September 26, 2007
Textile Museum to Open Branch in Penn Quarter
Written by DCist Contributor Amy Cavenaugh
The Textile Museum, which announced this summer plans to open a second branch sometime in 2008, has settled on a location, as Penn Quarter Living noted yesterday.
The museum, currently located at 2320 S St., NW, plans to open the outpost at 421 7th St., NW, close to the Mall and many of the other District’s museums. The new branch plans to focus on contemporary textile pieces, and will also give the museum an opportunity to invite more traveling exhibits.
“We picked the location for the mall proximity, and also because there are a number of interesting galleries in Penn Quarter,” said Annie Sanchez, communications assistant at the museum. “It's an expanding and revitalized area." At 23,400 square feet, it will almost double the museum's space, making it possible for the museum to hold special exhibits and display more works from the collection.
“We hope to make alliances with other museums and tie in with their shows,” Sanchez said. “The original site will be more focused on the permanent collection. We have over 18,000 pieces, so we have plenty of works to rotate through and give more visibility.”
Photo courtesy Penn Quarter Living.
The Penn Quarter neighborhood is notoriously devoid of grocery stores, leading commenters at Penn Quarter Living to raise the question about the utility of a ceding that much potential retail space to a second Textile Museum branch in an area where residents must rely on delivery groceries, weekly farmer's markets, or trek far out of the area to buy food.
The museum plans to hammer out details such as the projected opening date and the inaugural exhibit during a board meeting on Thursday.
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“We hope to make alliances with other museums and tie in with their shows,”
Hope they can partner with the Army Medical Museum and the Mutter Museum on a Diseased Limbs and Formaldehyde Fetus Crocheting exhibit. And isn't it about time they brought John Dillinger's penis back to DC? In a merkin?
I'm not feeling bad for those oh so poor Penn Quarter residents and their overpriced flats and lofts. Suck it yuppies. You can hope on the train and get to any number of grocery stores really very quickly. Cry me a friggin' river.
I am super excited about this new Textile Museum. The Textile Museum is one of the best museums in the whole area. And is totally too far off the beaten path right now. I think more museums should open locations downtown to show work that wouldn't normally be able to show or to target other audiences. These kinds of museum brand extensions work out tremendously well for the local museum and arts community as well as the local economy.
Good show.
As a former Textile Museum intern, I think it's a great idea for the organization to open a second branch in a more heavily-trafficked area. The main Dupont museum seemed to attract mostly an older audience who already had an interest in textiles or completely clueless elementary school students dragged there by their teachers.
Hopefully, the Penn Quarter site will be able to attract residents and tourists who didn't know they had an interest in textiles or that an entire museum could be devoted to cloth and fiber.
Nice idea. It would be good to spread the museums out over a wider area, maybe utilize more of the city.
I've always thought the textile museum is one of the more interesting, and certainly obscure, museums in DC. I've seen some fascinating exhibits there over the years, and am glad they are opening a branch in a more tourist-accessible area.
While I understand the desire for a grocery store (heck, I want more groceries in Adams Morgan and Columbia Heights, even though they're already a bunch there) I fail to see the connection to the museum moving in.
If the Penn Quarter folks want a grocery so bad, then they should get off their keyboards and start organizing a campaign like the Logan Circle residents who convinced Fresh Fields to move in. To use my favorite lame-ass cliche: "Stop Bitching and Start a Revolution!"
As a resident of the area (I'm a cheap apartment-building-living yuppie, thank you very much) I can attest to needing a grocery store or some kind of "mart". I do take the train to get my groceries and use peapod but it is frustrating not to have anywhere convenient to stop by on the way home (I also work downtown) to quickly pick up fresh groceries or when I just don’t feel like trekking across the city.
If you check out Penn Quarter Living you will see that people HAVE been working to convince a grocery store to move into the area for quite some time, to no avail. Here’s hoping that the Safeway on 5th & L opens sooner rather than later.
Well I think the downtown opening is a great way to draw Upper Northwesties to recreational activities in PQ. As a parent living east of the park (though not by much) in Adams Morgan, I'm always surprised that when I suggest activities in PQ to friends living in Upper NW, they occasionally respond that they haven't been down there for fun in years! One of the Textile Museum's goals in moving downtown is to be able to host more educational and community activities... this will help re-establish the long-lost tradition of downtown leisure time in DC among families. And yes, I insist that a vital city needs to embrace children.- SYB