The Public Museum

After dropping Fuzzball off for her surgery, we had some time to kill, so we went to the Public Museum. It was a pretty nice place, really, with three floors of exhibits. It was visually very rich.

My major complaint with it, is that while there were a number of cultural artifacts from all around the world, there was very little text discussing them. The text that there was dealt specifically with the artifacts and not with the people who created them. Many of the items were rather stereotypical, appropriate for a folk festival, however not very representative of the cultures at large. I am concerned that such an exhibit simply reinforces stereotypes about the cultures portrayed. Also, many of them blended the human produced artifacts with dioramas of wildlife. There was almost the suggestion that animals and people were really just the same (in an "other"=animal/simplistic sense), rather than pointing out the complexities of the various peoples.

So, very visually appealing. Not so educationally multicultural.