In a message dated 96-05-31 09:42:25 EDT, [log in to unmask] (Eric Siegel)
writes:

>When I was so excited
>   about museums, it wasn't because of any advanced display or
>   interpretive techniques, or any kind of real educational effort on the
>   part of the museums that I learned to love.  They just sort of put the
>   stuff out there and left me alone

Did they really? I wonder now about what kind of experience was set up for me
to just enjoy "alone." In other words, I think that exhibits have always had
a scheme, a plan, a motive, if you will and it is not for the outsider to
understand, just for them to enjoy *if they get it.* I think back to my
theater days as stage manager. You hear one actor flounder and make up a
line, the other actor gets lost and for about 10 minutes they are "winging
it" and you are sweating. Thing is, the audience never catches it. Those that
do, however, will remember the play forever.

Back to museums, my first moving experience in a museum was seeing the
"Ancestors" exhibit at the AMNH in NY. Wow. I must have spent 6 hours just
looking at stuff that I had only read about in my Physical Anthropology
class. In fact, I flew to NY just to see the exhibit and then came back home.
Yes, it was just stuff put out there for me to experience alone, but it was
more than an exhibit about human fossils. It was about human nature and the
need to uncover the past, it was about Apartheid, and the reluctance of
governments to work together, but the triumph of just such an occurrence, and
so on. Just as life isn't flat and mono-themed, museums are capable of
communicating so much with a single exhibit - if done with care and passion.
I think museums can be very much like life.

-Adrienne

- Adrienne