Want to See Cuba? Your Museum Might Take You

Want to See Cuba? Your Museum Might Take You
By ELIZABETH OLSON
Published: March 14, 2012

SOME large American museums, and an increasing number of smaller ones,
offer domestic and international trips — with Cuba currently all the
rage — that enliven the museums' images and at the same time help
increase membership and raise money.

Some are major institutions, like the Metropolitan Museum in New York
City and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, which offer tours to
Cuba and other destinations where travel can be difficult to arrange
individually.

But even the much smaller Woodson Art Museum in Wausau, Wis., is about
to roll out a Cuba trip. Ruth Schuette, a property manager who is a
member of the museum, said she was eager to join it because "I didn't
want to take a chance of going there through Canada or someplace else."

Also, she said, "I did not want to have to do all the homework myself,
and I know from my previous museum trips that I will be part of a
like-minded group interested in similar experiences, and we will keep in
touch afterwards about the trip."

Museum trips cost $4,000 to $10,000, with the trips to Cuba falling at
the lower end of the scale. Smithsonian Journeys, a giant in the museum
travel field, operates about 180 trips annually, and some of the
proceeds go to the institution's research and exhibitions. The
institution was a museum travel pioneer, beginning its trips in 1970.
Like many museums, it offered — and still does when asked — exclusive
trips for donors and board members, but the Smithsonian also helped
democratize museum trips by offering them broadly to the public.

At first, the Smithsonian had four trips a year, with up to 180 people
on a chartered Boeing 707, accompanied by academic experts. The idea was
so new that Amy Kotkin, longtime director of Smithsonian Journeys,
recalled, "Once Pan Am agents, in uniform, came to the Smithsonian
Castle and checked everyone in."

By the 1980s, the Smithsonian began to offer more varied trips for
smaller groups, typically around two dozen people. The program, like
most travel, suffered during the recession, but is now steadily adding
destinations, with Cuba trips brimming with interested travelers. Trips
to Cuba require a license from the Treasury Department and are reserved
for groups that can provide education and culture-rich programs.

"We're not on the cutting edge of adventures like climbing a mountain,"
Ms. Kotkin said. "We focus on lifelong learning, and offer soft
adventure in places like Peru, Bhutan, India, China and lots of other
destinations, and now Cuba."

Emily Van Agtmael, an interior designer in Maryland, who returned from a
Corcoran tour of Cuba last week, said the docent whom the museum chose
to explain the country's national museum, "made all the difference; with
her, we could really appreciate what was in the collection."

All museum trips are called "friend raisers," said Merle Lomrantz,
director of the Newark Museum's active member travel program, where more
than 1,200 of the museum's 5,000 member households have participated in
its domestic or international trips.

"What we have found is that the trips encourage members to become more
interested in the museum, to raise their membership level and become
patrons," she said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/15/arts/artsspecial/want-to-see-cuba-your-museum-might-take-you.html