ARTINFO.com

Font Size Font Increase Font Decrease

Re-discovering Discovery Times

Published: June 4, 2009
NEW YORK— Discovery Times is dead, long live Discovery Times. In the basement of the old New York Times building. With King Tut and the Titanic.

From 2002 to 2006, the Times had a news-based cablecast property called Discovery Times, which was a joint venture with the Discovery Channel. The newspaper pulled out at a loss, based on the assumption that people preferred to watch Internet video over television. Discovery kept the property and renamed it Investigation Discovery.

Now, Discovery and a partner are taking space in the newspaper’s former Times Square digs — the Times itself moved into a new facility nearby in 2007, the exterior designed by the ubiquitous architect Renzo Piano.

The new project, filling basement space where the paper was printed until the 1990s, will be called Discovery Times Square Exposition, perhaps inadvertently reviving the old joint-venture’s name. Discovery’s partner is Running Subway, a production company that is behind the New York annex of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

With 60,000 square feet, the facility will occupy two huge galleries plus a café and gift shop, all underground. It will open with two shows on June 24: “Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition” and “Lucy’s Legacy: The Hidden Treasures of Ethiopia,” the latter based around the fossilized remains of a female hominid. “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs” will open next spring.

Running Subway reportedly took out a 20-year lease and spent “tens of millions of dollars” on construction over the past year. It might be a good bet: Times Square is infested with tourists year-round, and the blockbuster shows will carry $19.50 price tags for adults, with modest discounts for children and the elderly.

Read more at The New York Times.

advertisements