Complaint: Museums

I don’t like museums.

There, I said it.

And I’m not sorry.

It may make me sound like a knuckle-dragging philistine, but so be it. I’m edumacated, I’ve got a coupla degrees, I love to read, but I don’t like museums.

I don’t enjoy them. I endure them.

But let me get very specific: museums in the present, with small children, suck. They’re so overstimulating it’s a wonder we don’t all get seizures from them like those little kids in Japan with the video game. Remember that?

Besides, museums have become so Disneyfied it boggles the mind.

How are they like Disney? You pay a huge fee, then enter only to be surrounded by gift shops so big they have departments, and name brand, over-priced food courts. To enter certain, special exhibits, you have to either be a member, a super member, a jumbo fabulous member, or own the museum, else you’re required to pay ANOTHER fee.

WTF?

It’s not Disney. It’s the mall! D'oh.

I don’t remember museums being like this back in the olden days. My favorite museum was the Electric Museum in Longueuil, Quebec. It was so small (How small was it?) I think my living room dwarfs it. (Bearing in mind of course that I do have a very large living room; you've probably never been to my house, so how would you know?) There were a few interactive, non-computerized activities; things like turning cranks and pushing levers. It was an electricity museum, what do you want?

Today’s ultra-mega museums are so tarted up that they aren’t really about the exhibits anymore. They’re about the snacks, the gift shop, possibly some I-Max or other 3-D related edutainment, including hands-on everything. (Can you say Rhinovirus? Rotavirus? Flu? Eek.)

When I’m in a museum I feel like I am surrounded by loud and annoying strangers who are filled with germs and make me wait in long lines to do something I frankly don’t really want to do, but think I’m supposed to do for my kids.

And herein lies the rub: Why are we going to all these damn museums anyway? I think there’s a place for museums. Restoring and saving artifacts is vital to preserving our sense of history and of the world around us. All good. But I repeat: why are WE going to all these damn museums anyway?

Is it to make our children smarter? Is it because we can’t think of any other ways to engage as a family on Saturday mornings? Is it because we think we’re supposed to and it makes us look good? Do people go because they enjoy it?

Sometimes I wonder.

If you really want to teach your child, what’s wrong with a book? A walk in the woods? A trip to the library? (You only pay fees there if you take something out and don’t return it on time, and there are NO snack bars or souvenirs, except for bookmarks.) Sure, there’s a place for museums in everyone’s life, I suppose. But life outside the museum walls in any country is actually very interesting. I mean, if you want to learn about a culture, you're better off in a cafe or public park than a museum. I’m just not convinced that small children really get a whole lot out of them, except very, very tired and very, very wired. Our manic desires to enrich our children don't always make sense to me.

I can see taking one child at a time to a museum, in the future, when they are interested in what the specific museum is offering. Then we can, I hope, walk around at our leisure, look at stuff until we’re tired, and leave. That’s harder to do when you travel as a group. I know lots of mom’s groups who meet at museums. That sounds like sixteen shades of hell to me. You can’t have a conversation with anyone at a museum! If you want to socialize, go to a park or someone’s house.

Museums are over-rated as destinations for families. I don’t like paying extra to see shark bones or eat McNuggets in an acoustically-hideous place where I can’t find the damn bathroom and the elevators are all broken and the exhibit my son wants to see is not only on the sixth floor, but closed for freaking repairs.

I’m just sayin’.