Blake Gopnik says it is having lots of stuff on display:
"Two new museums open in the Washington area during the last year or so. One, in suburban Virginia a good hour's drive from the Mall, lives up to hopeful expectations: In the eight months the Smithsonian's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center has been open, 1.3 million people have flocked to this branch of the National Air and Space Museum at Dulles Airport.
"The other museum, smack downtown and across the street from the new Convention Center, falters after just 14 months of operation: As my colleague Jacqueline Trescott reported recently, the City Museum of Washington has pulled in only 33,000 people, somewhere between one-third and one-tenth the numbers forecast for it, depending on the forecaster.
"The reason for the difference? Wondrous stuff to look at -- or a puzzling lack of such, at the City Museum. "