2 Museums Cope With a Problem--Success

Success can be a problem.

At the 3-month-old California Science Center, lines at the door can back up into Exposition Park, and timed tickets are required to see the most popular attraction--a 50-foot anatomically correct, transparent human model dubbed Tess.

Fifteen miles away at the Getty Center in Brentwood, senior to the Science Center by less than two months, crowds have exceeded expectations so much that architect Richard Meier already has gone back to the drawing board to reconfigure the entrance and add restrooms.

And that’s just for normal weeks. Vacations bring even more people. Anticipating an overwhelming influx of visitors during the recent spring break, the Getty orchestrated a four-week anti-attendance campaign. “It’s a full house,” the announcements said. “So look ahead, plan ahead, call ahead . . . and visit the Getty Center a little later.”

The two institutions might appear to have about as much in common as Sears and Saks Fifth Avenue. The $130-million California Science Center--formerly the Museum of Science and Industry--is a state-funded, centrally located facility that focuses on science and targets an audience of children and families. The privately funded $1-billion Getty Center, run by the J. Paul Getty Trust, sits on a lofty hilltop in a tony neighborhood and devotes its resources to fine art and related programs. Although the Getty attracts a broad spectrum of visitors, its core audience is tourists and the art world.

Yet both the California Science Center and the Getty--which are free, except for $5 parking fees--are attracting people who may have been turned off by the purity and stuffiness of old-style museums but feel at ease at the new institutions.

Attendance Has Far Surpassed Projections

And they are showing up in numbers that far surpass the most optimistic predictions. Having hosted more than 700,000 visitors since its Feb. 7 opening, the California Science Center has upped its first-year attendance projection from 2 million to 3 million. Nearly 800,000 people have gone to the Getty since it opened Dec. 16, pushing its estimated inaugural year attendance from 1.2 million to 2 million.

“We had this notion of ourselves as something like a park, knowing that a lot of non-museum-goers regularly go to parks,” said John Walsh, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum. The Getty Center is “kind of a cross between a park and a city square” where “people fall into familiar patterns,” he said. “Californians wander around the way they do at the Huntington. Europeans and people with village experience--anyone who is used to sharing space with neighbors--just plunk right down in the museum courtyard.”

And if visitors aren’t thinking “park,” they are thinking “shopping mall.” Just as commercial ventures such as REI, a sports equipment company, and the KCET Store of Knowledge incorporate physical activities, interactive devices and museum-like displays in their facilities, up-to-date museums often resemble theme parks and malls, with gift shops and a choice of places to eat. The California Science Center has a McDonald’s and a more upscale snack bar. The Getty offers a full-service restaurant, a cafeteria, a sandwich bar and food carts.

“Boundaries have been eradicated,” said Selma Holo, director of USC’s art gallery and museum studies program. “Nothing is just one thing anymore.” At a moment when “edutainment” and “shoppertainment” are buzzwords in retailing, nonprofit museums look more and more like commercial establishments, she said.

Much of the response to the Science Center and the Getty is the result of advertising, which reached into schools and community centers and spread the word on buses and streetside banners. But some observers say the institutions’ phenomenal popularity also exemplifies a search for meaningful recreation or spiritual fulfillment.

“The focus in the last couple of decades on technological advancements and the material world has increased to such an incredibly intense degree that people are hungering for things to dance with in their heads and their spirits,” said Jamesina Henderson, executive director of the California African-American Museum, which has had a 50% increase in attendance since the opening of the adjacent California Science Center. “Along with the newness, it’s the non-homogenized, non-Disneyized experience that people are really hungry for.”

The museums also help to fill a different kind of void, said James S. Catterall, a professor at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies who has published a study on the importance of the arts in education.

“Both places offer something people would like their kids to have but don’t get, unless the parents go out of their way to find it,” he said.

At the California Science Center that “something” is real specimens and a wide variety of hands-on activities. “It’s the same thing with art at the Getty. These things are thin at best in the schools,” he said.

Whatever the social implications of their popularity may be, the Science Center and the Getty are learning to cope with success.

“It certainly beats the alternative of building it and no one coming,” said Jeffrey Rudolf, executive director of the Science Center. “But we’ve had challenges.”

The biggest one was increasing the staff very quickly, he said. Of the 300 people on staff, about 100 were hired shortly before the new facility opened, and 50 have been added since then. “We have about 100 volunteers, but we need a lot more. Our staff has been consumed with crowd control, which is generally handled by volunteers, so they haven’t been able to do their interpretive work.”

On a typical weekend day, 10,000 to 12,000 people visit the Science Center. Presidents Day set the record of 16,000. “That was too many people,” Rudolf said.

Although the building’s capacity is about 9,000, attendance is limited to about 5,000 so that visitors can enjoy the experience, he said. During the first few weeks of operation, there were waits of up to three hours, but now most visitors walk right in. Even at the busiest times, there’s rarely a wait of more than half an hour, he said.

The Getty hosts about 10,000 visitors a day, dropping to 5,000 on particularly stormy days. Attendance peaked at 15,000 on Dec. 26.

“The biggest surprise for us has been the number of people coming by public transportation,” said Stephen D. Rountree, vice president of the Getty Trust. “We thought, based on our experience in Malibu and our sense of Los Angeles, that if we could control the parking, we could deal with 90% of the people who want to come. But 40% to 50% every day are coming in ways that don’t require parking. And they tend to come early in the day, all in a big bunch. So we lost the ability to stagger or manage the flow.”

What’s more, he said, people stay an average of four hours, instead of the projected three.

Because of the crowds, the Getty’s staff of 1,200 includes about 50 new employees. Because of unexpectedly heavy foot traffic in the museum, 14 members of the maintenance crew buff the wood floors every night, a task that had been scheduled for only once or twice a week.

The Getty’s food service was expected to bring in about $4 million the first year, but it will probably amount to $10 million. “The first few days, we just had mayhem,” Rountree said. Now, at peak hours, people wait in line for a few minutes outside the building that houses the restaurant and cafeteria to expedite service inside. In addition, the cafeteria has added cashiers and menu items that take less time to prepare or can be assembled in advance.

More Restrooms Are in the Works

Other coping mechanisms require physical changes.

“We are working with Richard Meier to do some redesign around the entrance on the first level of parking so that we can queue people up under cover,” Rountree said. When the crowd at the museum approaches 5,000, the maximum allowed by the Fire Department, arriving visitors must wait at the street entrance level or the lower tram boarding area.

“We are also trying to improve circulation at the entrance for taxis, shuttles and handling queues of people on days when we are really jammed. We will probably remove some of the trees at the entrance to make a larger area for cabs and drop-offs,” he said.

As for the Getty’s much-publicized shortage of restrooms--a problem that has arisen mainly because people use the ones off the museum’s lobby instead of elsewhere at the center--Meier is designing a new block of restrooms on the upper plaza, near the tram loading zone. The center also plans to add restrooms in the gallery buildings.

Still other ways to streamline the operation are under discussion. A kiosk may be added at the lower tram boarding area to take pressure off the bookstore and allow visitors to make purchases as they are leaving. A new ticketing system is also under consideration.

Despite the problems that success has brought, “people seem to understand,” the Science Center’s Rudolf said. “Some of our visitors get frustrated, but when they see the kinds of crowds we have, most of them understand that it’s a strain.”

At the Getty, too, “people have proved to be incredibly resilient and forbearing about waiting in lines,” Rountree said. “We are all A-types up here, so we didn’t expect that. People seem to think that this is a very special place and they are not surprised at all that it’s so popular. In fact, they are sort of surprised that we are surprised.”

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* SHAWN HUBLER: As chaos reigns, Science Center needs to trouble-shoot. B1