Host Organizations
Host Organization is a generator of an event with certain concepts. In this case, Premier Exhibition Inc. and The Howard Hughes Corporation is both classified as the private sectors. Premier Exhibitions, Inc is the organization based in Atlanta. The organization is known as a provider of worldwide exhibitions, which is mainly for educations and entertainment. Other than Bodies… the Exhibition, they also conduct TITANIAC: the Artifact Exhibition and TUTANKHAMUN: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs etc (“Premier Exhibitions,” n.d.). The company itself does not manage any venues, but they have contract among venue managers. They select the venue based on several criterions, including physical specification, proximity to foot traffic area and regional demographics, competitive analysis and historical attendance numbers (“Premier Exhibitions (Touring & Marketing),” n.d.). The exhibition managers critically research financial, environmental and sociocultural aspects of the venue and determine the most suitable place to hold the exhibition. For example, The Howard Hughes Corporations is one of the owners of the premise, obtained authority from the Premier to operate this exhibition at its own property. The Howard Hughes Corporation owns the South Street Seaport in New York and they conducted the exhibitions at Pier 17 area. The South Street Seaport is historically significant for tourism and retail industry and acknowledged as one of the oldest commercial buildings in NY.
Sponsor
According to Allen et al. (2010), sponsorship is regarded as a strong public relations tool generating community goodwill with promotion. Although NY exhibits did not have any sponsorship, The Missouri Attorney General, Chris Koster agreed with the sponsor of exhibition held at shopping mall, St. Louis Galleria (Held, 2010). He is a politician in Democratic Party from Missouri in U.S. According to his mission statement, he is responsible to protect public interest in an open, honest marketplace (“Mission Statement,” n.d.). When the issue about ambiguity origin of the specimen was raised, Koster represented the audiences and asked Premier for disclosure of provenance of specimens. Premier then corresponded through own website acknowledging the lack of description about provenance of the bodies. They added that those specimens are from University in China and they publicly announced, “Premier cannot independently verify the provenance of the human remains in this exhibit” (City, 2010). Premier has created win-win situation by obtaining sponsor in this exhibition. Koster has promoted himself with this