News
October 6, 2009 - Museum Center honored for community contributions
The Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal was scheduled to announce today that it is one of 10 institutions to receive the nation's highest annual honor for museums and libraries, the national medal for museum and library service.
The award, given by the Institute of Museum and Library Services since 1994, recognizes institutions for outstanding social, educational, environmental or economic contributions to their communities.
Center officials will receive the medal at a ceremony to be scheduled in Washington, D.C. The center also will receive $10,000, which will be put toward its programming, said Elizabeth Pierce, the center's vice president for marketing and communications.
"It's just a huge point of pride for this community asset to be recognized by museum professionals across the country," Pierce said. "It will bring heightened awareness to Cincinnati and Museum Center."
A banner announcing the medal was to be unveiled in the rotunda of Union Terminal at 10 a.m. today in a ceremony scheduled to include William L. Mallory Sr., the former majority floor leader in the Ohio House who led the nomination for the medal, and his son, Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory.
In his nomination, William Mallory wrote about how he worked at a shoeshine stand at Union Terminal when he was growing up in the West End. Years later, in 1986, he brought the center a state check for $8 million to convert the Art Deco train station and National Historic Landmark into a multi-museum complex.
Today the building houses the Duke Energy Children's Museum, the Museum of Natural History and Science, the Cincinnati History Museum, the Cincinnati Historical Society Library and Archives and the Robert D. Lindner Family Omnimax Theater. With more than 1.3 million visitors annually, the Museum Center was recently recognized by Forbes Traveler as the 17th most visited museum in the nation.
The other medal winners this year are the Stark County District Library in Canton; the Indianapolis Museum of Art; the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh; the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga; the Pritzker Military Library in Chicago; the Gail Borden Public Library in Elgin, Ill.; the Museum of Science and Industry in Tampa, Fla.; the Braille Institute of America Library in Los Angeles; and the Multnomah County Library in Portland, Ore.