A way of seeing...

Museums give a person a heighten sense of awareness of what can be represented. Many Americans have access to endless information and photos online but a photo with text on a computer doesn’t do justice in comparison to a museum exhibit. For example, pottery designs made by the Native Americans; stuffed endangered animals; or dinosaur fossils. Museums can change the way one sees an object. It’s something about the actual object that gives one a deeper insight, seeing the item to scale, so to speak. Sometimes even the smell of a museum sets one in the mood to learn and desire a deeper understanding of what’s on display. Some of my favorite museums are dinosaur museums. To be next to the actual fossilized bones of an animal that once lived and dominated the planet long before humans is a feeling of ah and wonder. In addition, that brings up a point that museums, in many cases, display objects removed from their original context. Going back to the Native American pottery designs, we don’t see how the object was used or made. The object sits there behind glass or a roped off area with a tag that states what it is and what it may have been used for. One must still have an imagination in order to see the full picture and sometimes creating that image by use the museum’s exhibit. Museums may set the exhibit as a way they want one to feel when one sees an object. For example, in the Connor museum most of the animals on display are stuffed and mounted in lifelike poses. The majority of people that see this exhibit many never be close to the living animal, for this reason, viewers want to see objects lifelike and not road kill. Museums provide an experience beyond an online photo with text, which may not be true in its context, but it may be safe and more cost effective than traveling to the other side of the world, for example, to see a live tiger in its actual habitat.