A Trip to the Museum

There wasn't a whole lot of work for me to do at the office yesterday, so I spent the day at the Air & Space Museum, American History and Natural History Museum. We're going to start a new visitor's survey in the next few weeks, so it would behoove me to be familiar with the component parts of the system that I work for. I'm pretty sure the exhibit on Western cultures hasn't changed since the first time I went to the Natural History museum in elementary school, but I do like looking at the shiny jewelery around the Hope Diamond, so I might make a trip back to that exhibit. For the record, it was frigid and not a day to be walking around the mall in my casual Friday outfit and ballet flats without socks on. Some homeless man even commented that I must be freezing, even though I was wearing leggings under my pants and a scarf wrapped around my head, but the fact that this man said something was certainly a reality check. The museums were comfy cozy and the Metro was warm, so except for the quick race across the mall, it wasn't awful, but I think that might be the last time I go out without boots on for a while.

One of my supervisors suggested that I act like a visitor and think critically about how people were using the museum exhibits, were they paying attention? Were they reading? Did they use the computer parts? At Air & Space, I followed this girl around for the better part of an hour. She was fascinating, I don't think she read a single sign, looked at a single movie, touched a single computer screen. She walked around the exhibits, digital camera in hand and just snapped pictures of every case and hanging piece of aircraft. I can't say that she actually appreciated the museum and I'm pretty sure she's going to post her pictures of her trip to DC on her MySpace page and just write that she went to some museum, not the National Museum, but she went to the nation's capitol and just took a few meaningless pictures. I'm pretty sure she has absolutely no idea what she knew that she looked at the Wright glider or the replica American Airlines stewardess uniforms, she just snapped pictures. I can only hope that she doesn't take this approach when she reads things, it would be a real shame if she just flipped through the pages and actually reads something on them

Here's hoping the other 4 million people that are about the descend on this city take a minute to read something.