The Riverside Metropolitan Museum is ready to change the way Riversiders view museums. Think flexibility, constant change, interactive exhibits, oral histories, thought-provoking stories of Riverside’s past, present, and future, when imagining the cutting-edge museums of the 21st century. With a collection worth its weight in gold, plus the renovations and expansions of the building to create a home worthy of the collections, the Museum is poised to be the destination museum for natural history and local history in the Inland Empire. Downtown Riverside is going through several major changes to the landscape of the Arts and Culture Corridor along Mission Inn Avenue and Main Street. With the recreation of the Riverside Metropolitan Museum as a 21st Century museum, the Riverside Art Museum’s programming that continually reaches record-breaking numbers, the creation of The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art, Culture, and Industry–lovingly dubbed “The Cheech”, the renovation of the Mission Inn Museum, the re-branding of the Culver Center for the Arts, the Sweeney Gallery and the California Photography Museum as “UCR Arts”, along with the addition of “F-stop” the on-tap bar that offers museum-goers various craft beers, and finally the incoming Civil Rights Institute of Southern California, Riverside continues to live up to its name as the City of Arts and Innovation.
–Phil Falcone
