It is common practice for cities to be associated with celebrated sons and (sometimes) daughters. This is tied to aligning the branding process to a selected individual’s personality, achievements or celebrityhood to ‘sex up’ the city’s image. In this paper, we compare and contrast the ‘museumification’ of George Best in Belfast and John Lennon in Liverpool. Our findings show, as expected, similarities in how both artists have been museumified in their respective cities; more importantly, however, we also demonstrate significant differences in how the celebrity museumification and associated landscaping has been received in Belfast and Liverpool. Firstly, it is claimed that Liverpool’s association with Lennon is based on a ‘highly selective’ reading of his life and ‘cleaning up’ of his past; however, this is not the case with Best in Belfast. Secondly, the celebrity museumification of Lennon received widespread local support; this is not the case with Best due to an ongoing debate about his suitability as a Belfast icon. We problematise this situation and ruminate as to why Best is seemingly more divisive compared to Lennon. Beyond the spatial spotlight of Belfast and Liverpool, the findings from this paper offer insights and lessons for place branding professionals and practitioners in other cities around the world.

城市与著名的儿子和（有时）女儿联系在一起是一种常见的做法。这与将品牌塑造过程与选定个人的个性、成就或名人联系起来，以“提升”城市形象。在本文中，我们比较和对比了贝尔法斯特的乔治·贝斯特和利物浦的约翰·列侬的“博物馆化”。正如预期的那样，我们的研究结果表明，两位艺术家在各自的城市被博物馆化的方式有相似之处；然而，更重要的是，我们还展示了贝尔法斯特和利物浦在如何接受名人博物馆化和相关景观方面的显着差异。首先，有人声称利物浦与列侬的联系是基于对他生活的“高度选择性”阅读和对他过去的“清理”；然而，Best in Belfast 并非如此。其次，列侬的名人博物馆化得到了当地的广泛支持；由于关于他是否适合作为贝尔法斯特偶像的持续争论，Best 的情况并非如此。我们对这种情况进行了质疑，并思考为什么与列侬相比，贝斯特似乎更具分裂性。除了贝尔法斯特和利物浦的空间聚光灯外，本文的研究结果还为世界其他城市的地方品牌专业人士和从业者提供了见解和经验教训。