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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

to not like museums?

40 replies

deaddei · 04/09/2009 11:06

Maybe it's because I don't like hoards of people all going in the same direction, wanting to go on the interactive exhibits at the same time..
I love the Imperial War museum,Museum of London and V and A, ,but dinosaurs,stuffed animals and anything scientific leave me cold. Maybe because the ones I like are more about social history and people.

OP posts:

therealbanksy · 04/09/2009 12:16

belgo - six hours in university road with only an ice-cream van for company is pretty dire, but i'm sure everyone agreed it was worth it. the city museum is fab anyway, isn't it?

Thunderduck · 04/09/2009 12:18

I love museums,always have. Unlike you OP my favourites are science museums but I do enjoy social history and art museums also.

I thought that York Castle museum was a marvellous social history museum. Have you been there?

I'm considering a break in London solely for the purpose of looking around museums.

belgo · 04/09/2009 12:20

I'm not sure six hours is worth it actually. I went there when the exhibition had just opened in June, and I queued just one hour, or rather my brother queued one hour for me!

It was well worth going to it, and it's great if it makes the museum more popular, because I think it's a much undervalued asset to Bristol.

MillyR · 04/09/2009 12:20

I generally like museums, but I do find the eagerness with which updated museums attempt to engage you stressful. I know there are these different 'learning styles' and museums try to reach out to all of them, but when I am confronted with interactive, multiple learning style displays, I just feel as if the museum is SHOUTING at me. So I walk away.

LottaRump · 04/09/2009 12:24

museums are ok if there is plenty of space and fresh air. those crowded and hot and stuffy ones just make we lose the will to live. I just charge round and get out asap.

FlyMeToDunoon · 04/09/2009 12:48

Took DDs to the science museum and it was horrific. The interactive bits were very loud and jangly and you had to wait for everything. Lots of the museum seemed to have been built of breeze blocks with very harsh lighting which was not conducive to soothing my nerves either. The cafe was small and packed.
Museums seem to have suffered from being updated to try and appeal to modern children.Not only does this result in loud, bright, harsh and expensive exhibitions but also hoards and hoards of visitors, queues, more noise and tiny amounts of interest stretched out for ages.

I like a nice National Trust House myself.

Original poster

deaddei · 04/09/2009 14:16

FlymetoDunoon- I'm with you there!!
And I too love a National Trust house, 9and cafe of course)

OP posts:

stickylittlefingers · 04/09/2009 14:31

thunderduck we were at the york castle museum this weekend and it was indeed really good - even 5yo loved it!

I must admit to adoring really unmodernised museums like the ones I grew up with. Hopefully the natural history museum in Dublin hasn't changed... absolutely nothing "interactive" about it - just lots of great stuff to see. The giant deer at the beginning was amazing...

WidowWadman · 04/09/2009 14:35

I love museums, and galleries and can't understand how anyone can not like them. But then other people probably can't understand that I'd rather take my eyes out with a rusty spoon than go on a center parks or a beach holiday.

The Railway Museum in York rocks btw.

WidowWadman · 04/09/2009 14:35

The Railway Museum in York rocks btw.

kathyis6incheshigh · 04/09/2009 14:37

We love museums and National Trust houses (though admittedly the main attraction for dd with National Trust is the granny they have in every room - she does like grannies.)

Also National Trust does tend to have good play areas these days.

kathyis6incheshigh · 04/09/2009 14:38

Railway Museum works for us too - enough space that ds (2) can run around and not break anything, and the Queen's Train for dd to look at.

Morloth · 04/09/2009 15:07

I love the Natural History Museum, I have a budding paleontologist and sat through many a talk this summer. Was bliss to have someone else explain something to him and he was happy to have people who were actually interested in dinosaurs to talk to.

We did get annoyed at all the tourists in our museum though .

Remotew · 04/09/2009 15:13

This thread is making me want to go to a museum. We don't have any good social history ones close by.

Bleh · 04/09/2009 15:15

I'm not particularly fond of the Natural History and Science Museums, but I think that's mostly because of the huge crowds and the annoying brats delightful children hogging all the interactive displays. Love art galleries too, particularly the Tate Modern (LOVE that it's open til 10 some days). I cannot stand steam fairs or any kind of display related to trains [flashbacks to being dragged around such things as a child].

I have to say, one of the best museums ever, in the world, is the one inside the Kremlin in Moscow. The tsars were so unfrikking believably wealthy, it's wall to wall diamonds and gold. And you see Catherine the Great's wedding dress (she was tiny) and Peter the Great's coronation throne. He was coronated at the same time as his older brother (who was very sickly, and the Russians didn't really go in for Primogeniture, more: whoever got there first/was more ruthless got the throne). However, behind the throne there was a compartment where his sister sat and gave him instructions. Amazing.

Can't stand audioguides either because they make you look like a twat.

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