Universal Survey Museum

When I came to the museum, the first thing that impressed me was the astonishing building: it was a masterpiece itself. The exterior of the Tampa Museum of Art has a light installation, and all I wanted at that moment is night to come so I could see thousands of colored lights reflected in the surface of the river that flows near the museum. What’s more, I liked the design of the museum inside as well. There were white walls and perfect lighting, and nothing would bother contemplation. In many museums I have visited before there was a lot of distractions, but in this museum everything was done on the principle of simplicity, and that was very pleasing to me. Moreover, when we came inside of the museum, it was almost empty. There were just a few visitors, who were fascinated by various drawings and statues. Most of the visitors were teenagers, what slightly surprised me. I

When I was younger, I thought museums were boring and dull, filled with pointless, nonsensical art work that people just pretended to understand what the artists were thinking. I thought people interpreted imaginary meanings from the art that other people just followed and accepted because it was the “cool” thing to do. This is one of the main reasons I avoided going to museums that were art based. Once I got the opportunity to visit an art-based museum for myself, I actually enjoyed it. I began to build my admiration and appreciation of art from then on. I have had the opportunity to visit many museums but this was the first time I visited The Museum of Modern Art. I always saw MoMA related things around New York City but was never able to

Museums have long served a purpose as cultural staples. For every museum, big and small, careful consideration is used in selecting its contents. When securing new items for a museum, it is most important to consider public appeal, educational value, and cost-effectiveness.

Positioned alongside Central Park in the heart of New York City, The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the largest and most influential art museums in the world. The Met houses an extensive collection of curated works that spans throughout various time periods and different cultures. The context of museum, especially one as influential as the Met, inherently predisposes its visitors to a certain set of understandings that subtly influence how they interpret and ultimately construct meanings about each individual object within the museum. Brent Plate in Religion, Art, and Visual Culture argues that “objects obtain different meanings in different locations and historical settings.”An object placed on display behind a glass case inside a museum would hold a vastly different meaning if it was put on sale by a street vendor, like the ones who set up their tables in close proximity to the Met. The different meanings that objects are able to obtain is attributed to the relationships that are established between the object itself and the environment that surrounds it. These relationships often involve the kind of audience that a museum attracts, where the work is exhibited, and how the exhibits within a museum is planned out. Museums subsequently have the ability to control how these relationships are established which influences the way a viewer is able to construct meaning. When a visitor observes an object on display at the Met, they instinctively construct a certain set of

Every effort should be made ahead of time to identify a museum that has items and works one can easily connect to our HUM 111 class and book. Since HUM 111 covers from ancient times to the 1500s AD, it makes more sense to focus on items from that time frame. In general, museums with artistic cultural artifacts and fine arts work better than history museums.

Cooper states that “museums came to understand that their unique educational ability was that of object-based learning...the possession of objects made museums different” (65). I tend to agree with that statement with some caveats. Firstly, object-based learning can happen without collections. Secondly, is the additional unique opportunity potential for lifelong learning. The museum is a place that can assist, contrast, or provide learning at every stage of a person’s life. For instance, the Mission museums in California are a resource for public elementary school curriculum (Dartt-Newton 97). As people of all ages from the public look to museums as an educational authority, the material presented needs to be as scrutinized as any other

The Dallas Museum is a renowned art museum established in 1903 and is located in Dallas, Texas (Neumann et al. 19). The Dallas Museum of art is one of the largest art museums in the United States of America containing more than 24,000 collections of art ranging from the ancient to the modern ones (MacDonald & Brettell 112). There are numerous things inside the museum, such as the pieces of art, museum visitors, and the architecture, that relate to the understanding of the world outside the museum in terms of the day to day life and the human society. My goal in this essay is to think outside the box and describe the observations I made inside the museum and explain how they relate to my everyday life, the wider world, or the human society.

To me, museums serve as trains that deliver goods that are arts to people. Art can be perceived as a mean to entertains our life, reflects customs and communicates thoughts, ideas and emotions and it’s museums job that bring them closer to people. There is a huge difference when it came to seeing the artwork in person and seeing the artwork from a book or website and magazine. You will never be able to feel a piece properly when you see it in the textbook, you will never understand how the color was put together and what is the meaning behinds it, you won’t see how the lines and curves are blend together to make the painting look perfect and how strong that art can affect you in emotion. Many people nowadays don’t even bother watching the art themselves, they rather listening to what critics have to say about the works in their own perspective and can’t even make a decision themselves whether or not they should see the arts. “An ounce of image is worth a pound of performance”, in my opinion, I think we will never know what is good until we see it

Throughout the experience, I learned the importance and care of working with an artifact along with operations within a museum. As I toured Heartland Museum, I witnessed all of the items that are stored behind the scenes because museums only keep a small percentage of the belongings on display. I also learned about the process of creating a display, which includes piecing together many details like attraction, relevance, and of course history. Museums must worry about the community’s interest in the displays. Lastly, I learned about the importance of an artifact by working with some of the items. It is important to handle artifacts with care because of the fragility of the item. After the information I learned at the museum, it was my turn to experience the public

Before I went to the museum, my prospective about a museum was poor expectations. What can a museum will offer? , this was one of the questions that I always had in mind. For these reasons, I never thought that I could enjoy a museum tour. However, everything change after visited the Phoenix Art Museum. I went to the trip with poor expectations, but since I arrived in the lobby with all of my classmates and the professor. I started feel that this trip will be sash an educational experience.

I believe that if the museum had taken into the consideration the feelings of the people who were unhappy with the exhibit. By doing so they could have made changes that would have made everyone happy.

When it comes to threats, there aren’t many. There are mainly two, competition and free admission. Competition is obviously a threat because when people think to go somewhere or bring there kids somewhere and they don’t think of the art museum, that is a visitor lost. They need to be the first place someone thinks of when they think “free” and “informative”, and frankly, they aren’t for the most part. The Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal and the Children’s Museum have the top of mind awareness that the

‘Imagine you were in charge of a museum’s collecting policy. What would you chose to collect and how would you justify these decisions?’

The information contained in museums is meant to represent changing and new ideas that are present within a given society. Whether museums contain historic artifacts, modern art, or other pieces, they are meant to represent people living in the past, present, and sometimes future. As such, they also act as educational modalities to help students and adults understand more about the world around them. An important component of museums in many instances is the extent to which they are able to engage their community, and the extent to which the community is able to contribute to the success of the museums. According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, community is defined as “a group of people with a common characteristic or interest living together within a larger society” and “a body of persons or nations having a common history or common social, economic, and political interests” (“Community”). These institutions work to understand the needs, assets, and concerns of communities. Therefore, museums are tied into the cultures of the neighborhoods and regions that contain them, and this contributes to the unique nature of each individual organizations.

The Cambridge Dictionary Online defined museums as “places of study, buildings where objects of historical, scientific or artistic interest are kept, preserved and exhibited”. To The Museums Association, a museum is “an institution which collects documents, preserves, exhibits and interprets material evidence and associated information for the public benefit”. Since 1998, this definition has changed. Museums now enable the public to explore collections for inspiration, learning and enjoyment. They are institutions that collect, safeguard and make accessible artefacts and specimens, which they hold in trust for society. Mike Wallace (1996) categorised museums into four distinct types, namely National Museums that hold collection of