Days ago I paid $25 for a 15 minute tour of a virtual replication of ancient Athens that my sister used at a museum.

In resarching new places to visit, I learned that the ancient Egypt and Titanic VR headset tours that are optional in the exhibits devoted to those two places in Las Vegas in the Luxor charges $30 for a 20 minute tour.

So I gotta ask why using Virtual Reality replicas of an ancient underground cataconmbs or a pyramid's interiors and so on so common at exhibits and museums and other tourist places so expensive? Are these VR exploration guides really that expensive and difficult to create?

I saw this intriguing post.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Museums/comments/15g9l3n/so_when_people_complain_about_museum_admissions/

I am curious what you museum enthusiasts aind people in the museum industry have to say about this?

Hi r/museumreviews! I am enrolled in a Coursera UX design program and am working on an audio tour app for art galleries/museums.

I want to improve my undestanding of what experiences people deal with when visiting art galleries or museums, and would appreciate any level of perspective into the general motivations and frustrations folks encounter! Myself, I'm an avid museum/art junkie, but have found myself visiting rather infrequently over the years.

Your experiences may difffer between pre- and post-Covid, but feel free to answer according to either or both contexts. This study will be utilized for my own primary research purposes to inform product design, and verbatim responses will not be shared with other parties. Thank you so much for any level of participation!

1. What excites you the most when visiting an art gallery/museum? (i.e. What's the most fun aspect?)

2. What frustrates you the most when visiting an art gallery/museum?

3. What is your process for touring exhibits/installations/art pieces? (For example, do you like to start at the very beginning of a gallery/museum and fix to an ordered path through till the very end? Or another way?)

4. How do you manage your time when visiting a large exhibit/gallery/museum?

5. What are your thoughts/emotions when navigating crowds or large groups of people at galleries/museums?

6. If you've ever taken a guided art tour before (or any guided tour, really) what did you find the most useful, interesting or engaging? What was frustrating about the experience?

Thank you!

Amazing perspective, I visited Bangkok Art & Culture Centre (BACC) three days ago and really enjoyed it. I went to the free exhibition which was really enjoyable. There is a lot of art gallery and art type in BACC such as photography, painting, film about art, short clips for art, pretty art exhibitions, and something interesting. In BACC, there are some restaurants, café, and shops that you can buy about handmade things and getting relax at café.

If you want to know about additional information, you can find it via the official website that is https://en.bacc.or.th/ where you can explore what is on show. There are many interesting exhibitions. Hopefully, everyone will try to visit here after the COVID situation gets better.

I would also like to try to go to a museum abroad after the COVID situation gets better. Where should I go and get new experiences? If you guys have an impressive museum, LET’S SHARE IT : 0 ) -- Lastly, should I have any more information on this review? You all can give some suggestion to me. I am here to listen and improve my reviews due I would like to share efficiently about my museum visiting experience.

How do you think technology can help improve Art museums? Do minorities feel unwelcome at Art Museums?

Please take this quick survey and I will compile the data and share it! https://brandeis.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_eeQpeTsRKH7oe1v

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmkxoYdt3uY

Hi! My name is Nan and I am an Anthropology undergrad who is researching on how people feel towards the new development on digital museum/exhibitions/museum websites for my honor thesis project. If you are a frequent museum visitor or have knowledge about the subjects above, please help me fill out this google questionnaire. I hope that everyone could take some time and answer the short-response question because they are vital to the research and might help experts to better understand visitors. Thank you very much!https://goo.gl/forms/UYAfbDmlz5K...

P.S. If you work in the relative field and would like to share your story through an interview (Skype), feel free to contact me at dingn1@uci.edu

We visited the New London Design Museum several weeks ago and really enjoyed it.

We went to the free exhibition which was really enjoyable. You can see our review at: https://youtu.be/mWyoaMRANdM

The overall feeling which we took away was positive but there was a LOT of waiting about. I think that this was mainly due to the fact that it was a weekend and that it was 1 week after it opened. So its probably less busy now.

I would say that its worth visiting the Design museum as there is a really interesting atmosphere along with exhibition. Plus there are many new exhibitions which you have to pay for which seem very interesting.

The official website is http://designmuseum.org/ you can explore what is on show :)

Hope you enjoy the new design museum as much as we did :)

Please consider donating. We are a national medal winning children's museum that is currently trying to expand. https://donate.amazementsquare.org/fundraise?fcid=657176

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts has a beautiful fine arts collection that is elegantly displayed. There are galleries dedicated to early to modern international arts, decorative arts, Canadian art, antiquities, contemporary art, art from "World Cultures"... There's even a whole section dedicated to art from Napoléon's Empire!

Here are some observations:

HOURS AND PRICING

The MBAM has limited hours. The permanent collection is only open until 5pm on Tuesday to Sunday. There are evening hours on Wednesdays (until 9pm) but only for the major exhibition. Those who work during the day can thus only visit the collection on the weekends.

The prices are standard (which is to say, expensive), though I was excited to see that all visitors up to 30 years old can visit the permanent collections for free.

BILINGUAL

Absolutely all of the labels and texts were displayed in French and English, an impressive feat.

UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL

The gallery spaces are intimate. Visitors can get really close to the artworks. On a weekday afternoon, I only saw two other visitors in the galleries. I had plenty of space to put my nose in the paintings.

CONTEMPLATION COUCHES

There are many comfy couches littered throughout the galleries, encouraging visitors to take their time with the artworks, with contemplation and discussion.

IN-GALLERY INTERPRETATION

Generally speaking, the in-gallery interpretation depends heavily on the panels and extended labels, which have a highly academic tone. The galleries I visited also offered a free musical audioguide, with song selections for specific artworks and a few spoken commentaries. The content is also available on a free app, which only works in the museum building due to copyright restrictions. (I downloaded the app version on my phone, but I was not able to get it to function.)

Several galleries had large pads of blank paper on the benches. I was not able to tell if visitors were encouraged to freely sketch, or if the pads were for specific visitors.

The MBAM offers free WiFi in the galleries, which enables visitors to search for additional information about the artworks on their own and share their visit on social networks (though I did not see any panels encouraging visitors to do the latter).

More about my first visit to the museum here.

From the outside, the SDASM already looks like it's going to be chock full of awesome. Two giant actual planes are held on stilts to make them look like they are soaring into the sky. The entrance inside alone has a view of about 6 more planes.

The tickets can be pricey, which is a low, but balboa park sells all museum passes for a week that bring the cost down if you are willing to visit more (which I recommend)

The planes are loosely organized by time, starting with the wright brothers and a replica (and some creepy wax models) to WWI uniforms and planes. Some are original, some are not.

Floor to ceiling, this place is crammed full of planes. They are EVERYWHERE. A plane fanatic could spend the entire day reading every plaque and studying every inch hanging from the rafters and planted on the floor.

There is a cafe, which we did not try.

There is a semi enclosed semi open center of the museum, which houses several of the larger planes, and has plants and benches and some filtered sunlight coming in through the greenhouse like ceiling.

The gift shop is pretty good. Kids will spend all their allowance, adults will likely buy little. Those with money may buy detailed models of certain planes and gold coated space pens. I got a Tshirt that says "I went to the air and space museum and all I got was this plane tshirt"

It was a great day.

I was plesantly surprised with this museum. It is very modern art heavy. Modern art can be a little out there for me, but the staff was so generous with antidotes about the individual pieces that I was really entertained.

Pros: * It only cost about $6. * Very kind and helpful staff full of insight about the art. I felt like I had a personal tour guide. * Outside garden to walk around with a fish pond to entertain my toddler. * Not too big. I feel I was able to see everything in about 90 minutes.

Cons * Like I mentioned, heavy on the modern art. While the modern painting were nice, some of the sculpture installations were just a bit out there for my taste * There were tons of school kids there the day I went on field trips. While they were all well behaved, it was kind of crowded in some rooms.

All in all, if you're in San Juan and looking for some air conditioning, you can't go wrong at the art museum.

This museum has a separate exhibit called the torture exhibit which I will not be including in this review.

The museum of man is located in Balboa Park, and has old fashioned grand ballroom style rooms like the rest of the park. It's entrance leads to a giant dome filled with casts made on site from Mayan carvings. You can look up and see the second floor which Is terraced around so you can see the permanent Mayan exhibit that has been around for many years.

Off to the right is an exhibit on the history of beer and historical techniques and events around beer, and to the left is a children's exhibit about monsters from different cultures. Both have amazing displays and lots of chances for interactivity.

Upstairs is a permanent exhibit on primates and humans, and the evolution of man, leading to a room with futuristic technology and a timeline tunnel listing mans greatest achievements starting with 200bc.

Across from the primate exhibit, on a terrace overlooking the main room, there is a display case discussing the history of the once native Kumeyaay Indians.

Lastly, there is an Egyptian room why several mummies- including one found in Mexico 20 some odd years ago- and countless artifacts ranging from coffins to jewelry.

The mummy exhibit leads to a bridge where you can look out across balboa park, and to a small Childrens exhibit which we did not explore.

Overall, the sheer number of different exhibits was great and made for a fun afternoon, they were rather small and underfunded. Several displays were broken, interactivity was hit and miss because you never knew if something would work.

Not to mention, each exhibit- excluding the relatively expansive history and future of man exhibit- could fit in a master bedroom.

However, the sheer quantity of artifacts and clear detail and effort made up for this. I can only hope someday they are able to fix the place up, because with some repair work this museum could suck you in for an entire weekend.

tl:dr Don't go out of your way unless you're in the area, or interested in one of the visiting exhibits. Also, goddamn school groups.

So loving my local city of Brisbane, I like to frequent the local museums, libraries and art galleries. Three of these things can be found in close proximity to the wonderful gardens and inland beach of South Bank, which are worth a visit in of themselves. However, when it comes to the museum, I do find it lacking.

It is rather small, and to look at all the exhibits in reasonable detail, it took me no longer than about 2-3 hours. Its 3 stories, but with a lot of it closed off for the paid exhibits (The Science Center which is great for kids, or the international one they occasionally have).

This leaves it with the feeling of wanting to look around for more but never finding it. It's like you're entering the foyer of something that could be much, much better.

Their upstairs exhibits about Queensland life and Aboriginal culture are quite interesting for the inquisitive eye, but even with that in mind it is incredibly dry. Not dull, just something makes you want to leave to find something more interesting. The droning on in the multi media spaces, the uninterested and generic voices talking about the artifacts. It's just not that interesting for something that contains thousands of years of precious aboriginal history. It should be set out better.

There is a lovely little exhibit of local flora and fauna, where you can see all our dangerous animals nice and safely behind glass and stuffed. This is nice, but you'll get through it rather quick, specially if you're a traveler from another part of Australia come to visit. This also contains some live animals, including snakes, lizards, giant cockroaches, and stick insects. Very cool, but very... underwhelming.

There is a cafe outside that goes with the art gallery which is nice, but over priced, as one would expect for a tourist trap. Kind of turns away locals. However, it is in the same building as the art gallery (which is also free to enter), which makes it a good place to have a day looking at various nice things. This is what makes it go from a 3 to a 5.

Also, beware the school groups. In the art gallery there is a lot more security, but as the museum has been trying to bring in children with their science center and free exhibits, you will have a lot of yelling and running around kids to deal with and they are just so goddamn annoying it has detracted from almost every experience I've had there.

The paid exhibits are definitely worth it if you're into them. I went to see the Egyptian one and found it very captivating, but wanted to leave the place the moment I was done with it, and not look at much else. They often have international exhibits come around which is nice.

So yes... If you're visiting Brisbane for any other reason, pop in. Its a good place with air conditioning and interesting things. But I wouldn't travel to Brisbane specifically for it.

Hello, museum fans!

I just wanted to point you in the direction of our sidebar, where we've updated the posting guidelines. I've received some feedback that many of the current reviews aren't very detailed, so in an effort to rectify this, we've created an 'outline' for you. This doesn't have to be followed strictly, but if your post is unhelpful or frivolous, you will be asked to add in the listed details.

We are also working on organization and adding user flair, so please be patient! I don't have any experience with CSS so things are a bit difficult... Your concerns are being addressed, though.

Make sure to visit our related subreddits and thank them for supporting us! They've all got great content that you guys would love. (And please let me know of any other subreddits I should add.)

Alright, that's all. If you have any questions, you know where to find me. :)

Edit: User flair is now available... with limited options. I'm not sure what to add, but you should be able to edit your own flair. If not, just send us a message and I'll assign flair to you.

Edit #2: We have a map! Check the sidebar. All of our current posts have been added to it. :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Museum http://www.shanghaimuseum.net

The Shanghai Museum is one of the best museums in China, easily. It's certainly not as big as some of the museums in Beijing or Taipei, but the collection is fantastic and diverse, and its compact design makes it easy to navigate.

The museum is located on People's Square, in a park-like setting. It's shaped like an ancient cauldron. The interior is centered on a multi-story court with escalators and stairs. Galleries emanate from here, each one separate (making navigation easy).

The museum focuses on art, but the art is presented in historical context for the most part. English captions are generally good. The exhibits are primarily traditional Chinese art forms from all eras (except modern). There is the usual painting, bronze, porcelain, jade, sculpture, etc... but there are also interesting galleries with furniture and ethnic minority art.

It's all good, but there certainly are some galleries I enjoy more than others (mostly a matter of personal taste). I love history, and I feel the sculpture section, which is largely religious art, tells that story well. I also love the incredible furniture section (some of the woodwork is unbelievable). The bronzes are incredible for their beauty and exotic design, as well as their incredible age (check out the Shang bronzes).

I'm less interested in the coin collection, since many look similar after a while. I'm also not as excited about calligraphy, which I can't read. That said, these are both interesting topics for some, and the collections here are solid. Also, the crowds can be a bit heavy, so try to go on a weekday, or off-season.

In summary, the Shanghai Museum is not the largest museum in China, but what they do have is very well organized and displayed. If you only visit one museum in China and you want to sample to diversity of ancient Chinese art, this is probably your best bet. (NOTE: I'm speaking of museums proper here; The Palace Museum aka the Forbidden City is the top sight in China for me).

Fairly small museum located in the SOMA district of San Francisco. I always like to pop in when I'm in the area and have an hour to kill. Exhibits tend to be well curated and fairly interesting if you have anything more than a cursory interest in cartoons and comics.

Price is a bit steep for it's size but it's downtown SF so that's not unexpected.

I missed the opportunity to go and would like to hear from someone who's been there

Edit: phrasing

Minnesota Marine Art Museum

My SO and I made a road trip to this museum last month because SO is an artist and heard good things about the museum. We were looking for something to do on a warm December weekend, so we drove down to check it out.

Winona, Minnesota is a college town of about 27,000 on the Mississippi River in southeastern Minnesota, about a two drive on Highway 61 from the Twin Cities. It's a very scenic drive even in the wintertime; we saw many bald eagles and hawks sunning themselves along the trees near the open water areas of the river.

The MMAM features four galleries of art and artifacts including Impressionism, Hudson River School paintings, photography, folk art sculptures and traveling exhibits. The artwork has a maritime/river/lake theme in keeping with the museum's objective.

We were wowed by the caliber of art and spent several hours wandering the galleries wondering how a small college town in the Midwest could have a museum of this caliber. Turns out many of the paintings are on loan from the collection of the museum’s chief backers, who are the owners of a nationwide hardware supply company based in Winona. They've given many pieces of art to the MMAM and work closely with the museum’s small staff to develop exhibitions. They are generous people who love to share their interest in art.

Pros: Works of many world class artists in a wonderfully warm, beautifully designed building located in a small, scenic river town. On long term loan or in permanent collections are works of Monet, Picasso, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Homer, Sargent, Cassatt, Andrew and Jamie Wyeth and many others. The curators have built an awesome collection and it's growing each year; the museum recently added another wing to house the growing collection of art.

Entry fee is $7.00/person. Cheap.

Cons: No photography allowed inside the museum. Located far from the East and West Coasts and even in the Midwest, Winona is kind of remote.

Still, art lovers from the Twin Cities, LaCrosse, Rochester, Des Moines, Duluth, Winnipeg, Madison, Chicago, or people staying in one of these places for a few days, should consider visiting this wonderful small museum.

http://new.artsmia.org/

Minneapolis-St. Paul is a metro area chock full of museums, but this one's by far my favorite. They're celebrating their 100th anniversary this year and they have 52 surprises planned.

Pros: it's a world-class art museum with more than 80,000 objects of all media types, spanning thousands of years of history, from ancient to modern, from every continent. Of particular note is a very highly rated Asian art collection. My favorites are Chinese jade objects, classics from European masters, and the collections from Oceania and Africa. You could easily spend a weekend here and still not see everything. Admission is free all the time, except for special exhibits. Membership is also free!

Cons: it's hard to come up with one, but their special exhibits can be expensive. The neighborhood is quite safe but surrounding areas can be a bit sketchy at night.

This is one of the top 5 places I steer visitors to the Cities.

First thing I can say is be careful of opening times, we almost got screwed over by them, however that's about the only negative thing I can say about it.

The museum contributes through a few main exhibitions and several "Walls of Manga", that being bookcases upon bookcases of manga. The museum allows you to read any of these and even provides reading rooms and resting places for just that. While the majority are in japanese there is one wall for english translations with enough manga in it to last many, many visits.

The two main exhibitions while I was there were spectacular, the first being the history of manga with manga from the decades arranged in chronological order. This also contins discussions on various aspects of its writing, conventions and artists.

The second focused on a single arist and showed framed full sized artwork from their works. It's a lovely end to the museum.

From what I gathered there was also multiple workshops and activities for various age groups however they weren't running during the period I was there.

Also he first thing you see when you walk in is a batman comic which is awesome.

Minneapolis Sculpture Garden - Walker Art Center

Would like to visit the sculpture garden when it's not snowing, but it was still cool to see the giant spoon.

The Walker is a decent collection. Edward Hopper, Office at Night, 1940 is there. A nice balance of modern paintings, sculpture and installations.

There are seven floors of the main galleries. Starting at the bottom you can continuously progress through without any long stair climbs.

Philadelphia is a city with a ton of history, and this recently remodeled museum does a great job of encapsulating it, though it is a bit small for the admission.

They have things you didn't know still exist, like the wampum the Lenape gave William Penn from the Treaty. This museum traces Philly history back to the beginning, and presents it in an organized, easily digestible way.

Sometimes, it glosses over some pretty important parts of our history, though. There's a room with a giant map of Philly on the floor, which is cool, but also feels like a waste of space.

Recently, they cut admission by 33%, which improves the score, but if they came down a bit more, it'd be better. For $10, though, I'll give this museum a 7/10.

http://www.philadelphiahistory.org/

This museum is a small, single purpose museum right next to the great pyramids of Giza in Cairo, Egypt. Pharaohs, in their cross to the afterlife, needed a mode of transport to go there. In this case, a massive boat next to a pyramid (and when I say next to, I mean right next to).

It's really cheap to enter (maybe around two euros on top of the price to get to the pyramids), but it's nice. There's a big boat, which is the main attraction, but before you get there there's an explanation of how they excavated it (picture as example). You also walk past the site of where the boat used to be, in a biiiiigg hole in the ground.

Anyways - it doesn't take long to go here (maybe half an hour to get through) but it's quite nice. It's a nice relaxing break from the hecklers and business outside, and it's well worth seeing the end result, a restored, beautiful boat. However, I would've appreciated slightly more background information, since I got most of it from a friend I was visiting with, instead of the actual museum. Furthermore, it's not extremely prominent or anything, and I think it would be worth drawing attention to something like this.

Figured i'd post this since so many of you would not get the chance to see it as it's all the way in Qatar. Apart from being a masterpiece of architecture ( I believe it is IM Pei's last work), the museum holds a vast collection of Islamic art across the centuries. The beauty of it is that you can fully enjoy the gallery without having to be a muslim. The stories that art tells throughout history are fascinating as it covers ~1400 years.

Cons: It's not easy to get more info about a certain part if you were interested as the staff is generally poorly trained.

More here http://www.mia.org.qa/en/

I thought it best to maybe give my two cents on the countries primary museum. Despite political instability, the building has remained in tact, however it's lack of renovation and modern zanyness had left it feeling lethargic. The entry fee was 70 EGP or around 30 for students- the first time I went round, the parking area was swarming with tourists coming of the buses with their guides, so it's considered thr first stop for anyone visiting Cairo by many. Thousands of items that match the scope of the British museums exhibits are within however the occasional Microsoft word print off and 1970's fact table scrambled around the huge complex isn't going to cut it when people would like an introduction to the pharonic world, which for many, it is. It was a fancy storehouse of amazing items, like king tuts ceremonial mask, nothing more. You have to know what you are looking at, otherwise they are just like any old hieroglyphs and sculptures of topless dudes you can find anywhere. This museum would have far more potential if they could adequately link each exhibit to the other, presently a story of the developing dynasties. "A song about his lover" isn't particularly telling when I'm staring at a 8 foot tall wall of hieroglyphs hidden behind another pile of dusty ruins with ambiguous history. Our guide tried to link each exhibit together, but due to the layout, very little is actually connected- but at least he knew what each item meant in the grand scope of things. I was going to visit the mummy room, but that was another 100 EGP, and I'm a cheapskate.

tilde: unless you either: Want to really see king Tuts mask, Have a great passion for ancient Egypt with knowledge that can overcome lazy descriptions and poor insight Or simply because you really like the building (its a freaking nice building) it might not be that fun :/

Wikipedia Page & Website

The Siriraj Medical Museum, like the Mütter in Philadelphia, is a building (several, actually) filled with various medical oddities. Here, you can view everything from fetuses (in varying stages of development) to full-grown human bodies floating in glass cases. Because the museum is located in Thailand, it also has a small exhibit to memorialize the victims of the famous tsunami. The museum is located across the river, and is relatively small, so it’s also convenient if you want to go on a river cruise.

The main building of the Siriraj holds several small exhibits and a small cafe (which serves delicious yogurt smoothies). A small section of the area displays fetuses with various deformities. Down one hallway are some broken bones and grotesque pictures of fatal accidents – decapitated bodies, slit wrists, stabbing victims, etc. In the main hall are tons of body parts, a few naturally-mummified rapists, and even some snakes in jars. Off to the side is a smaller exhibit about parasites will some cool dioramas and an elephantitis-afflicted scrotum (it’s much better than the Mütter’s giant colon, in my opinion).

The highlight of the museum is a small room within the main hall. It’s a hands-on exhibit dedicated to teaching sex ed to the blind. There’s a rubber female chest with instructions on how to do a self breast exam, and rubber models of both sexes’ pelvic regions. Yes, feel free to explore the vulva, or a penis with fake hair glued on it. There’s even a separated penis off to the side, which you can adorn with the provided condom (wrapped).

There are several smaller buildings that are part of the Siriraj Medical Museum (we went to two; I’m not sure if there are others). The forensic and the prehistoric museums are in crumbling, older buildings. The forensic buildings has an amazing collection of fetuses (many conjoined twins), which some guests have left toys for. It’s in this building that you can also view full adult corpses. The prehistoric building is much smaller and slightly less interesting, housing mostly arrowheads and a few primate skeletons.

The Siriraj Medical Museum lacks some variety in comparison to the Mütter Museum, and the signage is mostly in Thai (or oftentimes nonexistent), but overall it was a fantastic experience. It’s certainly not for children (what with the mentally-scarred accident photos), which is either a pro or a con depending on who you are. I’d highly recommend the Siriraj to anyone who can handle it!

This museum is free so it automatically gets +1. The building itself is shaped like a boat. It is very small and dated and has mostly model boats and old photos of boats, and unless you're really into that, you could probably walk through the whole thing in about 20 min. The redeeming quality it has a roof deck amazing view of Alcatraz and the bay and is a great place to watch evens happening on the water (America's Cup, fireworks, Alcatraz Race, etc.). If you're going to Ghirardelli Square, Aquatic Park, or Fisherman's Warf, it's worth stopping by here just for the amazing setting.

More info here: http://www.nps.gov/safr/historyculture/bathhousebuilding.htm

If you're into impressionism, get ready to faint at the utterly RIDICULOUS collection here. The collection is placed in several small rooms holding unreasonable numbers of paintings by recognizable and less-recognizable names. I wouldn't necessarily recommend this to people without a basic knowledge of art (or who don't do a little bit of research beforehand). If you don't know what you're looking for, it will feel rushed and disappointing. The curating of the pieces is interesting, they're not organized chronologically or by painter, but focusing on juxtaposition. Ancient African pieces are compared to early modern pieces. Two paintings of similar subjects by different artists are put on opposite sides of a room. Looking at the layout is almost as interesting as the pieces themselves. One definite issue I have with this is that in order to emphasize that this was once a personal collection, pieces are not paired with their signage. (You have to grab a booklet in the back of whatever room you're in to check.) It's incredibly frustrating to have to first search for the books then search within the books for a particular piece when in most every other museum on the planet you can determine ATD by looking at the BOTTOM CORNER. (There's also one piece which is some sort of ceramic lion just sort of hanging out and doesn't fit with anything else. I looked up the artist and can't find any other works by them, and I'm fairly convinced someone just left it there and a curator incorporated it into the exhibit.)

In order to visit the museum you'll have to book tickets ahead of time, check it out here: http://www.barnesfoundation.org/

This has always been one of my favorite places to go in the city of Philadelphia (which is saying something given how many choices there are). It runs specials on traveling exhibits; most recently, a Pompeii exhibit was featured. Body Works, King Tut, and Titanic have also made appearances in recent years.

In addition to the special exhibits, the Franklin Institute always has rooms dedicated to different aspects of science. The most famous, and a must-see every time I'm there, is the walkthrough heart in the anatomy exhibit. There are also rooms with inter-actable displays showcasing physics, engineering (I really enjoy the locomotive train), and of course electricity, paying homage to the institute's namesake Benjamin Franklin. You can also see a giant pendulum, enjoy a planetarium, and play with K'nex. It's a great place for kids, but adults can have an awesome time too.

It's about $20 for an adult to enter for the standard exhibits, so a family should plan for expenses worth a full day there. It's located in the heart of Philadelphia, and is worthy of your visit!

https://www.fi.edu/