What is all this "middle-aging" doohickey? I am 27 and I LOVE
museums. I loved them as a child on vacation to the Smithsonian NMNH, I
loved them as an airman in Darmstadt, Germany.I relished the Moscow Museum
of Paleontology in Russia, and even enjoyed the pseudo-museum shops in
Pakistan. Museums are spectacular. I can spend hours in a museum and turn
around the next day and see the same one again. They are a fascinating
collection of objects, workers, people and attitudes. They offer a variety
of moods and thought enhancing exhibits. I would be placed in the
GenX age zone, although I have to admit the MTV attitude ( which is the
origination of GenXers, ie. they grew up with Martha Quinn, Collin Hayes,
Sting, and that bad boy Billy Idol) is foreign to me. If I sit on a couch
for more than an Hour, I've got ants-in-my-pants!
        I take myself to museums. I go with friends and/or my significant
other. I will take my kids there.
 They are such excellent places to get a visual and a real idea of
the many things you have read about in the dry classroom environment of
middle school, high school, and college.  I just can't understand how
ANYONE would not want to spend a weekend here and there in a museum,
learning from a firsthand knowledge base. Getting the whole picture of a
subject, so to speak.

WhaHoO! Luv those museums...Baby!


Chad Laibly
University of Iowa
B.S. Geology
Museum Studies
Undergrad (two months left!!!)




On Fri, 2 Apr 1999, Ross Weeks wrote:

> I agree that interest in museums (whether or not we like it) tends to be
> part of middle-aging.  People start taking their children there....the
> children grow up....people have leisure time and are thirsty to learn, be
> entertained, whatever it is we do.
>
> Psychographic  -- yikes, where is the Mother Tongue headed?
> Ross Weeks Jr.
> http://histcrab.netscope.net
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Melissa A Washburn <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: the Gen-X thread
>
>
> >Regarding the whole discussion about getting Gen-X into the museum:
> >
> >        I have two distinct opinions on the subject; one being that it's
> >probably more effective to give younger kids museum experiences, thereby
> >ensuring that even if they do take a few years off from visiting during
> >their teens and twenty-somethings, they are very likely to return during
> >middle age (I base this on all the studies done showing that early museum
> >experiences tend to predict museum attendance as adults).
> >        My other thought is that yes, it is very dangerous to define a
> >whole age group by one psychographic profile, as one of the major cola
> >companies found out when trying to aggressively market "OK Cola" to
> >"Gen-Xers  <snip>
>