Fashion icon helps promote Ellis Island’s European counterpart

Flemish tourism officials and Brussels-born designer Diane von Furstenberg have launched an American campaign, called Via Antwerp, to promote Antwerp’s soon-to-open Red Star Line Museum, which is devoted to the story of emigration to the U.S. a century ago, writes Travel Weekly’s Nadine Godwin. The museum is housed in buildings that once belonged to the Red Star Line, a Philadelphia-based shipping company that carried more than 2 million immigrants to New York and Philadelphia between 1873 and 1934. Irving Berlin, Albert Einstein and Golda Meir were among those passengers. Set to open September 28, the museum is effectively an Ellis Island counterpart in Europe. At the Via Antwerp launch, Philip Heylen, the city’s deputy mayor in charge of culture and economy, said he was so taken with the Ellis Island Immigration Museum that he presented himself unannounced at the offices of the Ellis Island architects, Beyer Blinder Bell Architects & Planners. When asked if he had an appointment, he said, “No, but I have a great idea.”  And so it happened that in the years that followed, the restoration of the Red Star Line warehouses was undertaken by the same firm behind the renovation of Ellis Island. In those early days, he added, Diane von Furstenberg agreed to be godmother to the project. The museum exhibits, according to a press announcement, will illustrate the phases of an emigrant’s journey, relying on evocative displays of memorabilia ad photos, plus multimedia techniques to convey authentic emigration stories. The Via Antwerp theme highlights Antwerp as a port city, the gateway to Flanders in northern Belgium and beyond — and as well as an outbound gateway to the New World a century ago. Campaign ads will appear in and around New York subway stations and at in online banners. Visit Flanders said the goal is to increase the number of U.S. leisure travellers to Antwerp by 10% by the end of 2014 and also to attract 5,000 Americans to the new museum by the end of next year.