Still, the museum enjoyed steady but quiet success, finally outgrowing its former Lafayette Street space.
That means that the museum enjoys a natural and considerable flow of audiences and interest on a continuous basis.
In the 1950s, the museum enjoyed a higher public profile through a TV show broadcast on CBS, "What in the World?" It had a quiz-show format in which experts were shown objects from the museum's collection and tried to identify them.
The museum enjoyed a successful first year, with an initial target of 300,000 visitors surpassed after six months, with over 100,000 visitors in the first six weeks; by the museum's first anniversary on 5 July 2003 some 470,000 visitors had been received.
The museum enjoyed consistent critical acclaim for its exhibitions and acquisitions during Strick's nine years, but after a solid initial year financially (the tech-stock boom was still going then), MOCA ran budget deficits averaging nearly $3 million a year for the rest of his tenure.
Horse enthusiasts were preparing to pick blueberries, go to the state park and the museums — enjoy the many other charms of this village.
Soon, they're visiting museums, enjoying candlelit dinners, and casually dropping credit cards, drunk on modernity and consumerism.
"If the alternative is staying at the airport, why wouldn't you want to get out?" asked Don deKeiffer, an international trade lawyer in Washington, who has spent layovers seeing art in Amsterdam museums, enjoying casinos in Las Vegas and soaking in steaming blue outdoor waters during a snowfall outside Reykjavik.
UNITED STATES AIR FORCE MUSEUM To enjoy this museum, which is on the grounds of the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, in Dayton, Ohio, you do not need to have a great interest in military aircraft.
At the first Mystic reading, Ms. Larson scheduled the event over parts of four days so that visitors to the museum could enjoy it.
"It's a full-blown metropolis that has the luxury of feeling like a small town," Mr. Geppi said of Baltimore, as he noted the other cultural attractions that visitors to his museum can enjoy.
