Schwarz
View current page
...more recent posts
Coke, adding to all those slogans, must now be the only soft drink in the world with its own shrine: a tabernacle for the faithful, constructed by its creator. I can’t compare the New World of Coca-Cola — as this 92,000-square-foot, $97 million museum calls itself — with the old (which opened in 1990 and closed in April, a month before this resurrection). But if you want to have a Coke and a smile, and you don’t mind being engulfed by an enormous commercial (at $15 for adults), this museum offers its own puzzles and pleasures.
It stands in Atlanta’s once-blighted downtown, on a 22-acre plot that the company purchased in the early 1990s. Coke donated nine of those acres for construction of the Georgia Aquarium, which opened next door in late 2005. Then, in October, the company announced it would donate 2.5 acres to the City of Atlanta for a civil- and human-rights museum. Nearby CNN offers tours of its headquarters. Media, liberty, fish and Coke. Maybe only fish spoils the composite image.