Disastrous Sinkhole Becomes the Star of a Museum

When I heard about a massive sinkhole that nearly destroyed eight Corvettes at the National Corvette Museum back in February, I thought that this would surely lead to disaster for the museum.  I recently came across an article in The New York Times addressing this event and, to my surprise, the sinkhole became a star!  Bowling Green, Kentucky experienced a 60-foot-deep sinkhole right under the museum, stunning car lovers at the damage it had done.  Some of the cars were unrecognizable, like the 2011 high-performance Z06, while others were exposed to less damage.  The museum did not expect this to turn out positively, but it did indeed!  The sinkhole became a tourist magnet, shooting attendance up 59 percent in March compared to the same time in 2013.  This spike in attendance lead to growing sales atthe gift shop and cafe as well.

Though this disaster has turned out fairly well for the museum, they felt torn between keeping the financially rewarding sinkhole or filling it in and displaying their prized Corvettes.  After all, the mission of the museum revolves around these cars!  In June, the museum board meet and chose to preserve a small portion of the sinkhole, but not keeping it as a main attraction.  Katie Frassinelli, the museum's marketing and communication manager, praised the sinkhole's occurrence for bringing in publicity, but also called it a novelty that will eventually wear off.  I agree, considering the museum is called the National Corvette Museum and probably would not make it as the National Sinkhole Museum!


Above is a picture of a few of the cars that were removed from the sinkhole.  More photos can be found at the link below.

When the sinkhole occurred, the museum was thankfully closed and empty of visitors.  The museum was built on top of underground caves, which museum officials were not aware of.  Since we've been talking about disaster planning in both our museum and archive class, I thought this was an interesting example of a disaster gone right.  This sinkhole damaged collections, but also brought in a different type of visitor than usual.  The museum used this disaster to their advantage, something I had not yet thought about.

Here's the link the the article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/27/us/kentucky-sinkhole-a-mixed-blessing-for-corvette-museum.html?_r=0