It’s the end of a very short era in Georgetown’s retro arcade scene—today, the National Pinball Museum closed its doors in the Shops at Georgetown Park. According to CBS Baltimore, founder David Silverman (pictured left) says that he is closing a lease on a space near Baltimore’s inner harbor, and could move his collection there by the end of the year.

Silverman, who has sunk $300,000 of his own money into renovating the Georgetown space into a pinball paradise, received an eviction notice from Vornado Realty Trust, which owns the Shops at Georgetown Park, in May, ordering him to vacate in July. He was then granted an extension allowing him to stay through Labor Day, when admission to the museum was free.

Vornado, which took ownership of Georgetown Park last year, has a reputation of being severe with their properties, and also manages Springfield Mall. In addition to the Pinball Museum, stores like The Dandelion Patch and Fornash have also reportedly received notices to vacate. There are rumors that Target or Bloomingdale’s could move into the mall, but Vornado will not confirm.

Silverman has over 800 machines in his collection, and his pieces span the history of the game. We at Vox wish Silverman the best, and hope that this pricey, unique collection will find a more suitable audience in Charm City.

h/t: CBS Baltimore, Georgetown Dish
photo: TBD

It must have been too good to last. Only a year after beginning construction and only five months after opening its doors, the National Pinball Museum is being kicked out by new owners of the Shops at Georgetown Park.

WTOP reported that museum owner David Silverman was sent a letter by Vornado Realty informing him that his lease will be terminated in mid-July. Although the museum’s contract ran through December, the new owners have exercised a clause allowing them to end his lease on 60 days notice. According to the Washington Post, Silverman was asked to leave in order to make way for renovations to the mall.

The Post story notes that Silverman spent about $300,000 of his own money to create the museum, which houses about 200 pinball machines. Silverman is currently in the process of trying to find a place to either temporarily house his collection or permanently move his museum once he is forced to leave Georgetown.

h/t: WTOP. Photo: HeyRocker

While battle over the Shops at Georgetown Park heats up, at least there’s some hope for some fun on the horizon.

The National Pinball Museum is coming to the Shops, according to the Georgetown Metropolitan. David Silverman, its founder and curator, hopes to open the museum in September.

“I am building it as we speak,” Silverman wrote in an email.

Silverman’s grand plan for the museum includes pinball-themed eateries, exhibits on the history of pinball, and workshops on the construction of pinball machines. However, because he plans to build another museum on yet-to-be purchased land, some of these features might not be coming to Georgetown.

The Pinball Museum currently contains 50 pinball machines and is housed in a building behind Silverman’s Silver Spring home. With the move to Georgetown, he says, the museum can exhibit more of his collection. Silverman owns over 850 pinball machines, including a pinball machine precursor from the 1920s.

The large collection should get plenty of use; the museum will not only have exhibits, but also pinball machines for visitors to play.

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At least it’s shiny.

Economic downturn is forcing D.C.’s Newseum to cut its staff of 250 by 10 percent. Call it bad luck, but would-be visitors shouldn’t groan at the threat of shortened exhibit hours. When the Voice’s Sara Carothers perused its hallowed media halls in the spring, she found it to be a P.R. palace and home to enough slant for two Fox News Channels. “Uninspired,” she wrote.

Given that visiting the Newseum costs adult visitors $20 a pop, the $450 million museum may not have come up against hard times if it didn’t–well, suck.

An exhibit at the Newseum—the portmanteau, the folly—recently riled Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, who was not impressed by the showcasing of his former Montana cabin, the scene of his final capture by the FBI. Kaczynski, currently imprisoned in federal Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colorado, spotted an ad for the exhibit, “G-Men and Journalists” in the Washington Post and wrote an angry letter:

Since the advertisement states that the cabin is ‘FROM FBI VAULT,’ it is clear that the government is responsible for the public exhibition of the cabin. This has obvious relevance to the victims’ objection to publicity connected with the Unabom case.

I hope Kacyznski doesn’t find out about museum’s site’s interactive cabin.

It’s the middle of July already and your DC routine–9-5 internship, drinking games, and rotgut TV–is getting old. Your body and mind are revolting, and the National Gallery has the perfect thing: an exhibit of Martin Puryear’s minimalist sculptures.

The sculptures are elegant and simple but have enough complexity to hold viewers’ attention through the 48-piece exhibit, and the NGA’s classy, hands-off curation–one or two pieces per gallery, few guilt-trippy art history lessons stencilled on the walls–is a treat.

Martin Puryear runs from June 22 to September 28, 2008 at the West Building of the National Gallery of Art. Archives/Navy Memorial Metro on the Yellow/Green Lines, or take a crosstown 30s bus.

Photo from the National Gallery of Art