The Science Museum in London can be disappointing at first. I have not been there for 10 years or more so things may have changed.
The trouble is that much floor space is taken up with things that seemed important a century or more ago. The lower floor of the Museum where one first walks in is cluttered with huge, static and rather boring steam engines and sprinkled with many glass cases containing highly detailed models of ships etc. I am sure our Victorian forbears found this all absolutely fascinating, but they left little room for displaying more modern exhibits or even reproductions of older engine types.
A good science museum should attempt to show the history of the development of technology, not just a few decades frozen in time.
The engines belong in a steam museum displayed as a part of a wider context. Even better if they could be made to run again.
The museum might use the vacated space to show the entire history of stream engines from Hero to modern turnbine.
The AGO is Toronto has a bad habit of hanging artwork, well… stupidly! But they are getting better. The main problem is the lighting, they can’t seem to figure out how to illuminate glossy painting or artwork that is framed behind glass.
I went to see the Cindy Sherman exhibit a few years ago and left thoroughly peeved. All the photos were behind glass, fair enough, the problem was that they couldn’t figure out how to light the space. So either the photos were illuminated in such a way that there was serious glare reflecting off the glass and you couldn’t see the image, or you were illuminated so well that most of what you saw was your own reflection in the glass rather than the photo behind it (her photos are often dark which made the mirror effect worse).
Agh! It drove me crazy.
The recent “Matisse to Gaugin” exhibit was quite the opposite. So carefully lit that half the time you couldn’t tell if there was glass or not unless you practically put your ear to the wall beside the framed paintings.
I don’t know if there’s someone else in charge or what, but the difference has been really noticeable lately.
They have such wonderful and fascinating artifacts, unfortunately, the exhibits are only labled in French. They do have cards in a bin in some rooms which give English translations, but I found that the English cards were almost always missing, and there were no guides in sight to ask questions. Had I not purchased a book in the giftshop, I’d still not know the significance of many of the things I had seen.
The Tower of London is nice, and I enjoyed it. Some of the exhibits are very interesting, and the Yeoman Warders guides are well informed, interesting and happy to answer any question you have. Unfortunately, you have to get seperate tickets (free, but they only allow so many through at a time) to see part of the Tower (the Queen’s House, where Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymore were held prior to execution) which we didn’t find out until the end of our visit, and by then it was too late in the afternoon to get a ticket.
And the auditory memory exhibit at some museum. The “difficult” level was 8 notes! “Mary had a Little Lamb” is harder! Thought they would test you on a whole song!