A Brand New V&A Design Museum Opens This Week
Posted on 09/11/2018, 6:00 PM
The world-famous V&A museum, founded as an offshoot of the Great Exhibition of 1851, is one of London's most popular attractions, bringing in about 4.4 million visits a year. This weekend, the Victoria and Albert, the more formal name for the powerhouse of decorative arts, will have a presence in Scotland, too. V&A Dundee, billed as Scotland's first design museum, opens on the revitalized...
Arthur Frommer: The Biggest News is the Dominance of Tourism by the Chinese
Posted on 09/05/2018, 12:00 AM
Suddenly, the press that deals with travel is full of articles about the sudden rise of Chinese tourism. All over the world, Chinese citizens have become the largest source of tourism, edging out the American, German, British and French. This doesn’t happen by accident. In recent years, the Chinese government has encouraged the movement towards international travel as a means of accomp...
New Street Murals Animate World Trade Center in New York City
Posted on 08/27/2018, 6:00 AM
Ever since the events of 9/11, New York City has faced the challenges of rebuilding the area around the Twin Towers as well as finding an appropriate aesthetic for the site—tasks that have been especially difficult given the emotions involved. In early 2017, Silverstein Properties, the World Trade Center's main developer, invited 50 street artists to do what they do best all over the 69th-floo...
Arthur Frommer: I Love This Canadian Program of Literary Discussions and Tours
Posted on 08/16/2018, 2:00 PM
Every year, thousands of English-speaking adults gather at a number of famous universities to engage for a July week or two in discussion of the great books or great issues. Led by a faculty member of these schools, participants pursue a “learning vacation” at places like Oxford and Cambridge in England, Cornell in upstate New York, or St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. These one-w...
Huge Projections and New Architecture Center Added to Chicago Riverwalk
Posted on 08/15/2018, 7:00 AM
The Chicago River has had about as strange a career as any waterway in North America, starting with its namesake city's decision in the late 19th century (enacted in the early years of the 20th) to reverse the river's course in order to keep sewage out of Lake Michigan. Of course, that just sent the sewage—including the foul runoff from the same meatpacking factories that gave Upton Sinclair the...
National Comedy Museum Opens in New York State
Posted on 08/13/2018, 12:00 PM
Think of the word museum and you’ll probably think of old paintings. You might expect the sound of footsteps crossing a quiet gallery or guards standing watch over masterpieces. The National Comedy Center, which just opened in Jamestown, New York, shatters that lofty picture in favor of something more fun. If this museum is doing its job, attendees will be laughing their way through more ...
Two New Non-Travel Books May Change The Way You See the USA
Posted on 08/09/2018, 8:30 PM
You drive into a new town. It is not a famous place and it certainly isn’t a tourist magnet. But it has a certain vibe, a personality. You start to explore, stopping by a local store, walking through a park, trying the coffee joint where townspeople are congregating. It’s an interesting exercise, but the takeaways are vague: seems like a nice place, you think. But you don’t think more than that, ...
Partially Underwater Artwork Welcomes Snorkelers in the Maldives
Posted on 08/02/2018, 3:30 AM
The world's first semi-submerged sculpture park is now open for snorkel-equipped art lovers off the coast of the Maldives in the southern Indian Ocean. Dubbed Coralarium, the over-/underwater project was dreamed up by British artist Jason deCaires Taylor, who, according to Smithsonian magazine, has worked on similar installations off coasts in Grenada, Mexico, and the Canary Islands. Those were ...
Georgia in Hawaii: O'Keeffe's Forgotten Island Travels
Posted on 08/01/2018, 2:15 PM
Georgia O'Keeffe had a strong sense of place, and that place was usually New Mexico. But having a powerful affinity for one locale didn't leave the painter immune to the allure of others, as she discovered, seemingly to her own surprise, during a 1939 stay in Hawaii. "My idea of the world," she wrote in a letter sent from the islands to her husband, the photographer Alfred Stieglitz, " . . . h...
The Game-Changing Museums of Indianapolis
Posted on 07/09/2018, 6:45 PM
Indianapolis is reinventing the museum. As dropping attendance and revenues plague museums across North America, Indy’s most storied institution, Newfields: A Place for Nature and the Arts—once known as the Indianapolis Museum of Art—has become the sixth-most-visited museum in the United States per capita. Part of the reason for its success has to do with that name change. In 2017, curato...
This Midwest American Town Is Turning 350 Years Old
Posted on 07/03/2018, 7:15 PM
You might have heard that New Orleans and San Antonio are each celebrating a 300th birthday this year. Both cities made our list of the Best Places to Go in 2018 for that very reason. But it's likely you missed the news about another riverside municipality's big milestone—even though it bests the other two by half a century. Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan turns 350 this year. The Soo, as it's kn...
Route 66 and Puerto Rico Among USA's Most Endangered Historic Sites
Posted on 06/28/2018, 3:30 AM
Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Route 66 all appear on 2018's "Most Endangered Places" list, the National Trust for Historic Preservation's annual roundup of important architectural and cultural sites in peril. The purpose of the list, the group says, is to raise awareness and spur action to protect landmarks—and in some cases landmasses—"facing a range of challenges and threats, from d...
Arthur Frommer: This Is Surely the Year's Greatest Travel Bargain!
Posted on 06/28/2018, 12:00 AM
About a dozen years ago, a tour operator called China Spree, headed by a Chinese-American expert, astonished the travel world by charging only $999 for a one-week stay in Beijing including air fare from America (or $100 more for one week in Beijing and Shanghai) and quality accommodations. Then, the founder of China Spree was able to accomplish those travel wonders by negotiating rock-bottom pr...
James Bond Museum Opening in Austrian Alps
Posted on 06/26/2018, 11:45 AM
You'll have to wait until the fall of 2019 for the next James Bond movie, which is being directed by Danny Boyle and stars Daniel Craig in what is reportedly his last outing as 007. Starting on July 12, though, the debonair British spy's fans (Live-and-Let-Diehards?) can visit a new Bond-themed museum set at one of the shooting locations for the previous installment, 2015's Spectre. The 007 Ele...
