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Millennium on View is a new visual arts program developed by Millennium Hotels and Resorts (MHR) in partnership with many of North America’s leading museums and cultural organizations, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Millennium on View room package deals may include tickets and passes to exhibition previews, exclusive receptions, and private tours. Given the fact that tourists rank the visual arts among their top reasons for traveling, MHR encourages cultural tourists to use the program as a portal to the art world by offering updates on modern and contemporary art fairs, biennials, and festivals.

Whether museums have to pay to be included in the program is unclear and it remains to be seen if such loyalty programs will be mutually beneficial in the long run.

Go to website Millennium on View

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Museums, including powerhouses such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, have come under increasing fire from Italy, Greece and other countries with vast antiquities troves that want the return of priceless artwork they claim was illegally acquired.

Meanwhile, culture mavens in Italy and France protest when their governments launch international ventures, such as sending a Leonardo da Vinci painting to Japan or opening a branch of Paris’ Louvre Museum on the Persian Gulf.

But some experts and curators say this is actually the moment for museums to reinvent themselves by focusing less on buying and more on long-term, mutually beneficial partnerships with other institutions abroad.

Read full article (USA Today, June 9, 2007)