review of a museum website

I visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum at http://www.ushmm.org. The first thing I noticed was that the museum had a section on the right hand side to view the site in a different language. They have over ten different languages that you can view the site in. They have links across the top and on the right side that you can click on to go to things such as education, research, history, and support. They also have a search bar at the top of the page for quick searches on their site. Their mission was very easy to find under the “museum” tab. It states,”The Museum’s primary mission is to advance and disseminate knowledge about this unprecedented tragedy; to preserve the memory of those who suffered; and to encourage its visitors to reflect upon the moral and spiritual questions raised by the events of the Holocaust as well as their own responsibilities as citizens of a democracy.” The website is extremely user friendly and isn’t too cluttered. It gives people a very good idea of what the museum has without taking away what an actual real life visit to the museum would be like. They have 13 subjects of online exhibitions that you can look at including children and the U.S. The website contribute to the mission because it is extremely educational without being a physical visit to the museum. The website talks about the history behind the Holocaust and clearly defines what genocide is. College graduates can also do fellowships, internships, and research at the museum which I found very interesting. The website also has a behind the scenes for staff and shows what the curator does for the museum and how much work the museum took to create and still takes to run. There are many videos and photographs for many different things. One could spend hours looking at all of their online collections and I can’t even imagine going to the actual museum. I feel like the website isn’t as dramatic or as powerful as the physical museum would be but I realize that it is very hard to portray something so powerful on the screen of a computer. I think that this is a very good and well organized website.

exhibit review

I got to go to beautiful, sunny Las Vegas for spring break. I figured this would be a great opportunity to visit a museum so my dad and I looked one up to visit while we were there. Being from Richland, Washington (which is right by the Hanford Site) and my dad from Los Alamos, New Mexico (working at the Los Alamos National Labs), we decided that the Atomic Testing Museum. The museum opened in February of 2005 in Las Vegas, Nevada. It is located in a very modern looking building just a few miles from the Las Vegas Strip and the University of Nevada- Las Vegas campus. Their website has a mission-like statement that says “ATM permanent exhibits portray world history as community history through varied representations of the story of the NTS and its programs, first-person narratives, large iconic artifacts, authenticity of text, environmental re-creations, theatrical devices, interactive elements for personal exploration, multiple viewpoints expressed in multi-media presentations and stunning graphics, many not seen before.” The museum seemed to be geared more towards adults than children and I can see how a child may get bored or be uninterested in the museum. The museum was very clean and organized on the inside and was pretty dimly lit after the ticket booth with the exception of lights shining on the displays. The staff was very nice and they had pamphlets for older students to read and fill out as they went through the museum. The exhibits were laid out very well and there were arrows on the floor pointing in the direction of the next room. There was a lot of concrete and stainless steel throughout the museum to give it the “bomb shelter” feel throughout. There were huge posters on the walls with information to read. There was a lot of reading, something I didn’t like about the museum. They had a giant timeline spanning through the entire museum about the atomic bomb and the tests sites that went all the way to the year 2000. On the same timeline they had fun inventions and facts on the bottom so that it really put the era into perspective for those who either weren’t around or couldn’t remember. In one of the corners they had an alphabetized list of all of the code words that were used for the atomic tests so that other nations wouldn’t find out and so the news was relatively secret from the public. My favorite name was Zucchini but they also had other fruits and vegetables on the list. It was amazing to see how much work was done with the atomic bombs and yet how secret the whole operation really was. My favorite display showed the influence of the atomic bomb on pop culture. Many artifacts were displayed in this large case. It contained things like atomic fire ball candy (cinnamon flavored candy), comics, books and other toys throughout the time the atomic bomb came about. If seen some of these stores and even eaten an atomic fire ball. One of the more impressive displays was a JC Penny clothing display. The museum even had an old JC Penny catalogue which used atomic bomb testing to see how good their clothing was (definitely a very interesting marketing ploy). It showed picture in their catalogue about how much heat and pressure their clothes could withstand (tested on mannequins of course). The museum also had basic chemistry displays in which it talked about radioactive elements and electron orbitals. This portion of the museum definitely brought me back to my days in basic chemistry which I don’t want to relive again. The most impressive part of the entire museum was the theatre in which you got to experience what it felt like to be on the atomic test site. There was a countdown, a giant rumble, air, and a flash of light. The noise was also overwhelming. There weren’t many visitors in the museum when I attended which made the experience more personal. The museum did not allow photography which was a bit unfortunate because I know there were things that I missed. The museum had a Geiger counter and some samples to test with it. Fiesta ware is slightly radioactive whereas water is not radioactive at all. At the exit of the museum, they had a gift shop where they had pencils, pens, patches, jewelry, shirts, mugs, atomic candy, and nuclear waste candy, magnets, and original 1962 Galvanized metal Fallout Shelter signs. The museum was very interesting but I’m not sure if I would have been interested in it if I did not have such a personal connection to the Hanford Site or the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Review of NY Times article

I read an article about the future “At Ground Zero” museum scheduled to open in 2012. I have never been to New York thus, have never been to ground zero but I heard that it is a very impactful and emotional place. When I first started this class I wondered if they had a 9/11 museum or if the people of New York were going to try to create one. Even just reading the article was very impactful. At the museum they are going to have recordings from survivors remembering the attacks on the World Trade Centers on September 11, 2001. The museum is also going to have artifacts from victims such as a red jacket owned by Karen Hawley Juday. Many of the artifacts were donated by the victims’ families. The museum is going to have about 400 oral stories and a sound booth where visitors can record their own thoughts and stories. The museum also contains a time line of September 11, 2001. I believe this museum will have a very large impact, especially as newer generations grow up and begin to ask questions about September 11. This was a very traumatic event in American history and there is no doubt in my mind that it will be in textbooks and classrooms across the nation for my children to learn later in life. This article brought out the power that this museum is going to have and certain encouraged me to go visit it someday. I really enjoy the thought of a hands on experience of recording your own memories for others to hear. I think that creates a sense of connection within our country and also people who come from outside the United States as well. If done correctly, this is going to be an amazing and powerful museum for many generations to come. The idea of this museum lets the voices of the survivors and victims be heard so that current and future generations can understand what happened on September 11, 2001.

architecture and museums

When going into a museum sometimes we have a pre conceived notion of what we will actually see by what’s on the outside. We judge everything by its outside. We judge people initially on how they look or what clothes they wear. We judge magazines by what’s shown on the cover and we decide what movies to see by the preview. I think of the architecture of a museum as a preview. If the architecture is old and boring (like the museums my parents took me to as a young child) people may think that they will not have any fun at a museum like this. However, it can be really interesting to compare for the architecture to the objects inside the museum. Architecture has played an important role in the way that I view museum. I love the shape and the look of the Experienced Music Project in Seattle. It draws people into it just by the feel and the look of the architecture outside of it. Even people who may not know what the museum is, they may be drawn to it by what it looks like on the outside. I was drawn into the museum and I was in awe from the time that I entered it. Architecture can determine your experience because if you go in to a museum in a bad mood not wanting to be there because the architecture turns you off from it, you probably won’t get anything out of the experience. However if the architecture draws you in and makes you want to go to a museum, you are going to get a lot more out of your visit.

quality and success in a museum

When an individual goes to visit a museum, they have a particular picture in their head that they think the museum will look like. They think about how it will be displayed and based on the advertisements for the museum, they try to think of what objects the museum will have in it. When I went to the Bodies exhibit, I had all of these things in mind any many more. I had never seen a dead body before so I was really curious if I was going to be able to get past that fact and do what I was there to do; learn.
I believe that the most successful thing about the Bodies Exhibit was how the bodies were displayed in such a fashion that you didn’t think about them being dead bodies, but rather, a learning tool for anatomy or physiology. There was no flow or real structure to the museum so people could wander at their leisure. Each exhibit had enough space around it for many people to see the item at the same time. The thing that surprised me the most was that the designer took time to think about where to place the more powerful exhibit, such as the fetal development display. That way, parents could decide if they wanted their children or even themselves to see the display.
The advertisements for the museum are also what made it successful. If the viewer is going into a museum based on the advertisements, and if the viewer does not see what they expect, it may impact how they feel about the museum. The Bodies Exhibit truly advertised what objects they had while still leaving an element of surprise so that not everything was given away and would still encourage the viewer to go to the museum, rather than just look at a book of pictures.

I'm losing my mind/contextual approach

When an individual is going to create a museum, they need to gather or use artifacts. They must take these artifacts out of the context they are in to tell a story with them in their museum. Pearce talks about a contextual approach. Often times, we need to think of these objects as being in context still to understand the full story. We also talked about how putting something in a museum makes it have meaning. This could end up being a very bad thing sometime in the future. Museums need to be credible sources of the truth and when there isn’t a contextual approach to the museum; the viewer might make up their own story. When I went to the Bodies Exhibit in Seattle, the bodies were placed in a different context than someone may normally think of dead bodies. They may think that their context should be in a cemetery or even cremated. They had no name or personality type or anything other personal information associated with them. If they had though, it would have taken away from what the museum truly wanted for viewers to take from it. They wanted it to be educational and only educational. Having that extra information may have taken away from that part of the museum. However, people like me really want to know those things and it may help us look at the Bodies in that educational way rather than asking too many questions about whom they were or where they came from. I think the contextual approach is successful depending on what the museum wants their viewers to see. If they want to tell a story from history then it does need to focus on the contextual approach but if it is just an Exhibit full of bodies, some of the context may be unnecessary and take away from what the museum really wants.

my way of seeing

When I entered the Bodies exhibit in Seattle, Washington, I was nervous. I am getting a degree in Biology and hope to someday become a physician’s assistant but something inside me was uneasy about seeing real bodies. I had never seen a dead body before so my senses were very heightened. It was difficult to take it all in so I stood at each body for awhile. I was trying to look at the bodies in the medical aspect but my inner voice had so many questions. Who was this person? What did they do for a living? What is their family like? How old were they when they died? How did they die? So many thoughts flooded my brain that it was difficult to focus. I was trying not to be too loud when I conversed with my sister, where as in a normal setting I wouldn’t be conscious of something like that. I was watching other people and their reactions; listening to what they said as they looked at each body. When I look at things in real life I don’t ask questions. When I see a person walking down the street with a dog I don’t wonder what the person’s name is, what they do for a living, how old they are, or even what their dog’s name is. I wanted to touch the bodies and it was very difficult to just look at things in cases and not be able to touch them. There were some touch aspects to the exhibit but I wanted to know more. I wanted to know what veins felt like in my hand. I wanted to know the texture of certain organs and who they belonged to. The atmosphere of a museum is what makes it what it is and makes seeing in a museum that much different than just a simple stroll down the streets in downtown Seattle.