After closing in November due to lack of visitors and revenue, the D.C. City Museum has vowed to reopen next year. However, museum officials are requesting a yearly $1 million subsidy from the city. "We're on our way," Thornell Page, co-chairman of the Historical Society of Washington, told the D.C. Council on Tuesday. "It's a new vision, new partners and a new future." The museum will experiment with on-site dining, similar to city museums in other large cities. It will continue to rent musuem space out for social functions. Unlike the last go-around, it will not charge an admission fee. "Admissions, in this town, is a deterrent to attendance,'' Page said. "We'd like to get away from that.'' Although initial attendance projections ranged from 100,000 to 450,000 a year, the museum, which opened in May 2003, drew only 36,536 paying visitors in its first 15 months.
Thanks to Peter Buryk
