Someone had mentioned a few weeks back that there should be a filmography
on museums.  If anyone out there ever has the energy to compile this be
sure to include the Sylvester Stallone/Wesley Snipes flick "Demolition Man"
where, in a seemingly utopian and peaceful future, when a homicidal maniac
needs weaponry, the only place left for him to find it is in a museum display
on the violence of the past.  (Yes, I freely admit that I rented this movie
last night because I never got around to seeing it on the big screen.)
 
The set designers must have known a thing or two about museums since the
museum in the movie seemed to have a really annoying sound-loop system that
fed visitors constant information as they walked around the building. And at a
computer screen where visitors could find out more about artifacts in the
gallery, the friendly voice rattled off all sorts of technical information
that would only be of interest to specialists.  (Of course museums today would
never make these sorts of mistakes in exhibit development.)  Worth watching
just to see Stallone and Snipes blow up an exhibit.
Pursuing cultural literacy,
Carolyn Brady
 
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  [log in to unmask]   |  "Real solemn history, I cannot be
 MA program in Public History |   interested in....The quarrels of popes
   Indiana University-        |   and kings, with wars or pestilences
    Purdue University at      ü   in every page; the men all so good for
     Indianapolis             |   nothing, and hardly any women at all."
 (out of town Aug. 8-12)      ü                       --JANE AUSTEN
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