Exhibition

On the 28th October 2019 I visited Manchester to go to the Peoples History museum and the Museum of Science and Industry to further my research regarding spatial experience regarding exhibitions. Firstly, we attended the museum of science and industry, a place I have visited many times over the course of my education for different purposes in different subjects, wherein we focused on the experience that the layout and displays allowed us to feel. To my surprise as an adult I found that I was able to appriciate this experience far more than I have done in my previous visits and really understand the gravity of what I was learning about in regards to the progression of us all from our predecessors experiences whereas as a child and a teen I found it hard to find interest in what I was looking at except for when I was in the more interactive areas of the museum. Comparatively, to my previous ideas of this museum i found that the juxtaposition of bright technological screens with information about technological advances was inviting however child orientated. There was also a sense of getting lost in the history with the cobbled stone road outside and no clear direction through the museum. Finally, we attended the Peoples History museum where again, I have previously visited however my experience in this one has always been profoundly different, this is because of the nature of the museum being more oppressive and sober as it displays deeply upsetting material about the hardships and suffering of humans in history. In the past I don’t feel as though I have given the museum the appreciation and interest that it deserves and similarly to the science and industry museum I feel as though with age I have come to find the ability to empathise and understand the exhibits on a deeper level and the journey that it offers. I also found that the way that the exhibitions were presented was more mature with solid colour backing the more monochromatic displays and informative as opposed to the technological exhibitions presented in the science and industry museum. I also enjoyed how there was a feeling of a journey through the museum going from the lower floor galleries to the higher floor galleries. However, I did find that the interactive aspects of this museum for example the phone/space installation seemed a bit tacky and didn’t seem to fit the overall theme of exhibits which made it feel a bit gimmick-like. In conclusion the differences within the museums seem to orientate around the target audience and the level of interactivity, the science and industry museum being more interactive and the people's history museum being more mature in content and display successfully evoking a deeper level of emotion and empathy as opposed to a child-like sense of awe and fascination and bright lights and bold colours meaning that exhibitions really do create a foundation for the experience of a museum.