policy and urban regeneration: the West European experience. Manchester :Manchester University Press. 

Bourdieu, P (1994) Distinction: a social critique of the judgement of taste, London, Routledge

Bourdieu, P. and Darbel. A. (1991) The Love of Art: European Art Museums and their public. Cambridge (UK): Polity Press.

Boyle, M. and Hughes, G (1994) The politics of urban entrepreneurialism in Glasgow, Geoforum, 25, 4, 453-470

Burbank, M. J., Andranovich, G. D. and Heying, C. H. (2001) Olympic dreams: The impact of mega-events on local politics. Boulder (Colorado): Lynne Reiner Publishers.

Burt, N (1977) Palaces for the People: a social history of the American Art Museum, New York, Little Brown and Co.

Butler, T. and Savage, M (1995) Social Change and the Middle Classes, London, UCL Press

Citrinot, L. (1999a) ‘Paris’, Travel and Tourism Intelligence City Reports, vol. 1, 1:53-75.

Citrinot, L. (1999b) ‘New York’, Travel and Tourism Intelligence City Reports, vol. 1, 3:53-73.

Clarke, R. (1991) ‘Government Policy and Art Museums in the United Kingdom’ in M. Feldstein (ed.) The Economics of Art Museums. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. 

Eisinger, P (2000) ‘The Politics of Bread and Circuses: Building the City for the Visitor Class’, Urban Affairs Review, Vol. 35, 3:316-333.

Feldstein, M. (ed.) (1991) The Economics of Art Museums. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

Frieden, B. J. and Sagalyn, L. B. (1989) Downtown, Inc. How America Rebuilds Cities. Cambridge (Mass.) and London: Massachussets Institute of Technology.

Gold, J. and Ward, S. V. (eds.) (1993) Place Promotion: The Use of Publicity and Public Relations to Sell Cities, Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.

Gomez, M.V. (1998) Reflective Images: The Case of Urban Regeneration in Glasgow and Bilbao’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Vol. 22, 1:106-121.

Hannigan, J. (1998) Fantasy City: Pleasure and profit in the postmodern metropolis. London and New York: Routledge.

Harvey, D. (1989) ‘From managerialism to entreprenurialism: the transformation in urban governance’, Geographiska Annaler, 71 B.1, 3-17.

Jameson, (1989) Postmodernism or the cultural logic of late capitalism, New Left Review, 146, 53-92

Jansen-Verbeke, M. and van Rekom. J. (1996) 'Scanning Museum Visitors: Urban Tourism Marketing', Annals of Tourism Research, vol. 23, 2:364-375.

Jauhiainen, J. S. (1995) 'Waterfront Redevelopment and Urban Policy: The Case of Barcelona, Cardiff and Genoa', European Planning Studies, vol. 3,  1:3-23.

Judd, D. R. (1995) 'Promoting tourism in US cities', Tourism Management, vol. 16, 3: 175-187.

Judd, D. R. and Fainstein, S. S.  (eds.) (1999) The Tourist City. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Law, C. M. (1992) 'Urban Tourism and its Contribution to Economic Regeneration', Urban Studies, vol. 29, 3-4:599-618.

Law, C. M. (1993) Urban Tourism: Attracting Visitors to Large Cities. London and New York: Mansell. 

Law, C. M. (1996) Tourism in Major Cities. London:Routledge.

Ley, D (1996) The new middle class and the remaking of the central city, Oxford, Oxford University Press

Ley, D. and Olds, K (1988) Landscape as spectacle: world’s fairs and the culture of heroic consumption, Environment and Planning D Society and Space, vol. 6, 191-212

Lord, B., Lord, G. D. and Nicks, J. (1989) The Cost of Collecting: Collection Management in UK Museums. London: HMSO.

Martin, B (1981) A sociology of contemporary cultural change, Blackwell, Oxford

Mazanec, J. A. (ed.) (1997) International City Tourism: Analysis and Strategy. London and Washington: Pinter.

McNeill, D. (2000) ‘McGuggenisation? National identity and globalisation in the Basque country’, Political Geography, vol. 19, 4:473-494.

Mellor, R (1997) Cool times for a changing city, in Jewson, N. and MacGregor, S (eds) Transforming Cities, London, Routledge

Newman, P. and Smith, I. (2000) Cultural Production, Place and Politics on the South Bank of the Thames, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, vol. 24, 1:9-24.

Owen, C. (1990) 'Tourism and urban regeneration', Cities, vol. 7, 3:194-201.

Page, S. J. (1993) 'Urban Tourism in New Zealand: The National Museum of New Zealand Project', Tourism Management, vol. 14, 3:211-217.

Page, S. J. (1995) Urban Tourism. London and New York: Routledge. 

Philo, C. and Kearns, G. (1993) Selling places: The city as cultural capital, past and present. New York: Pergamon Press.

Pratt, A (1997) The cultural production system: a case study of employment change in Britain, 1984-91, Environment and Planning A, 29, 1953-1974

Richards, G. (1996a) ‘Introduction: Culture and Tourism in Europe’, in G. Richards (ed.), Cultural Tourism in Europe. Wallingford (UK): CAB International.

Richards, G. (1996b) ‘Cultural Tourism in The Netherlands’, in G. Richards (ed.), Cultural Tourism in Europe. Wallingford (UK): CAB International.

Robertson, K. A. (1995) 'Downtown Redevelopment Strategies in the United States: An End-of-the-Century Assessment', Journal of the American Planning Association, vol. 61, 4:429-437.

Robertson, M. and Guerrier, Y. (1998) ‘Events as entrepreneurial displays: Seville, Barcelona and Madrid’, in D. Tyler, Y. Guerrier and M. Robertson (eds.), Managing Tourism in Cities: Policy, Process and Practice. Chicester: John Wiley & Sons.

Roche, M. (2000) Mega-events and Modernity: Olympics and expos in the growth of global culture. London and New York: Routledge.

Rosentraub, M. S. (1999) Major League Losers: The Real Cost of Sports and Who’s Paying for it. New York: Basic Books.

Sassen, S (1990) The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo, Princeton University Press, Princeton

Scott, A. J. (1997) ‘The cultural economy of cities’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, vol. 21, 2:323-340.

Scott, A. J. (2000) The Cultural Economy of Cities: Essays on the Geography of Image-Producing Industries. London: Sage.

Shachar, A. (1995) 'Metropolitan Areas: Economic Globalisation and Urban Tourism', in A. Montanari and A. M. Williams (eds.), European Tourism: Regions, Spaces and Restructuring. Chichester: John Wiley& Sons.

Sudjic, D. (1993) The 100 Mile City. London: Flamingo.

Thomkins, C (1973) Merchants and Masterpieces: the story of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, E.P.Dutton

Towner, J. (1985) ‘The Grand Tour: A key Phase in the History of Tourism’. Annals of Tourism Research, vol. 12, 3:297-333.

Towner, J. (1996) An Historical Geography of Recreation and Tourism in the Western World 1540-1940. Chichester: Wiley. 

Trew, J. (1999) ‘London’, Travel and Tourism Intelligence City Reports, vol. 1, 2:37-63.

Urry, J. (1990) The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies. London: Sage Publications.

van den Berg, L. and van der Borg, J. and van der Meer, J. (1995) Urban Tourism: Performance and Strategies in Eight European Cities. Aldershot: Avebury.

Ward, S. V. (1998) Selling Places: The Marketing and Promotion of Towns and Cities 1850-2000. London and New York: E & FN Spon.

Whitelegg, D. (2000) ‘Going for Gold: Atlanta’s Bid for Fame’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, vol. 24, 4:801-817.

Whitt, A. J. (1987) ‘Mozart in the Metropolis: The Arts Coalition and the Urban Growth Machine’, Urban Affairs Quarterly, vol. 23, 1:15-36.

Wright, E. and Martin, (1987) The transformation of the American class structure, 1960-1980, American Journal of Sociology, 93, 1-29

Wu, C. (1998) ‘Embracing the Enterprise Culture: Art Institutions since the 1980s’, New Left Review, 230, 28-57

Zollberg, V (1981) Conflicting Visions in American Art Museums, Theory and Society, 10, 103-125

Zukin, S. (1995) The Cultures of Cities. Cambridge (Mass.) and Oxford: Blackwell.