Jackson Fish Market
Posted on October 2, 2007 by hillel on Industry, User Experience

Privately Owned Museums and Micro Theme Park Experiences

Check out the Spy Museum — a privately owned museum in DC. The museum is cool because, well, it’s filled with spy stuff. What’s interesting about it is that it’s privately owned.

“The Malrite Company, developer of the International Spy Museum, is the successor to Malrite Communications Group Inc. founded in 1956. For more than 40 years, Malrite Communications Group was involved in the world of entertainment, news and information through its radio and television broadcasting businesses.”

Creating “experiences” physical though they may be is not exactly a new commercial enterprise. Amuseument parks, DisneyWorld, etc. But the museum format is something you usually associate with non-profit organizations.

There are also experiences that are somewhere in between the museum and the Disney experience on a micro-scale — Tomb from 5W!ts in Boston. Awkward company name aside, it looks kind of cool.

These are expensive creations when they’re done right, but if someone could come up with a formula for doing them well, getting repeat visits from folks, and scaling them effectively, they could be a super interesting urban alternative to flying halfway across the company to a big museum or theme park.

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