November 18, 2005
The National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia plans to raise its profile and quadruple the number of annual visitors. The museum is to be housed in a downtown building currently housing several television stations and is scheduled to open in 2009. The museum' director Goodman said that the museum currently had to "turn down a lot of exhibits that are offered to us because we don't have the space for them." With a more prominent location, the new facility could attract 250,000 people in its first year, Goodman said. Currently, the museum has around 60,000 visitors per year. Officials at the museum – an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution – are in the midst of a US$ 100 million fund-raising campaign in anticipation of the project. Architect James Polshek has been retained to design the new site. His firm also made the plans for the American Museum of Natural History's Rose Center for Earth and Space, the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian, and the Clinton Presidential Center.