Newseum Newseum in Arlington, Virginia, in 1997. Prior to opening in Virginia, it maintained exhibition galleries in Nashville and Manhattan, the latter in the lobby of the former IBM Building at 580 Madison Avenue. In 2000, Freedom Forum decided to move the museum across the Potomac River to downtown Washington, D.C. The original site was closed on March 3, 2002, to allow its staff to concentrate on building the new, larger museum. The new museum, built at a cost of $450 million, opened its doors to the public on April 11, 2008. Tim Russert, a Newseum trustee, said, "The Newseum made
Newseum a pretty good impression in Arlington, but at your new location on Pennsylvania Avenue, you will make an indelible mark." The Newseum on Pennsylvania Avenue shares a block adjacent to the Canadian Embassy. After obtaining a landmark location at Pennsylvania Avenue and Sixth Street NW, the former site of National Hotel, the Newseum board selected noted exhibit designer Ralph Appelbaum, who had designed the original site in Arlington, Virginia, and architect James Stewart Polshek, who designed the Rose Center for Earth and Space with Todd Schliemann at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, to work on