Thinking about museums
In most cities, I notice that history museums are not top-ranked destinations for travelers. But in some ‘mega’ historical places, their archaeological museums are widely known as ‘unmissable’. Athens was such a place, as was Cairo in Egypt.
I believe that museums are an odd place for many people – the idea of visiting a museum almost always seems like a good thing, but the actual experience is often frustrating, although people do not usually talk about their feelings afterward. I think a large part of the frustration comes from the way information is presented to the audience, and quite often they display too much information to begin with.
My own solution to this is to ‘lower the bar’ and try to focus on what I feel like when I see the piece in front of me. If I can feel something interesting or new at least one time, I am satisfied with my visit.
But even with this ‘relaxed’ approach, I couldn’t stop thinking about some other ways to improve the arrangement of the pieces at the archeological museum in Athens. The root issue, ironically, seems to be the fact that the country has too many great things to have on display. The first floor was mostly dedicated to displaying some notable statues from different Greek civilizations, and sometimes it felt like having a walk through storage rooms, rather than being carefully guided from one era to the next. It is interesting to remember that I had the same impression at the archeological museum in Cairo, another museum with many world-famous pieces.
@ National Archaeological Museum, Athens, Greece, February 29, 2020
