Frank Gehry’s Experience Music Project, soon to open in Seattle is one of a new generation of experiential museums “characterized by a sometimes brash and loopy mix of commercialism and high-tech exhibition space. These facilities often “celebrate not the past but the present of American popular culture: from Virginia’s Newseum to the Grateful Dead’s prospective Terrapin Station in San Francisco, from numerous science museums such as the Museum of Innovation in San Jose to the various halls of fame. The new museums are sometimes more akin to dazzling amusement arcades or electronic playgrounds than to the somber and solidly physical dignities of the Met. Visitors are called upon to play, participate, and buy, rather than contemplate. Some curators, indeed, question whether they are really museums at all and not entertainment complexes with a loose educational veneer. – Metropolis