The National Quilt Museum has just won its second consecutive TripAdvisor Award for Excellence, signifying that a new stitch has just been sewn in the fabric of the Museum's evolving reputation as a high-quality tourist destination and premium art museum.
According to TripAdvisor, which just released the Award for Excellence winners this past week, the award is given only to destinations that consistently achieve outstanding traveler reviews on TripAdvisor.
Only the top-performing 10 percent of destinations listed on TripAdvisor receive this prestigious award, a globally recognized designation that spotlights only the cream of the crop in tourism and hospitality. TripAdvisor-branded sites make up the largest travel community in the world, with more than 200 million unique monthly visitors.
"TripAdvisor is delighted to celebrate the success of businesses around the globe, from Sydney to Chicago and Sao Paulo to Rome, which are consistently offering TripAdvisor travelers a great customer experience," said Alison Copus, Vice President of Marketing for TripAdvisor for Business. "The Certificate of Excellence award provides top-performing establishments around the world the recognition they deserve, based on feedback from those who matter most – their customers."
The National Quilt Museum is a destination art museum that features quilt and fiber art. The Museum works to advance the art of quilting by bringing it to new and expanding audiences worldwide. Museum CEO Frank Bennett asserts, "This is a unique art form that everyone should experience personally to fully appreciate."
The Museum offers three galleries of rotating exhibits with works by the most acclaimed quilt and fiber artists working today. In addition, its traveling exhibits can be seen at other museums and events throughout the country. In an average year, the Museum's facility and traveling exhibits are viewed by over 110,000 people from all 50 of the United States, as well as from over 45 countries worldwide.
While the Museum has always been a must-see for active quilters, in recent years the audience of non-quilters attending the Museum has steadily grown. Mainstream media outlets outside of the art world have taken notice as well – with publications as diverse as Forbes and Southern Living covering the Museum, as well as a recent appearance in the form of a question on America's Favorite Quiz Show Jeopardy! "Every day we see people experiencing the art form for the first time. They are amazed by what these artists can do with fabric," Bennett remarks.
Reviews on TripAdvisor are written by travelers of all kinds, as such, the Certificate of Excellence recognition conveys the opinions of all travelers that visit the Museum. "The Award for Excellence shows the expanding enthusiasm for this artwork among people who aren't part of the quilting community, and that's a reflection of the growing, yet long-deserved respect for the art medium. It's not an award for the Museum - it's an award for quilting!"
