Museum of Pop Culture: Mopop
Museum of Pop Culture: Mopop
Museum of Pop Culture: Mopop
The museum, which used to be known as Experience Music Project and Science
Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame (EMP|SFM) and later EMP Museum until View of MoPOP from the Seattle
November 2016, has founded many public programs including Sound Off!, an Center with the monorail traveling
annual 21 and under battle-of-the-bands that supports the all-ages scene, and Pop through it
Conference, an annual gathering of academics, critics, musicians, and music buf
fs. Established 2000
Location 325 5th Avenue N
MoPOP, in collaboration with the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) presents
Seattle, Washington
the Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Film Festival, which takes place annually
every winter at Seattle Cinerama Theater. Coordinates 47.6215°N
122.3486°W
Type Popular culture,
music, science
Contents fiction, video games
The Hall of Fame stopped inducting fantasy writers after 2004, when it became part of the Science Fiction Museum affiliated with
MoPOP, under the name "Science Fiction Hall ofFame". Having inducted 36 writers in nine years, in 2005 it began to recognize non-
literary media.[9] It retained the quota of four new members and thus reduced the annual number of writers. The 2005 and 2006 press
releases placed new members in "Literature", "Art", and "Film, Television and Media", and "Open" categories, one each.[11][12] In
[13][14]
2007 and 2008 the fourth inductee was placed in one of the three substantial categories.
MoPOP de-installed the Science Fiction Museum in March 2011. When the exhibition "Icons of Science Fiction" opened in June
[5][6][7]
2012, a new Hall of Fame display was unveiled and the class of 2012 inducted.
Nominations are submitted by the public but the selections are made by "award-winning science fiction authors, artists, editors,
publishers, and film professionals."[15]
MoPOP restored the original name online during June 2013 and announced five new members, one daily, beginning June 17. The
first four were cited largely or wholly for science fiction but the last was J.R.R. Tolkien, "hailed as the father of modern fantasy
literature".[16]
The class of 2014 brings the number of members to 84, four annually except five in 2008 and 2013 to 2015.
1996: Jack Williamson; A. E. van Vogt; John W. Campbell, Jr.; Hugo Gernsback
1997: Andre Norton; Arthur C. Clarke; H. G. Wells; Isaac Asimov
1998: Hal Clement; Frederik Pohl; C. L. Moore; Robert A. Heinlein
1999: Ray Bradbury; Robert Silverberg; Jules Verne; Abraham Merritt
2000: Poul Anderson; Gordon R. Dickson; Theodore Sturgeon; Eric Frank Russell
2001: Jack Vance; Ursula K. Le Guin; Alfred Bester; Fritz Leiber
2002: Samuel R. Delany; Michael Moorcock; James Blish; Donald A. Wollheim
2003: Wilson Tucker; Kate Wilhelm; Damon Knight; Edgar Rice Burroughs
2004: Brian Aldiss; Harry Harrison; Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley; E. E. "Doc" Smith
2005: Steven Spielberg; Philip K. Dick; Chesley Bonestell; Ray Harryhausen[11]
2006: George Lucas; Frank Herbert; Frank Kelly Freas; Anne McCaffrey[12]
2007: Ed Emshwiller; Gene Roddenberry; Ridley Scott; Gene Wolfe[13]
2008: Ian Ballantine and Betty Ballantine; William Gibson; Richard M. Powers; Rod Serling[14]
2009: Edward L. Ferman; Michael Whelan; Frank R. Paul; Connie Willis[18]
2010: Octavia E. Butler; Richard Matheson; Douglas Trumbull; Roger Zelazny[19]
2011: Vincent Di Fate; Gardner Dozois; Harlan Ellison; Jean Giraud[20]
2012: Joe Haldeman; James Tiptree, Jr.; James Cameron; Virgil Finlay[7]
2013: H. R. Giger; Judith Merril; Joanna Russ; David Bowie; J. R. R. Tolkien[16]
2014: Frank Frazetta; Hayao Miyazaki; Leigh Brackett; Olaf Stapledon; Stanley Kubrick[15]
2015: James E. Gunn; Georges Méliès; John Schoenherr; Kurt Vonnegut; Jack Gaughan[21]
MoPOP rebrand
In November 2016 EMP Museum announced a rebrand to Museum of Pop Culture, or MoPOP.[22] In an email to current and past
members, CEO and Director Patty Isacson Sabee wrote:
Spanning science fiction, fantasy, horror, fashion, sports, and video games, MoPOP reflects our vision for curating,
exploring, and supporting the creative works that shape and inspire our lives.
Architecture
MoPOP is located on the campus of Seattle Center, adjacent to the
Space Needle and the Seattle Center Monorail, which runs through the
building. The structure itself was designed by Frank Gehry and
resembles many of his firm's other works in its sheet-metal
construction, such as Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Walt Disney
Concert Hall, and Gehry Tower. Much of the building material is
exposed in the building's interior. The building contains 140,000 square
feet (13,000 m2), with a 35,000-square-foot (3,300 m2) footprint. The
name of the museum's central Sky Church pays homage to Jimi
Hendrix. A concert venue capable of holding up to 800 guests, Sky
Church boasts 70-foot ceilings, state-of-the-art sound and lighting, and The Sky Church An exterior view of the
a mammoth indoor HD LED screen.[23] The last structural steel beam building
to be put in place bears the signatures of all construction workers who
were on site on the day it was erected. Hoffman Construction Company
of Portland, Oregon, was the general contractor. Magnusson Klemencic Associates of Seattle were the structural engineers for the
project.[24]
Even before groundbreaking, Seattle Weekly said the design could refer to "the
often quoted comparison to a smashed electric guitar." Indeed, Gehry himself
had made the comparison, "We started collecting pictures of Stratocasters,
bringing in guitar bodies, drawing on those shapes in developing our
ideas."[25] The architecture was greeted by Seattle residents with a mixture of
acclaim for Gehry and derision for this particular edifice. "Frank Gehry,"
remarked British-born, Seattle-based writerJonathan Raban, "has created some
wonderful buildings, like the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, but his Seattle
effort, the Experience Music Project, is not one of them."[26] New York Times
Design by Frank Gehry
architecture critic Herbert Muschamp described it as "something that crawled
out of the sea, rolled over, and died."[27] Forbes magazine called it one of the
world's 10 ugliest buildings.[27] Others describe it as a "blob"[28] or call it "The Hemorrhoids".[26] Despite some critical reviews of
the structure, the building has been called “a fitting backdrop for the world's largest collection of Jimi Hendrix memorabilia.”[29] The
outside of the building which features a fusion of textures and colors, including gold, silver, deep red, blue and a "shimmering purple
haze,"[30] has been declared "an apt representation of the American rock experience."
[31]
Finances
The museum has had mixed financial success.[32][33] In an effort to raise more funds, museum organizers used Allen's extensive art
collection to create a 2006 exhibit within the confines of the MoPOP.[34] The exhibit was entitled DoubleTake: From Monet to
Lichtenstein. The exhibit included Roy Lichtenstein's The Kiss (1962), Pierre-Auguste Renoir's The Reader (1877), Vincent van
Gogh's Orchard with Peach Trees in Blossom (1888), Pablo Picasso's Four Bathers (1921) and several works of art from Claude
Monet including one of the Water Lilies paintings (1919) and The Mula Palace (1908).[35] Since then the museum has organized
numerous exhibitions focused more specifically on popular culture: Sound and Vision: Artists Tell Their Stories, which opened
February 28, 2007, for example, brought together both music and science fiction in a single exhibit, and drew on the museum's
extensive collection of oral history recordings.[36] The museum's recent exhibitions have ranged from horror cinema, video games,
and black leather jackets to fantasy film and literature.
References
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36. • "The EMP|SFM Oral History Program"(https://web.archive.org/web/20070921124329/http://www .empsfm.org/progr
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19. Retrieved 2013-03-19.
External links
Museum of Pop Culture official website
SeattleWiki: Experience Music Project
Experience Music Project at greatbuildings.com
New Interfaces for Musical Expression – NIME-01
"Exhibitions / Past Exhibitions". EMP Museum (empmuseum.org)
"Exhibitions / Past Exhibitions". Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museumempsfm.org).
( Archived
2007-09-23. Retrieved 2013-03-19.
"Exhibitions / Past Exhibitions". Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museumempsfm.org).
( Archived
2011-01-27. Retrieved 2013-03-19.
"Exhibitions / Past Exhibitions". EMP Museum (empmuseum.org). Archived 2012-07-18. Retrieved 2013-03-19.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Museum_of_Pop_Culture&oldid=819740669
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