I was trying to remember how I’d come to know Minneapolis before even arriving there. Although I had visited for a couple of days in 1989, very little of that time formed any significant impressions. Rather, I realized I had come to know Minneapolis through the foibles of a young, working class woman struggling to "make it after all." It is not without some irony that 119 North Weatherly, Apartment D, is but a few blocks from my home. Of course, the current owner tries— perhaps hopelessly— to camouflage the quaint Victorian from the leer of tourists, shielding his private life from scrutiny. Such efforts seem superfluous to me because their is no private life there per se that is not already known to these tourists. To move beyond the facade of this house is to enter the televisual fiction of Mary Richard’s bachelorette pad. "Minneapolis"— the media composite— was there in the thirty second opening sequence: the walk around the pond at Loring Park, a flurry of signs on I-94 reflected on the front windshield of a Ford Pinto, that triumphant toss of her hat on the city street. As Ernest Pascucci has observed: "In September 1973, as The Mary Tyler Moore Show began its fourth season, the opening credits announced the malling of Minneapolis, replacing the outdoor location shots that led up to Mary's famous toss of her blue hat with a thoroughly majestic image of Mary reaching the top of the escalator in Philip Johnson's IDS Center."

My contemporary impression of Minneapolis is formed by what constitutes— perhaps depressingly— one of the biggest tourist attractions in America, The Mall of America, conveniently located a few miles from the airport. More than it’s collection of 300+ shops, the Mall of America exists as it’s own entertainment complex, replete with an indoor aquarium and amusement park. A nexus of consumerist ventures where planes off load passengers from Asia while the RV parking lot overflows with weekend visitors from places like Iowa and the Dakotas. As the embodiment of what is euphemistically call "shopertainment," the Mall of America defines the very concept of destination culture: that unrelenting impulse to be "there." Nestled within the Mall of America is second most important development of theme-mania, the "eatertainment" craze, epitomized by the Rainforest Cafe.

The Hard Rock Cafe has the distinction of being the first eating establishment to strategically incorporate an entertainment theme into its mission, as early as 1971, while Planet Hollywood remains the dominant player— having successfully muscled the promise or threat of real actor appearances— over its competition, such as the frail and failing likes of the rather oxymoronically envisioned Fashion Cafe, where, apparently, the anorexic meet to eat. Newcomer Rainforest Cafe plays more successfully in the fields of "experiential" dining, where diners’ "adventures" begin with their paper "passports" stamped by the hostess, the mise-en-scene of animatronic alligators, khaki-clad barkers with live parrots perched on their arms, a bubbling aquarium bar, and the crack-and-flash of thunder and lightning dispensed like clockwork every 35 minutes. Just like Niketown’s encapsulation of experiential retail, the Rainforest Cafe embodies the ethos of what has been billed as the new experience economy.

While Mall of America creates a self-contained set of environments for recreation, dining, and retail adventure as a kind of consumer suburban city, it is the urban city itself which is the greatest challenge for what is termed the urban entertainment destination or UED. Vastly larger and more difficult to control, the urban entertainment destination is the aggregation of various redevelopment zones, shopping, entertainment, lodging, and dining districts synergistically connected to one another in ways which preserve a sense of security and propriety. Just as the smooth movement of money and information exemplifies the economy of flows, the elevated walkway, or skyway, and pedestrian tunnel ensure the separation of the postmodern tourist from the uncontrollable nature of the post-industrial street. And unlike the escalator and elevator, which facilitated the arrival of the modernist shopper within the confines of the department store and indoor mall— just like Mary Richards— new technologies in people transport have already been theorized by Rem Koolhaas for moving bodies vertically, horizontally, and diagonally in his proposal for the new MoMA. As Koolhaas coyly discloses: "As more and more architecture is finally unmasked as the mere organization of flows... it is evident that circulation is what makes or breaks public architecture."

Is there no city without revitalization? Again Minneapolis epitomizes this approach to urban development with the recent intensification of activity surrounding the new corporate headquarters for Target occupying a major block of downtown Nicollet Mall, several city blocks of shopping that is itself connected with the longest system of skyways, and the concentration of major theaters, sporting complexes, nightclubs, and restaurants forming the boundaries of this UED. I can't help but think of the fate of the nomadic tourist which Francesco Bonami ponders when he predicts: "[that] today's largest peaceful migration of people... produced by the perennial masses of tourists moving around the world... may be the real heroes of the future, people devoted to becoming textures of the world, a soft net or gauze that brings money and peace wherever it arrives. We have the monument of the unknown soldier, but soon we will also have one to the unknown tourist— some person collapsed under the sky of Florence or in the Burmese jungle." Or, one might add, under Mall of America's Camp Snoppy.

The third major component of the experiential transformation of cultural life, particularly in museum contexts, is the advent of edutainment strategies and infotainment technologies. The 19th-century school factory for disciplined learning has been banished, first displaced by the adaptation of "learning is fun," and now replaced by a fun-loving sense of "discovery," where sensation is knowledge. It is the spectacularized encounter and the prescribed pathways to understanding that define the course of action. These strategies have been actively employed in science museums for years, sometimes in surprisingly inventive ways but usually in the form of planetarium light shows set to rock music, whose mere existence ensures that Pink Floyd royalties will continue well into the next millennium. The mantra of interactivity, which has been reduced to the carpal-tunnel-inducing practice of clicking, is now replaced by the "immersive exhibiting" promised by Imax and Iworks technologies. Whether ironic or somehow predestined, the use of immersive exhibiting has been most intense around wilderness adventure schemes— where we can play along the simulated boundaries of nature and culture.

All of these thoughts come to bear on the future development of the Walker Art Center as a kind of urban destination. This of course raises many questions about the transformations of museum culture. For example, can Pine and Gilmore's description of the four "E"s of the experience economy— entertainment, educational, esthetic, and escapist— be simultaneously engaged as a multiple set of options for potential audiences? Can sensationalized knowledge and discovery be added to the already existing conventions of contemplation and interpretation in museum settings? Can the routine of museum going itself be staged, revealed to be the spectacle that it already is? Can our metaphors include the elements of chance or serendipity, which are seemingly outside the boundaries of a scripted and staged experience? In other words, can the museum be more club-like than mall-like?

As more and more themed ventures grow stale with smaller and smaller profits, the ever-changing nature of museum programming bodes well for audiences demanding new adventures with increasing frequency. And finally, are museums ready to accept the notion of a true but messy multiplicity, a place where different peoples are offered individually chosen pathways to discovery and information?

Bibliography

Francesco Bonami. Unfinished History. Minneapolis: Walker Art Center. 1998
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett. Destination Culture. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 1998
John Hannigan. Fantasy City. London: Routledge. 1998
Steven Harris & Deborah Berke. Architecture of the Everyday. 1997
B. Joseph Pine II & James H. Gilmore. "Welcome to the Experience Economy" Harvard Business Review, July-August 1998.

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