Paul Allen's No One Experiences Music Project

A remarkable O'Geary building and many millions of Paul Allen's clams have not been able to make the Experience Music Project here in Seattle work. This series of stories in todays' Seattle PI is an interesting history of failed whimsy, and the inability of Vulcan corporate stoolies to run a non-profit business successfully.

Why such a failure? They try to run it like a business: worthless hype, inflated costs and ticket prices, an unfocused mission, vastly overpaid senior staff, ridiculous and dysfunctional attempts to restrict information and extend centralized control, unimaginative curation that's already rerunning exhibits, and what appears to be a complete misunderstanding of the place of a cultural institution in a community. More expensive than any museum in the U.S., they seem shocked that the Seattle rock community, let alone this city itself, is indifferent.

The whole place supposedly celebrates the popular, accessible roots of rock. But unlike say, a museum, or, say, a rock club, the exhibits can't really show you much about rock music. And unlike Cleveland, there are things to do in Seattle besides going to an ill-conceived rock museum, like going to a rock show for $8 and buying everyone a round of beer.

Now what to do with the building...