National Museum of the American Indian

[reedrover]

On Monday, Achaosofkittens and I played hooky from work to spend the day together. Not only did the goats do us the courtesy of not kidding on Monday, but the weather and traffic also conspired with us. We spent a somewhat leisurely morning at home, then went downtown to visit the new-to-us National Museum of the American Indian

Comments

[vvalkyri]

Had a couple minutes to duck in and out of NMAI the other day, and happened upon the Twilight exhibit, which amused and surprised me.

Horse Nation's around most of the year, right?

I'm not particularly enamored of NMAI, but I very much do like their cafe, which has (to my understanding) representative foods from each of the regions.

Edit: I've liked the temporary exhibits, but the permanent space is confusing to navigate and involves a lot of "here, open this draawer" or "punch something into a computer if you want to know what that thing there is" which makes the flow even worse.

[melaniesuzanne]

Agreed about the cafe. Best food in the Smithsonian Museum system.

I left the NMAI feeling discomfited. Like reedrover, I'm glad that I went but I most likely won't visit again.

[gipsieee]

I went to the NMAI once to see the exhibits, and have been back 3-4 times for lunch (with varying amounts of time (from none through about an hour) accompanying friends/family around the exhibits they wanted to see).

I do very much enjoy their food and love that they made that portion of the museum eductational(ish) as well.

[achaosofkittens]

The food was lovely. Mmm pulled buffalo!

[hannnahkl]

That was precisely my complaint about NMAI - lack of context. I'm thrilled that all the different groups are represented, and there are a lot of really neat things on display, but I found the viewing experience incredibly frustrating. It was even more frustrating for Dave, who didn't have the benefit of knowing some of the (for lack of a better term) major historical plot points and was even more lost. As I recall, he described it as "a stunning example of organization by committee."

[reedrover]

a stunning example of organization by committee

HA! Yes, it was definitely rule by committee. I'm not sure, though, that the presentation implies "organization." I think a better word would be "federalist system." There was one overarching law of presentation space allocation, and then everyone established their own style within the borders.

[vvalkyri]

god, yes. the one time I ventured through the main exhibiy it felt like a whole bunch of minimally related sections.

[achaosofkittens]

One of the issues with this style was that the same sorts of things were said over and over. Everyone needed to tell their story from the beginning, which meant we got a bunch of high level overviews and very little meat.

[hannnahkl]

It doesn't help that I work at an institution that puts particular emphasis on historical context in exhibits, so it colors my view a little. Still, some would have been nice. And I agree about the n-iterations of the stories from the beginning; there was enough shared history that *somebody* could have stepped back and said, "Okay, here are the commonalities - let's put the framework/timeline up at the start of the exhibit spaces so we don't all have to rehash it."

[reedrover]

I totally agree. One basic introduction and then branches of the story might have made for a more cohesive exhibit, but I'm not sure. The "Our Lives" section is all recent-to-current events, so might not have any commonality to offer.

That common-framework approach was what they did for the horses exhibit. "Look, horses showed up mostly due to the Spanish, and appeared here-here-here-and-here at these times. From there, horses spread across the entire continent from this time period to this time period. Their period of highest historical significance was X." It made the branches very easy to follow.