Stop 6: Museums of Spain

The last country on our Eurotour was Spain.  In a change of pattern from other countries, we actually traveled around that country a bit, rather than spending all of our time in one place.  We spent 3 days in Barcelona, 4 days in Valencia where I attended a conference, and 2 days in Madrid.  

The museums we visited included:

• La Catedral de la Sagrada Familia (Barcelona)
• La Pedrera (Barcelona)
• Museu d’Historia de Catalunya (Catalan History Museum, Barcelona)
• Poble Espanyol de Montjuic (Barcelona)
• Museo de Historia de Valencia (Valencia)
• MuVIM (Valencia)
• Baroca
• El Prado (Madrid)
• Museo de Traje (Madrid)

Our trip to Spain.  Because it was eventful in its own right, I thought I’d share the story of our trip to Spain.  In keeping with my unique talent for devising completely impractical itineraries, we took the train from Berlin to Barcelona, a 24-hour odyssey that involves 2 train changes, a and transfer among train stations during a 5-hour layover in Paris.  The first part of the trip, from Berlin to Paris, was relatively uneventful.  It a smooth ride on the German bullet train, a free meal on the French high speed train, and plenty of work time.  I finished an article on which I had been working for 7 years.  

The situation changed when we arrived in Paris.  Although technically connected by train, the ground links at both train stations contributed to irritable moods.  Unlike the recently renovated and upbeat and upscale Gare du Nord (terminus of the Berlin train), Gare Austerlitz (starting point of the train for Barcelona) is an excuse for Zoloft.  Technically, the station is being renovated but it’s too early in the process to see anything other than a few signs of construction.  

One of the reasons that they’re remodeling the stations is so that it can handle high speed trains.  We realized this when we saw our train—something of a late 1970s, early 1980s vintage, without much updating.  

As we waited for the train, we saw some shady looking characters.  They drank a beer at the table next to us in the restaurant, and my partner took the seats across from them in the waiting room.  They looked us up and down, like “What can I take from these people?”  

At the first opportunity, we left the waiting room and waited in line for the train.  I saw the guys disappear in that general vicinity, but they didn’t seem to appear again.  

We took our seats on the train—to save money, we reserved regular seats for the overnight train.  The couchettes were more than twice the cost of a Parisian hotel.  

We were assigned to the center seats, which face another couple (even less privacy than I expected).  But, at the least, no signs of the shady looking guys I had seen earlier.  

Just before we were about to depart, the shadiest of the shady looking guys took the one open seat in the car.  No sleeping for me; I needed to make sure he didn’t take our stuff.  I was convinced he was going to rob us.  

About a half hour after we departed, the conductor collected tickets, as well as our passports.  To be honest, I don’t know why they collect them—they’re usually not needed for travel between European states.  But I would soon develop a hypothesis.  

The couple across from us, who looked like a couple of modern young Muslim newlyweds, were a little nervous about giving their passports.  After the conductor left, my partner  suggested that I say something to them, assuring them that the passports would be returned  in the morning (this is what happened when he traveled to Europe a few years earlier).  “They spoke English.”  But I was a bit reluctant to say anything without being asked, so I declined.  

Which was a good thing, because my partner could turn his attention to eaves dropping.  When the conductor asked the shady looking guy for his ticket and passport, a long exchange occurred, and ended with the guy leaving the car.  

“He didn’t have a ticket,” my partner explained.  “And they’re kicking him out at the next stop.” Marco’s native Spanish skills contributed to our safety.  

Now I can sleep, I thought.  My things are safe.

Marco was more practical.  He just wanted the now-open seat; it offered more privacy.  

Things quieted down quickly, until about 2 am.  That’s when the lights came on and a team of border guards noisily entered the train.  They went directly for the couple in front of us—the ones who were worried about their taking their passports.  

Apparently, they were worried with cause.  (Once again, my partner’s eavesdropping skills proved useful.)  The husband’s papers were fine, but hers were not.  She did not have a European residency card and had overstayed her welcome on the visa that she had.  She said that they were at home, but the guards insisted that she leave the train.  Her husband asked if he could go with her.  They said yes, but he wouldn’t be able to get back on the train later.  He left.  

I felt bad for her situation and hoped the support of her obviously loving husband would help her through.  

I might add that my partner hates to eavesdrop, and hates when I ask him to, but he knew I was a bit frightened and knew that what he learned through eavesdropping would reassure me.  

I realized I’m supported, too.   

La Catedral de la Sagrada Familia (Barcelona).  One of the hottest tourist spots in Barcelona is an unfinished cathedral in the heart of the city designed by Antoni Gaudi, who designed several other buildings in Barcelona.  In advance of our visit, I had seen photos of other Gaudi buildings and thought they just looked weird.  

But it seemed to be the place to go and my partner really wanted to see it.  After the sleepless and adventurous night on the train before, crazy night on the train, walking through a building was about all I had the brain space for.   As soon as we reached the property, I knew what the fuss was—not just about the building, but about Gaudi.  From afar, the cathedral looks like a gothic structure but close up, it is one of the most unique visions for a building I’ve ever seen.  Spires weren’t merely concrete, they were cornucopias of fruits and homages to the apostles.  This was a work of love by an architect who clearly wanted to express his deep, unwavering love of God.

One other thing became evident as we approached the building—it wasn’t finished.  It was a live construction site.   

Even though we arrived near closing time, we waited a bit in line before we could buy tickets.  They were pricey, and the audioguides were extra (on top of a high admission fee and after receiving free audioguides at most of the museums in France and Germany, the expense seemed all the more usurious). But the sign said that the fees would go towards completing the construction of the cathedral.

As we walked through the parts of the building that were complete—part of the nave of the chapel with soaring ceilings and elegant stained glass windows and a cavernous crypt below—we learned the story of the cathedral and of Gaudi.  

Gaudi was an architect who had had health problems as a child, which led to his spending lots of time in the country, where he developed an intense love for nature that became an integral part of all his work.  He integrated natural images into all his designs.  Moreover, he integrated shapes and lines from nature into his work, which led him to test the limits of engineering and materials sciences and contributed to the unique look of his buildings.   Although not explicitly stated in the exhibition at the cathedral’s work was a forerunner to that of today’s superstar architects like Gehry, Liebeskind, and de Meuron and Herzog, all of whom rely on using unusual lines and materials.  

He was not the original architect assigned to the Cathedral, but assumed responsibility for it early in his life and it quickly became his opus magnus.  Towards the end of his life, it was all he worked on.  But the planned project was so extensive and required so much craft work that it was going to take a long time to build.  Work continued for nearly a decade after he died, but was interrupted by the Spanish Civil War, when anarchists stole the plans for his building, so no one knew how to finish it.  

Eventually, experts reconstructed the plans, and resumed construction.  According to the plans, a few significant sections have barely been started and construction managers anticipate a completion date of 2026, the 100th anniversary of Gaudi’s passing.  

Viewing the building inside and out, exploring the intricate craft work, soaring ceilings, unusual lines and surprising images close up, I became a major Gaudi fan.  I wanted to spend as much time exploring as possible—but couldn’t.  

It’s not just that the site closes at 6 pm, but the staff is one of those that’s anxious to leave at 6, so they start shooing out visitors at  5:45.  I wish they would leave the staff on duty until 6:30, so that they could merely close the facility to tourists at 6 and give themselves additional time afterwards to close the building.  

But afterwards, I could see Gaudi everywhere in Barcelona’s central business district.  His buildings (we would tour another), the tschatcchas in the gift shop, and even the benches and street lights on the major shopping thoroughfare, Passeig Gracia.

Museu d’Historia de Catalunya (Catalan History Museum, Barcelona). A recently restored warehouse on the Barcelona waterfront hosts this museum that provides an extensively documented history of Cataluna, the eastern most district of Spain that speaks its own language (a mixture of Spanish and French, with a number of unique words and spellings mixed in) and, with its distinct language, has its distinct identity.  In addition to recounting the history, this museum celebrates that identity.  

Since moving to Quebec, I have become increasingly sensitized to the challenges that a community faces when it is the majority within the region in which it lives, but not within the larger country in which it is located.  Part of that growing awareness is familiarization with  similar communities in other parts of the world; Cataluna is one such community.  Before coming to Barcelona, I was aware of the unique Catalan language and that Spain had recently granted the region more autonomy.  But that was really the extent of my knowledge.

This museum definitely fast-forwarded my education.  The museum is extensive; its permanent exhibition covers two entire floors of the museum—and they’re warehouse sized floors at that.  Although visitors can enter the history at any point, those who choose to start at the chronological beginning—like my partner and me—experience the full history.  The journey starts with the founding of an outpost at the edges of the Mediterranean during ancient times, continues through the early Christian, then Moorish rules, then back to Christian rule, a period of relative independence and later modernization, the Spanish Civil War, and post-Franco rule and greater autonomy.

Whenever possible, the exhibit designers  tried to display objects (many from archeological digs) in displays that suggest their context  of use.  For example, in addition to displaying pottery, the pots might be displayed in a re-creation of a store or home, with partial walls and background paintings of relevant scenes.  Some highlights include the re-creation of a medieval church, a Moorish-designed water wheel and irrigation system, and scenes from homes in the 20th century.  The exhibit ends with a display of the various peoples of Barcelona today, intended to be a positive presentation of a modern, multi-cultural community.  Although the people photographed and their stories were real, this someone seemed a bit contrived.   Or maybe I’ve seen this display enough in the history and municipal museums of other cities that it has little effect on me.  

Labeling was extensive: each epoch of history, each gallery, each grouping of objects, and each object.  Labels, too, were multi-lingual, including Catalan and Spanish.  At times, the extent of  documentation felt overwhelming.  But upon reflection, I’m glad for it.  

The documentation filled some gaping holes in my understanding of modern history, especially regarding the Spanish Civil War, which was merely a quick blip in world history classes in high school and university.  I had no idea who was fighting for what, much less how it happened. I only knew the outcome was the long rule of Francisco Franco, and I didn’t really know that much about him or his rule.  Those holes were filled in. 

The museum also presented history from a distinct Christian, Catalan viewpoint. It presented a proud history, highlighting periods of great independence as well as great subjugation, and the rise of a new, modern Catalan identity.    That said, although this was a Catalan history museum, its primary—though not exclusive--focus is Barcelona.  

My primary complaint is time; we could have easily doubled the two and a half hours we spent here.  

La Pedrera (Barcelona).  Our visit to a second Gaudi creation, this is a tony apartment building that Gaudi designed on the equally tony Passeig Gracia.  Like Gaudi’s other work, one can only appreciate beauty of this building close-up.  Like the Catedral de la Familia Sagrada, this one incorporates Gaudi’s naturalistic vision.  

But it admittedly looks like a boulder from afar, hence its name. Pedrera comes from the word piedra  or rock.  And all I could think of the entire time I was in the museum is the Spanish name for cartoon character Fred Flintstone—Pablo Picapiedra.  

(The official name of this building is something more refined, but everyone calls it by its popular name.)  

Like la Catedral, this one charged a lot and charged for everything.  The audio guides were extra (unlike many museums in Spain).  They also caused traffic jams; the narrow, crowded passages through the building were blocked with visitors listening to their audio guides.  (I kind of felt really bad for Mr. Gaudi, who died unrecognized after languishing in a hospital after being hit by a car when crossing the street. He had no descendants, which seems to make people all the more motivated to profit from his work after death.)  

But they were also littered with tourists getting photos of everything, whether they needed the photos or not.  (There was one particularly self-absorbed family ahead of me who must have held up 50 people just to get a good shot in the bathtub.)  

If the building was overpriced and the visitors the kind who give tourists a bad name, the unique designs and craftsmanship, as well as the rooftop vistas, made the building well worth the visit, and reminded me that those hassles are just silly annoyances in the end.  One of the highlights of the building is a multi-level rooftop terrace that affords magnificent views of the city.  The attic just below it provided background on Gaudi and this particular creation of his.  

One of the apartments was open to the public, decorated as it would have been when the building opened.  The bathrooms, kitchen, and electric lights—all of the latest vintage at the time the building opened—looked a bit dated.  But a close inspection left no doubt—these were works of art as well as historical artifacts.  So were the furnishings.  

What the fixtures and furnishings possessed in style, they surprisingly lacked in color.  Perhaps that’s because the colors were somewhat faded from years of exposure.  But the original color palettes seem somewhat neutral.  

The rest of the apartments are not open to the public, because people actually live in them.  So La Pedrera itself is not a museum, just part of it.  

The two gift shops were also terrific, though apparently not coordinated.  The gift shop at the end of the visit of the apartment had some unique and wonderful items, some of which I wanted to buy for my sister.  But the small store was crowded so I thought I’d go to the more spacious shop on the ground floor—outside of the museum area—and buy the items there.  No such luck.  Although both emphasized Gaudi and design, the two stores had completely different inventories.  

After the visit, we waited for the Tour Bus to take us to our next destination. While there, we met and tried to talk with a family, whom we learned were from Montreal.  Apparently we had cooties; these people did not seem to want to engage with us when they learned we were from Montreal.  Because I’m used to people being friendly when they meet people from their home town, I was taken aback by their icy-ness.  OK—I felt hurt.   

Poble Espanyol de Montjuic (Barcelona).  Because it is a sort of living history institution, I would have wanted to see this attraction under any circumstances, but it was one of the top items my partner wanted to see in Barcelona, so that made it tops on our list, too.  The Poble Espanyol (Catalan for Spanish village) was built as an attraction for the 1929 World’s Fair and was so popular that, even when the rest of the fair  grounds were converted to other uses, this attraction remained—and remains to this day.  

It’s housed on a mountain that contains many of Barcelona’s top sporting and visitor attractions, Montjuic.  According to the tour bus, this was the Mount of Jews, where the Jewish community lived during Moorish times.  

El Poble contains a number of buildings, each fashioned after the architecture reminiscent of a particular region of Spain. The designs were prepared by university professors who toured Spain and recorded extensive notes about the local architecture, then suggested representative buildings.  In most instances, the primary significance of a given building was its exterior.  The interiors were filled with tourist shops.  Some were artisan shops with artisans occasionally demonstrating their crafts.  Others were restaurants, generally of the white table cloth variety.  

The one exception was a modern art gallery, which displayed a wide range of work from Picasso to newer artists just trying to establish their reputations.    

The only way to learn about the buildings was through the audio guide, which was narrated by a Chatty Cathy.  She provided extensive historical documentation on each building and the original after which it was fashioned.  But I left wanting for more information about the 1929 World’s Fair, which was a watershed moment for Barcelona and is known as a showplace of advanced art, architecture, design, and literature—on the eve of the Depression and the dark years of recidivism into fascism that followed.  

Museo de Historia de Valencia (Valencia).  House in a restored water cistern, this museum covers, in many ways, the same history as the Museu d’Historia de Catalunya and employs many similar presentation techniques.  But this museum does so from slightly different perspectives—solely that of Valencia rather than all of Catalunya as well was that of a region that left Catalan rule earlier than Barcelona.  Furthermore, although the museum roughly covers the same historical periods and territory, its presentation is more compact, probably limited by space.

We were welcomed to the museum by the friendliest greeter, who took the time to explain the layout of the museum to us and provided me with an English guide to the exhibits (made easy to carry because it was provided in a binder with handles—a nice usability touch).  

The museum had a central hallway, from which visitors could select any epoch in the history of Valencia to explore.  But each epoch was directly connected to the next, thus providing visitors with both free-choice and linear approaches to the exhibits.  To be honest, the floor plan probably worked better on paper than in the museum, because visitors following the linear plan would miss the introductions to new epochs, which were presented in a central atrium that visitors would not pass through under such circumstances.  

Like the Museu d’Historia de Catalunya, this museum exhibited its collection of historical objects in displays that suggest their contexts of use. On the one hand, it seemed like the exhibits contained more fabrications than original objects, but the ones that the museum displayed were handsomely showcased.   The museum also used “attract” objects, like a car that could be seen from far away and would “attract” visitors to come closer.  

Labeling was extensive and bilingual (Catalan (which is not as widely spoken in Valencia as in Barcelona, but still widely used and has historical significance all the same) and Spanish).   Curators formally introduced visitors to each epoch with a brief overview of the epoch and a timeline naming historical highlights, many of which are explored in more depth in the exhibitions.  Each section of an epoch, as well as each scenario and its objects also had their own labels, too.   

In addition to labels, the documentation of the exhibits consisted of audiovisual re-enactments of scenes reminiscent of the period, so visitors could envision the history.  Each exhibition seemed to have at least one such audiovisual station.  Professional actors performed the scenes, which visitors could hear in Catalan, Spanish, and English.  Scenes included a Roman era family discussing an upcoming communal event and Valencian leaders discussing the impact of the departure of the Jews.

The most recent sections of the exhibitions supported the conclusion from my dissertation research: displaying the most recent history is the hardest.  Although the displays aptly identified some key moments in the rule of Francisco Franco, the interpretive labels suggest that more healing is needed and that made me wonder—as I had when visiting the sections on the Inquisition and other museums during this trip—how do societies deal with the less than pleasant parts of their past?  The post Franco period receives minimal coverage but that’s probably because the history is still writing itself.  

All in all, this was a wonderful museum and we thoroughly enjoyed our visit there.  

MUVIM (Museo Valenciano de la Illustracion y la Modernidad).  When I read about it, this museum seemed like one of the most unique I had ever heard of:  it presents the history of thought through the ages.  Given both the uniqueness and ephemeral nature of the subject matter, I really wanted to see how they approached it and the museum was number one on my list of must-sees.  

The visitor experience, however, suggested, why bother.  Finding the building wasn’t easy; street signs were only minimally helpful.  When we finally found and entered the building, we couldn’t find any staff person to greet us, much less answer our questions.  When we did (the information desk was a couple of levels below ground), I learned that I had ignored a small piece of information in the description; that exhibit is only available by appointment, which visitors must make 24 hours in advance.  So we didn’t see it.  

Trying to make the best of our time, we did decide to see a brief exhibition on Artel, a group of crafts artisans from Europe and who had a Bauhaus-like approach to decorative arts before Bauhaus dominated that scene.  The exhibition was modestly interpreted.  The brief exhibit and gallery labels provided some orientation but none provided much of a sense of the significance of the collection on display, much less what  happened to the movement.  Did the Depression and the political turmoil of the 1930s cause it to end as they had done to similar movements?  Just as significantly, the gallery seemed physically disconnected from the rest of the MuVIM facility and getting back from the exhibit to the museum was a bit of a challenge.

In our travels through the facility, we also saw a second exhibition on something.  To be honest, it was not interpreted at all, so I have no idea what we saw, whether we started at the beginning or end.  What I did sense is that all of the objects in this exhibition are reproductions.  That makes me wonder what the point of the exhibition was.  

Baroca.  The last museum we saw was off of the itinerary; we walked by an historic church in the midst of restoration as we were leaving that day’s festivities in advance of the traditional Las Fallas celebrations.  The doors were open, beckoning visitors to see the collection of religious artifacts on display.  All we had to do was walk past a bit of scaffolding.  

We saw a large number of silver and gold chalices and similar pieces used in various church ceremonies, as well as wooden carvings in the walls that experts were trying to restore (though they looked like they might fall under the heavy layers of new paint).  

The highlight was walking up some scaffolding that was opened to the public so visitors could see the view of the sanctuary from on high.  

Minimal labels were provided, but those that were offered some insights into this church as a living institution rather than to the artistic or historical significance of the objects we viewed.  We left with the sense that the exhibition was temporary and, as soon as the restoration was complete, authorities would close the exhibition. 

El Prado (Madrid).   One of the most significant art museums in the world, el Prado is home to a collection comprising several centuries worth of Spanish masterpieces.  

Housed in a classic building that has been expanded and remodeled throughout its history, its most recent addition was in the past year or two, intended to make the museum more visitor friendly by giving it a new entryway that provides better access to the exhibitions, a large café, and a huge gift shop.  

What makes this museum most visitor friendly is its hours; it stays open until 8:30 pm.  It easily has the traffic to justify the extended hours; I just wish more major museums would follow suit. 

We started our visit in the temporary exhibition, an amazing and sumptuous exhibit on the art of armour, featuring ceremonial swords, amour, and similar objects, as well as paintings depicting royals wearing and using these pieces.  Each king had his preferred armour-er, and each armour-er, in turn, had a unique style represented in the craftwork of the piece.  They were truly works of art, and often labors of love.  

In the process of learning about the armour, I also learned about the Spanish kings, including Carlos III.  From all appearances, he bore all of the problems of inbreeding among royals and the long-term consequence was that he left no heirs, so the Spanish crown transferred to French relatives who had a distant claim to the throne.  

This separately ticketed exhibition seemed to be designed for large crowds that didn’t seem to show up, at least not when we were there (and the museum seemed rather busy).  Exhibition designers left lots of space between items so crowds could easily move without bunching up.  But as I just said, that wasn’t a problem.    

Then we ventured into the permanent collection. Although this is physically a huge museum, for its size, it works extremely well.  Art is grouped together by period and genre, and each gallery seems to have a well-defined theme.  The floor plan easily guides visitors from one gallery to the next, but if visitors need to quickly go to a part of the museum, that’s relatively easy to do.  There’s some semblance of a central hallway, although it does not provide access to each key section of the museum. 

The art itself does the Spanish people proud.  When surrounded by so many beautiful paintings and sculptures, one can easily lose sight of the mastery of them.  But the artwork in this museum constantly wows the visitor.   

One aspect of the museum that seems like a work in progress is the labeling.  Each gallery has a label but sections within each gallery—as well as entire segments within the museum—do not.  Gallery labels generally appear in Spanish and English as do those accompanying the individual works of art.  But the extent of both labeling and translation is inconsistent; some galleries have labels for the gallery and significant objects in both Spanish and English, some in one language, and some have next to no labeling.  I hypothesize that the museum is revising its labels as part of the recent renovation, but has only partially completed the project.

In addition to the main gift shop in the new visitor entrance area of the museum, el Prado has lots of small gift shops throughout the museum.  Like La Perdrera, these smaller gift shops do not resell merchandise available in other gift shops in the museum.  For those who might be interested in buying something but not in the middle of a visit, the museum might consider selling everything in the main gift shop.  This strategy seems to be a merchandising strategy typical of European museums; we Americans are used to selling everything everywhere so if we missed it in the first gift shop, we can pick it up in the second.  I guess my American-ism shows at moments like this.    

A small trifle, to be sure.  This is an amazing and extensive museum; although we barely made a dent in seeing the collection during our three and a half hours here, I’m sure glad we had the opportunity to visit, and have a great reason to return.  

Museo de Traje (Museum of Clothing).  We went to this museum, on the edge of the newer part of Madrid and near the university, because my partner wanted to.  An admitted fashionista, he thought this museum would be interesting.  

And he was right.  

Although finding it was a bit of a challenge (there are directions in the nearest subway station, but somehow fall apart when at street level), when we finally found it, it was well worth the walk.  The seemingly simple, low, lean Mies van der Rohe-inspired home of this museum belies the subtle drama of the building and the display of clothing.  But the drama merely enhances the visitor experience, like a hidden courtyard at the entrance, and a few surprises in the permanent display.  

The heart of the museum is a permanent display of centuries of Spanish clothing for men and women (though more women’s clothing, than men).  

The exhibit follows a defined path and the building is designed so that going directly to a part of the exhibit isn’t really all that easy.  People can either go forward or in reverse chronology.  

Following the official path, the first part of the exhibition explains the challenges in preserving and displaying clothing.  I had learned this during my dissertation research, so I focused more on how they presented information rather than what they presented.  And the curators did a superb job of explaining the issues clearly and succinctly and, just as significantly, setting realistic expectations among visitors.   

My impression is that the target visitor for this museum is a first-time visitor.  The curators seem primarily interested in introducing visitors to the topic of clothing and the key themes in the subject area, and make great efforts to educate them, while avoid overwhelming them.  Each room and case has labels (providing thematic background), but no objects did.  

Instead, the curators provided two other tools to help visitors learn about individual objects.  They could pick up in-depth explanations on separate sheets of paper that visitors could pick up at various points throughout the exhibition and keep with them. Unfortunately, some of the sheets were out of stock. 

Or visitors could listen to the free audio guides, which provided in-depth descriptions of several key outfits in the exhibition.  The curators also seemed intent on attracting visitors and building their comfort with the content, as all of the explanatory materials were bilingual.  

Acknowledging that the story of clothing is also the story of accessories and shoes, the displays included these items as well. In some cases, they were displayed as objects in their own right; in other cases, the accessories and shoes completed an outfit on display.  

More than merely appreciating the clothing, the curators tried to develop visitors’ understanding of the historical contexts that gave rise to these pieces.  Rather than jamming the cases with clothes, the designers designed sparse cases that call attention to the clothes.

By including one or two props in each case—like walls of a ballroom from the 18th century, one-of-a-kind arts and crafts and pieces of furniture from the 20th century—curators also helped visitors visualize the world in which people wore these clothes.  The clothes themselves ranged from folk clothing to everyday clothing to art-worthy designer pieces.  

But the highlight of the exhibition was the end; visitors literally down a runway lined with the work of latter-day Spanish fashion designers, an appropriately dramatic close to a well-displayed collection.  

The gift shop was as spacious as the exhibitions and had an appropriately large selection of items in terms of the quality and uniqueness of the items for sale.  

I only have two minor suggestions for this museum.  One is to improve the signage from Metro stations.  The other is to include the work of global Spanish mass merchandisers in the last gallery of the exhibition.  Given the international influence of chains like Zara and Mango, I was surprised by the lack of mention for them.  

Summing Up: Future posts on this blog will explore some of the themes in this posting, themes that have particular interest to information, instructional, and experience designers: 

• Displaying difficult stories from the history of a people 
• Traffic design patterns in museums
• Price gouging and sweet deals on museum admissions
• Different ways that people learn through museum exhibits

Next posts:  Reflecting on the museum experience (you knew I had to get academic on you).  

Stop 5: Museums of Berlin

With 170 museums, Berlin offers visitors a seemingly endless opportunity to indulge their interests in museums. Berlin’s museums cover all of the genres: art and decorative arts, history, science and technology, interest group, and natural history.

Although I had just visited Berlin 15 months earlier and visited several museums on that visit, I  barely made a dent in that 170-museum list.  More significantly, I only saw—but did not visit—Museum Island, so named because it houses several museums.  These are also the leading art museums in the city and among the leading ones in the world.

Selflessly, I wanted to share them with my partner and selfishly, I wanted to see more of the museums of Berlin.  So that city became the next city on our European tour.

So I returned to Berlin to rectify that situation, and visited these 7 museums (2 return visits, 5 additional ones):

• The Story of Berlin
• Neues Museum (New Museum)
• Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery)
• DDR Museum
• Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung (Musical Instrument Museum)
• Kunstgewerbemuseum  (Museum of Applied (Decorative) Arts)
• Deutsches Historisches Museum (German Historical Museum)

The Story of Berlin (www.story-of-berlin.de).   Hidden in the back of a nondescript office building with an interior mall near the heart of West Berlin’s shopping street, Kurfürstendamm , the Story of Berlin provides visitors with an introduction to Berlin through its history.  Although its name comes up in a Google search of museums, some tourist guides label The Berlin Story an attraction.

Because I had just visited it 15 months earlier, I would not have visited the Story of Berlin on this trip.  But even after taking a tour bus through the city, my partner had questions about Berlin and, based on my previous visit, knew that the Berlin Story would answer them.

The Story of Berlin has two parts: a two-story exhibition that walks visitors through the history of the city, and a nuclear bomb shelter, located elsewhere in the building (outside of the exhibition) and that requires a guided tour.

The exhibition focuses on the dramatic: after a brief introduction, it begins with a dramatic walk up the stairs designed to look like a typical, lower middle-class apartment complex in Berlin, and arrives at a multimedia theatre, which provides a cavalcade of images of Berlin through the ages.  Past a curtain, the exhibition begins.  The first part of the exhibition consists of a hallway, which provides a timeline of development of the city, from its founding in the thirteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century, when the city emerged as the capital of a united Germany and a leading economic center in Europe.  Off of the main hallway are several period rooms, each focused on a theme—such as the economic development of Berlin—and displaying artifacts (some original, many fabricated) in scenes reminiscent of the period.

Following that is a larger, area, with a small side gallery that explores the World War 1 and the resulting collapse to the German Empire, and a larger area describing the Weimar Republic days.  The latter explores in depth the history and politics of the country, the expansion of the city, and developments in the economy and arts, which had influence far beyond the city limits.

This segment ends with the beginning of the Nazi era (always referred to as National Socialist, rather than Nazi), with a symbolic and literal descent down two flights of stairs to the lower level of the exhibition.  The journey down describes the Nazi rise to power, and its tightening grip on society.  By the bottom of the stairs, Berlin lays in ruins after being nearly destroyed in the war. In one of the most effective scenic displays in the museum, the first section of the lower level recreates the image of a bombed out, debris-laden Berlin, and tells the story of the Soviet blockade and subsequent Allied airlift to break it.  The story continues with the tale of the divided city—told by side-by-side displays showing how different scenes of every day life appeared in democratic West and communist East Berlin, two parts of the same city, divided by the infamous wall.  This segment is probably the most extensive and best documented in the exhibition, and has the largest number of authentic objects.  In fact, one of the objects is a case of American-supplied cheese that was  kept by a West Berliner and donated to the museum.

The exhibition ends with the story of reunification that begins at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate.

For history buffs, like me, who want an overview of the city’s history and are especially interested in the era when the city was divided, the Berlin Story is superb—especially for people who want to read labels.  The exhibition—with completely bilingual labels—provides gallery labels that describe the general history of an era, case labels that describe history and sociology of a particular issue during that era, and object labels that describe the significance of an object within the larger historical and sociological context.  The labels border on serving as a book on a wall.  I would have liked a copy, but the Berlin Story does not—as of now—publish an English-language gallery guide.

Because of limitations of the physical space, other than the small galleries off the main hallway introducing the history of Berlin, visitors cannot easily choose an era of history to visit and must walk through the entire exhibition.  For example, visitors cannot skip the pre-World War II era and go straight to the part describing the era of two Berlins (as my partner wanted to do).   Although physically possible, signage and other physical barriers prevent visitors from entering at the end and exploring history backwards in time.

The other part of the Berlin Story is the visit to the bunker, a nuclear bomb shelter built in the 1970s under the building housing the Berlin Story.  The location of the bunker is in the parking garage below the building and requires leaving the Berlin Story premises and going outside, to a separate entrance.  After going down several flights of stairs, visitors enter a screening room, where refugees from a blast would enter and be admitted to the protected space beyond the wall.  The shelter was huge—and could be used as parking spaces when not used as a bunker—and lined with beds, four levels of them. The bunker had room for 3600 people.  We could see the wash rooms, the kitchen, the temporary generator (which could provide electricity for two weeks—the amount of time needed until authorities felt it would be safe to go back outside).

Some sections were described through labels, but the bilingual tour guide provided much more information (and often did not provide time to read labels before moving to the next section).  Among the issues raised by the tour guide was the problem of people being cooped up in a small space for an extended period of time.  Although such a space would physically preserve life, no one had really survived an entire two weeks in such a space because the psychological toll was too high.

Neues Museum (New Museum) (www.neues-museum.de) was the first museum I visited on Berlin’s famed Museum Island.  Like the Mall in Washington, DC, which houses the various buildings of the Smithsonian Institution, Museum Island in Berlin hosts several of Germany’s national museums.  As its name suggests, Museum Island is an island but was essentially closed for nearly 60 years, as most of the museums were destroyed in World War II and were not reconstructed until German reunification.  Most of the treasures in the collections survived the war, and the reconstruction of the museums has sparked inspiration and controversy for their adherence to, or liberties taken with, the original designs.  Regardless, UNESCO has designated Museum Island as a world heritage site.

Given its reputation, I was surprised how crowded Museum Island seemed—nothing like the sprawling space in Washington.  Furthermore, I was surprised that the main ticket booth was a trailer, and I had to wait about 20 minutes in cold, precipitating weather to get tickets.  I later read that this, too, is a source of concern.  The master plan includes a welcome center, but its design and cost have caused a lot of controversy and, like the weather that day, its construction is in the deep freeze.

As I entered the museum, which only reopened a year earlier, I noted that the museum and the island are still construction sites.  But I also saw in the buildings signs of age that could be restored to shiny new, but had not been.  Perhaps that’s intentional.

The Neues Museum houses the archeological collections from Egypt and the near East. The highlight of the collection is Negertiti’s Bust, a remarkably well preserved and unique sculpture from ancient Egypt that is noted for its excellent condition and unique representation of the human body, as well as the beauty of its subject.  My partner was really revved up to see it but, to be honest, I didn’t care one way or the other.  Then I entered the room that holds the bust—a small room that still bears some of the scars of the war.  It houses just one object and provides visitors plenty of room to explore it (in marked contrast to the display of Mona Lisa in the Louvre).

And I fell in love.

Nefertiti is truly perfect. She emotes a sensitivity that photos fail to capture, much like  Michaelangelo’s David.  The image is iconic, but can only be fully appreciated in its original form.

After visiting Nefertiti, we could focus on the collection. Her iconic status becomes all the more impressive when one explores the rest of the collection, which is not only historically significant, but just plain nice to look at.

The display of the art seemed surprising; rather than arranging it chronologically, the curators arranged it thematically.  In most museums, a thematic display means that a chronological display would only highlight its deficiencies.  Not so here; the curators used the thematic display as a teaching device, to highlight similarities across time.  That said, the Egyptian collection admittedly seemed smaller than in Istanbul or Met.  In addition, despite the excellent documentation of individual pieces, the galleries lacked broader orientations to the art within, either on labels or through the free audio guides (though I did appreciate that they were free).

Of all the galleries, the one that impressed the most was the display of documents.  The display itself was kind of interesting, using a system of sliding cases that I have not seen in other museums.  Four long, horizontal cases displayed different categories of documents.   Visitors press a button to see several samples, whose conditions varied from excellent to marginal.  But what captured my attention the most was that many of the documents were of a practical and technical nature; attestation to the long history of technical writing in the world, even if it has only recently sought recognition as a profession.

The Egyptology section is a centerpiece, but we briefly passed through a gallery of early Germanic times, before the founding of Berlin in the twelfth century.  Objects provided insights into various political, economic, and religious practices—some quite different from what I expected. When I return, I hope to have a chance to explore these galleries in more depth.

One other part of the museum surprised me—the gift shop.  Not surprisingly, the merchandise was Nefertiti heavy, but the overall size was kind of tiny, given the importance of this museum, the likely number of visitors, and the age of the museum.  I would have expected something larger.

Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery) (http://www.smb.spk-berlin.de/smb/sammlungen/details.php?lang=en&objectId=17&n=1&r=2).  Our second stop on Museum Island, the Old National Gallery, a neoclassical museum (like the other buildings on Museum Island) that displays mostly representational German art from the 1600s through the early 1900s, with a few abstract pieces.  The museum had strong imperial connections to the Kaiser.

The artwork on display was excellent, and many galleries focused on the works of just one or two artists.  The museum also houses a large collection of sculpture. Although many of these German artists might be well known within art circles, I had not seen much of their work in North American encyclopedic museums and, in this way, the museum presented a learning  experience.

As I viewed this mostly representative artwork, I could also envision the backlash to the largely abstract painting that emerged in the early days of the 20th century and substantially grew during the years of the Weimar Republic, a rage that culminated in Hitler’s exhibition of “Degenerate Art,” works by artists considered today among the best and most influential of the 20th century.

DDR Museum (www.ddr-museum.de/en/). Tucked onto a small space along one of the canalways of Berlin, just off of a major boulevard and beneath a modern hotel and a galleries with gift shops and restaurants, the DDR Museum tells the story of life in East Germany under Communist rule during the Cold War.  Like the Berlin Story, this “museum” could also be classified as an exhibition.  In fact, I was unclear whether this institution was, in fact, a nonprofit museum or a for-profit exhibition company.  It could easily be described as an attraction.

No larger than  a Gap Store but, on the Saturday night we visited, far more crowded, the museum takes a thematic approach to life in the DDR, rather than a chronological one.  It has sections devoted to work, schooling, leisure, communications, transportation, fashion, and home.  Highlights include a Stasi car, which visitors can sit in, and a recreation of an East German apartment.  Each segment had extensive labels, and encouraged a lot of interaction between visitors and the exhibition.  One involved opening drawers to see objects, others presented stories of school and work life through a series of lockers.   A video theater showed videos of actual television shows from East Germany.

Visitors seemed to brace the interaction but, given the crowd visiting, it caused people to bump into one another, and bunch-ups throughout the exhibition.

Although I thought the toilet looked kind of gross, the rest of the East German apartment didn’t look as awful as I would have imagined—and frankly, more comfortable than the labels gave it credit for.  But an anti East-German bias seemed to permeate the labels in the museum, almost belittling life there.  For example, many of the sections not only focused on the limited selection of consumer goods in East Germany, but their attempts to create inferior products, as in the fashion section, where cotton Levis jeans were contrasted East German jeans made from synthetic fibers.  Similarly, the website showed what looked like a drawing of a bunch of nude people on a beach.  It was actually a photo of a case recreating a beach scene in East Germany.  That—and several photos—focused on East Germans’ love of nudism.  From the perspective of a somewhat prudish North American, it seemed a bit exploitative.

Other segments focused on the sensational, often leaving out crucial information in the interpretive labels.  For example, the section on pre-schools talked about collective potty training of children, in which kids were all sent to the potty at the same time and could not leave until the last child finished.  The label quoted one criminologist, who said that this practice led to certain anti-social and criminal behaviors post reunification.  An internet search found that this explanation is not widely regarded; in fact, sociologists tend to credit more plausible explanations, like the breakdown in society and security post reunification, as the cause of these behaviors.

Implicit—but not explicit—in this exhibition is the historical context, such as how the DDR started. Nor did the exhibition provide any insights into the fall of the DDR.

Upon leaving the museum, my partner commented what I had thought—but had not voiced: that the DDR Museum is somewhat disrespectful in the way it portrayed East German life.

Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung (Musical Instrument Museum) (www.sim.spk-berlin.de). As its name suggests, this museum displays musical instruments from the 1600s onward, with a large collection of keyboard instruments (pianos and predecessor instruments), stringed instruments (guitars, violins and violas), and wind instruments.

The museum designer achieved something that others have tried but often failed—making the entire collection visible from an atrium.  That was the original vision for Atlanta’s High Museum by Richard Meier, but the space was sufficiently large that atrium didn’t provide enough of a view; it merely impeded traffic.  In this case, because the collection and building size were appropriate for the concept, the atrium provides a clear, quick view of the entire three-floor museum.  It also allows the food odors from the lower level cafeteria to freely flow through the building, too.

Exhibits are arranged sort of chronologically by time period, then by type of instrument.  The craftwork on some of these instruments was excellent.

The documentation in the museum, however, is nearly exclusively in German (except for English labels in a temporary exhibit), so the objects had to tell the stories by themselves.  For the most part, they succeeded.    And dates on the labels, which help place the instruments into their historical context, transcend language.  That, in turn, provides a basis for figuring out how different instruments emerged, much as the curators themselves would have to do.

Still, I would have liked to have read the details on one exhibit that showed the creation of a piano from raw materials to finished instrument.  (At the end of the tour, I found an English guide to the exhibitions, which contained complete translations of the labels.)

The museum provided an audio tour, but rather than narrating the exhibition, the guide provides recordings using the instruments.  Press a number and hear something that recorded with that instrument.  At first, I was disappointed but, on second thought, realized that this was perfect.  In the end, aren’t instruments supposed to be played?  Furthermore, aren’t classical and folk music the perfect accompaniments for Sunday morning (when we visited the museum)?

The dates were almost visible (though larger type would have been preferred), resulting in the possibility that someone could begin to figure out the story of the development of these instruments, which included some I had never seen before, but were neither described nor available to hear through the audioguide.

Kunstgewerbemuseum  (Museum of Applied (Decorative) Arts (http://www.smb.museum/smb/sammlungen/details.php?objectId=7).  Both my partner and I share a strong instrument in applied arts—furniture, tableware, desk accessories, and textiles—so this museum seemed like a natural one for us to visit.  And we were not disappointed by a vast collection that is as expansive in its scope as in the periods of time it addresses.

Like its neighbor, the Musical Instrument Museum, this is a three-story museum built around an atrium.  Unlike that one, however, the collection is, at best, only partially visible from the atrium because the atrium is smaller, and galleries are much larger and go much deeper into the building than in the Musical Instrument Museum.


Similarly, like its neighbor, the labels in this museum are almost exclusively in German so the objects had to tell their stories by themselves.

The museum sort of recommends a path through the exhibit through its  design of traffic patterns, but does not support that pattern visually. For example, no sign explicitly advises “the exhibit continues in this direction.”  Furthermore, although the nominally recommended pathway through the museum was chronological, the chronology seemed a bit out-of-sequence.  The third floor presented collections from the 1700s through the 1900s; the second floor presented collections from the 1200s through 1600s, and the first floor presented collections from the middle of the 20th century onward.

Those trifles aside, the museum engagingly displays its excellent collection.  Within an era, the exhibit designers organize objects by type, such as porcelain, silverware, and desk accessories.  The exhibit designers  judiciously used large objects to attract visitors from afar, as well as room constructions (one room reconstruction reminded me of a room where Leisl and her boyfriend meet in The Sound of Music). Once attracted to a section, visitors would find the objects well displayed in cases; no single case was overwhelming though, at times, the sheer number of cases felt overwhelming.  That feeling f being overwhelmed might alos be attributed to the fact that this was the sixth museum we had visited in 3 days.   I might have been in the early phases of museum fatigue.

The emphasis of the collections varies across periods.  In the earliest periods, the collections weigh heavily towards religious objects with few everyday objects.  In contast, much of the collection on display from the 1700s seems weighted towards pottery.  The emphasis in the later years of the 20th century is on furniture.  This is probably a function of what has survived from those times, but also a function of who commissioned the art.  Decorative arts are practical arts (perhaps that’s why I’m drawn to them) and primarily driven by what sells. What sold in the 1200s when the church was the primary benefactor of the arts substantially differed from what sold in the 1800s, an era characterized by growing middle classes.

Deutsches Historisches Museum (German Historical Museum) (www.dhm.de).  Located just off of Museum Island, this recently opened museum (2006) tells the history of Germany, from pre-historic to current times.  Its neoclassical home (with additions designed by I.M. Pei) houses an extensive collection of artifacts that predate the Roman Empire.

But the collections are somewhat disproportionate in size; the two-story exhibition starts on the upper level, which covers all of history until 1918.  The equally sized lower level covers history since then.  This is as much a statement on the availability of objects from different time periods as it is on the complexity and sensitivity of the more recent history.

This was my second visit to the museum; I had only chance to explore in depth the galleries on the Weimar Republic the first time, and quickly glanced through the galleries on early German history.

This time, my partner, who developed a strong interest in recent German history, wanted to start with the most modern history.  So we started the exhibition at the end, which seemed to perturb the guards, who tried in vain to direct us to the upper level where the history technically begins.  But I remembered what an informant for my dissertation told me; a good history exhibit can be visited in any order, including reverse order.  And I was determined to take her advice, if only to help my partner pursue his interests.

Our interest in entering the exhibit at the end didn’t sufficiently bother the guards, they also wigged out over my partner’s carrying his bag with him.  They really should have told us about that when we bought our tickets, as they should have had signs there, too.  

Although I was easily engrossed in the story and the exhibition, my partner—who was less familiar with modern German history-found the exhibit overwhelming. On the one hand, we appreciated the English labels.  On the other hand, the labels are, essentially, a book on a wall.  (The same informant for my dissertation study specifically advised against that.)  The labels did follow the typical three-tiered approach of most modern history museums—gallery, section, and object labels.

But those labels were dense with facts and reading.

In some instances, the overwhelming amount of information resulted in unintended inconsistencies.  For example, in the most recent period, the labels identified incidents by year, even though most incidents were only identified with a headline and no explanatory information for those of us unfamiliar with the events.  This should have suggested to the curators that perhaps they had gone overboard with detail.

Furthermore, in the process of listing every event, this chronological, event-driven approach to history lost the thematic perspectives so essential to an effective interpretation of history.  More than what happened, what ultimately matters is what those events mean in the larger narrative of history.

Perhaps this event-by-event reporting is intended to provide a preponderance of evidence to support particular interpretations of history in the museum, and that might raise concerns among some of the public.  Perhaps that explains the extensive coverage of World War II, which probably takes 50 percent of  the gallery space on this floor.  For history junkies like me, that’s fine.  The more facts, the merrier. But for someone trying to learn the general story, like my partner, perhaps a streamlined version might be helpful.

Summing Up: Future posts on this blog will explore some of the themes in this posting, themes that have particular interest to information, instructional, and experience designers:

• Displaying difficult material
• Traffic design patterns in museums
• Whether or not museum passes are a good deal

Next post:  The Museums of Spain.

Stop 4: Museums of Paris

After Istanbul, my partner and I traveled to Paris.  To be honest, the original plan for our trip to Europe was to rent an apartment in Paris for 2 months, where I could immerse myself in French and become more comfortable in the language.  But after seeing the short-term rents for Parisian  apartments, two months became ten days and immersion in French language morphed into visits to as many museums we could visit during that time.

During those ten days, we visited these museums:

• Arc de Triomphe  
• Musee d’Orsay
• Musee des Arts Decoratifs
• Musee d’Art et d’Histoire du Judaisme 
• Musee de Quai Branly
• Choco-Story—Museum of Chocolate  
• Musee des Arts et Métiers  
• Chateau deVersailles

Arc de Triomphe (link to the Wikipedia entry; the Arc does not appear to have its own website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc_de_Triomphe).  A 200-year-old-plus structure that honors French soldiers, it’s monumental in every sense of the word—as a tribute to the soldiers, centerpiece in the Paris street plan,  landmark for Paris, work of craftsmanship, and a place that inspires awe and respect.  And the rooftop offers some pretty amazing views of Paris.

Although the Arc itself is 200 years old, its visitor center is brand new.  And in contrast to the majestic and timeless nature of the Arch itself, the Visitor’s Center seems like little more than a multimedia show that will quickly look dated and, before then, frustrate the living daylights out of some of its visitors.  One of these displays deconstructs pieces of the exhibit, another tells about similar local monuments in other cities. But the exhibit tells little about how the Arch was built or why.  (For that information, the tour bus was more informative.)

The system will frustrate visitors because only a few stations are available; none of the information is replicated and only one visitor can control the exhibit at a time.  If this were a low-traffic tourist spot, that might be fine.  But even on a winter’s day, the Arch was teeming with visitors.  Some impatient children are not going to be happy; some of those children might be of adult age.

Whatever the limitations of the Visitor’s Center, the views on the roof more than compensated.

Musee d’Orsay (www.musee-orsay.fr/en/home.html).  This was my third visit to the home of the most important collection of Impressionist art.  The first was 30 years earlier, at the old home of the collection at the Jeu de Paume and was duly impressed by the impressionism on display there, though I can’t say I remember much else.  In the early 1990s, I had heard that the collection moved to a new museum.

But time has passed so quickly that I was surprised that the new  home, the Musee d’Orsay, was undergoing some age-related reconstruction when we visited this February.   The museum still seemed new to me.  That said, the staff expertly handled communication about the renovation and, through explanatory signage, also deftly managed expectations around closures and rearrangements dictated by the renovations. What they failed to explain was exactly why they were undertaking the renovations.  

Besides that reminder of my age—and some problems with my credit card as I tried to purchase tickets—two other issues struck me as I entered the museum.  First, despite the cavernous size of the interior (a sign of its past life as a rail station), the galleries are surprisingly intimate in size and scope, clearly arranged and organized and, on a spatial level, create one of the most satisfying experiences for a museum visitor.

The designers handled traffic patterns particularly effectively; all paths are clearly marked and each room thematically leads into the net.  As significantly, visitor traffic always moves somewhere; no dead ends exist.  As significant, even on a busy Thursday evening, traffic flowed well, without the bunch-ups of visitors that typically occur in popular museums. Although the museum does not fatigue the visitor, for those who felt tired, designers provide plenty of seats.   They’re also great for simply sitting and admiring the amazing art.

Second, although I always think of this museum as a museum of Impressionist paintings its collection goes well beyond paintings, Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, and covers a wide range of art and art movements from the latter half of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth.  One collection that I find particularly memorable is that of Art Deco and Art Nouveau decorative arts.

Although the artists, art movements, and types of art work,  on display vary widely throughout the museum, the quality of the art is consistently superb throughout.

What was less consistent is the labeling.  Some galleries had have gallery descriptions, but most don’t.  Of those galleries that have descriptions, the descriptions are available in three languages: French, English, and Spanish.  Labels on individual pieces of art are only published in French.   Some individual pieces had no label, some had one, and some had two (a repetition, so more visitors could read at the same time).

Perhaps the inconsistency is an intentional and not-so-subtle means of encouraging visitors to rent audioguides (an additional source of revenue to the museum).  Perhaps this inconsistency results from a desire to encourage visitors to keep moving by limiting those occasions when they would need to read labels.

Most likely, it’s an unintentional inconsistency.  That’s sad, because that inconsistency detracts from the important task of educating visitors.  As one of the most high-traffic museums in Paris—indeed, in the world—this museum plays a pivotal educational role.

But that’s just a trifle.  This museum also provides a great entertainment experience; a night amidst beautiful paintings, sculptures, tableware, jewelry, and reconstructed rooms from some of the artistically productive and creative periods in recent history.

Musee des Arts Decoratifs (www.lesartsdecoratifs.fr).  I’ll start with the complaints about this tiny museum that’s dwarfed physically and in the conscious of most visitors by its next door neighbor, the Louvre.  Although the museum claims to cover decorative arts, publicity, and textiles, my experience has been that visitors can only see two of the three.  Although I’ve only visited twice, at least one of the three collections has been closed each visit.

Which sucks, because this is a gem of a museum (but the good news is that, on this visit, the gem collection was open).

The other complaint is that the layout of the building is weird.  Visitors enter in a central hallway, with a security station, ticket counter, and entries to the gift shop (great books and design merchandise, though no bargains to be found) and hallways to the two sides of the museum.  The hallway to the left leads to the textile, jewelry, and publicity galleries.

Most of the action was on the right side, the decorative arts galleries (none of which are accessible from the left side).  The galleries featuring work from the 1950s and later are on the upper floors, which are not directly accessible from the ground floor, or from the third floor, where the exhibits begin.  They’re only accessible from an elevator at the end of the fourth or fifth floor.  It seems as if the building was developed in stages and the major renovations that occurred in the past decade did nothing to unify the building.

Enough complaining.

Whatever frustrations the closures and the layout posed were more than compensated by the superb collection and displays.  If one wants to get a sense of the development of Western European-inspired decorative arts from the Middle Ages onward, this is the place to go.  In the process, the exhibitions tell the story of changing lifestyles (primarily of the rich and famous), tastes, and preferences through the ages.  The story starts with re-constructed rooms from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, including a fifteenth century bedroom, parlors from various eras, and an exquisite art deco apartment and sample office.  In addition, individual pieces of furniture, especially chests and chairs, and decorative objects are displayed on their own.

As noted earlier, objects from the 1950s through the 2000s are displayed in a 4-story wing accessible from the end of the Art Deco display.  Although easily missed, this wing shouldn’t be.  Even if the objects weren’t amazing, the views are.  The upper levels from the ninth floor provide dramatic views of the Louvre, the Tuileries and even the Arch de la Defense.

But the displays are even more impressive.  The highlight is a three-story atrium whose focal point is a mountain of chairs.  Nearly every modern chair imaginable is displayed in this mountain, and the views from each level provide a different perspective on them—focused on the whole at the upper levels and the parts at the lower levels. The whole shows how the chair has been one of the most popular subjects for designers in the modern era.  The parts show the diversity of their responses, from designs that build on earlier traditions to designs that try to create new ones.

This attention getting centerpiece could distract visitors from the equally impressive collection of furniture and tableware on each floor.  But, in my case, it had the opposite effect.  By drawing attention upward and outward, plus providing glimpses of other objects from this atrium, this centerpiece drew me to the other parts of the collection.

The jewelry collection mentioned earlier was equally impressive for its display, as well as its objects.  In fact, it’s a textbook example of how to display tiny objects, using dramatic lighting to draw attention to individual pieces, then accentuating that attention with a presentation of some pieces so they seem to literally fly out in your face.  This display would have made even mediocre jewels seem impressive, but the jewels on display here were definitely not mediocre.

Most parts of the museum featured limited labeling, and all of that was in French. Most rooms have a room description and each case also had a description.  Some objects were also described in detail, but many were not.

The strongest labels were in the jewelry exhibition.  Truly instructional, these labels provided  definitions of key terminology for jewelry, and linked the terms with the pieces that demonstrate them.

For me, the French-only labels were great, because one of the reasons I visited Paris was to develop my skills and confidence in French.  But if you don’t speak or read French, note that the museum provides free audio guides in the language of your choice, and provides orientations to each major gallery, as well as key objects within them.

Musee de Quai Branly (www.quaibranly.fr).  A popular newcomer to the Parisian museum scene houses collections from the native peoples of Oceania, Asia, Africa, and America.

Because the artwork comes from areas in and near French colonies, these collections were once called “primitive” (referring to their presumed level of human development) and “ethnographic”  (referring to curiosity about these peoples in Western civilization).  Modern views see the objects as decorative and religious art that provides insights into the lives and values of the civilizations that produced them.

Given this contemporary perspective; a general interest in these subjects as a result of short stints living in Africa and East Asia, and in former French colonies in North America; and enthusiastic coverage of the opening of the museum in the New York Times   in 2006, I had high expectations for this museum.  Anticipation only rose as we waited in line outside in near freezing weather for a half hour merely to purchase tickets.

In retrospect, I can certainly say that this was an interesting experience and I learned a lot about the indigenous cultures whose objects the museum displayed.  So on a basic level—that is, in terms of approaching the museum as an institution of free choice learning, this museum works.  Given the large numbers of visitors on the day we visited, others probably share this sentiment.

But does the museum deserve the hype, a place as one of the leading museums of Paris, which also has museums like the Louvre and the Musee d’Orsay?

To be honest, I’m not sure.

Architecturally, the rich blue building with an unusual shape is definitely eye-catching.  But I’m not convinced it will age well.  Only four years after its opening, the building looks dingy and dirty in places.

In terms of collections, the museum brings together vast holdings about cultures across the world under one roof and displays the objectives clearly and engagingly.  Off of the African and Asian galleries are small intimate rooms which are as most notable for the dramatic ways in which they display objects.

But the actual objects on display seemed to my only modestly trained eye to be unimpressive.  Except for the Oceania collection (the first on the preferred route through the museum and probably the largest), most of the objects are of just ordinary quality and the objects on display are of limited breadth, suggesting that the collections are not as extensive as might be expected.  What’s on display at the Quai Branly hardly rivals either the quality, much less the breadth, of single-purpose collections like those of the African Art Museum of the Smithsonian Institution and Smithsonian’s Museum of  African Art in Washington, DC and the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco.

Similarly, by primarily focusing on displaying the work as art, the cultural context is lost.  The Field Museum of Natural History provides particularly enlightening displays of objects in their everday contexts.  On the one hand, the focus on art is intentional; the museum claims to be a museum that celebrates the arts of the cultures on display. But the labels suggest a mixed understanding of that mission; they are chockablock with explanations about history and culture, often to the exclusion of discussions of the art.

Indeed, the Quai Branly seems to be a traditional ethnography museum, with everyday objects (some admittedly with strong artistic qualities) and arranged both geographically and, in many cases, chronologically.

And a primarily etic (outsider’s) interpretation of the objects; the  vantage point throughout the museum primarily seems Western.  It’s most noticeable in the Americas section of the museum is primarily explained by an interpretation of their culture by noted French philosopher, Strauss-Levi interpretation.  Indeed, it was an interesting one, but certainly not an emic one.  In fact, the voices of the peoples who created these objects seemed be absent throughout the museum.  (I’m not a fan of just an emic view, either, as will be discussed in a few moments.  My preference is for balance.)  

Nor do the labels explain (or, for that matter, even hint at) that many of the objects have their roots in colonial rule.  In some instances, the objects do not come from former colonies.  For example, he Americas section has more objects from the Pacific Northwest and Alaska (former British and Russian colonies) which admittedly have strong artistic traditions, than from Quebec. The direct French connection to the few objects likely from its former colony, Quebec, is not even mentioned.  Similarly, the Americas collection only contains 1 or 2 objects from Haiti.

In terms of designing the visitor experience, the administrators of the Quai Branley could learn a few lessons from its sister museum, the Musee d’Orsay.  The 30-minute wait in the cold for tickets was unnecessary; but that’s what happens when most of the ticket booths are closed on the busiest day of the week.   When visitors do enter the museum, they entered into a construction zone for a new temporary exhibition.  Rather than hiding the mess behind curtains and promotional signage, the administrators merely left it all on display—complete with pieces of drywall missing.

Once visitors complete the walkup the ramp to the second floor with the permanent collection, the design is intended as a scatter system,  in which visitors can, technically, enter any of the four major sections of the exhibition.  But signage and implicit traffic patterns actually force the traffic into the Oceania collection.

None of these issues is so serious that I would recommend against visiting the museum.  Rather, these are issues that the museum staff might consider when the time comes to refresh the galleries it in about 7 to 15 years.

Musee d’Art et d’Histoire du Judaisme (www.mahj.org).  Hidden on a narrow side street off of another narrow street with just enough nooks and crannies (like an English muffin) to easily get lost, merely finding this museum was an accomplishment.  But well worth the effort.  From a rather modest entry way, visitors enter into a grand, though barren, courtyard surrounded by a building that looks like it once housed a wealthy family.

The welcome became even warmer inside—not just because of the heat in the building. This museum offers complimentary admission to teachers, regardless of the subject or level taught, much less the country of the school.

My partner and I had a particularly strong interest in the temporary exhibition about the   Camondo Family—Sephardic Jews from Istanbul who brought their finance business to Paris in the mid-nineteenth century and quickly rose to the heights of Parisian society.  The exhibit primarily focused on their social rise and their acquisitions: homes (with some valued objects on display), and artwork that they donated to the French people, and form core parts of the French national collections.

From there, we visited the two-story permanent collection, which was bookmarked by small galleries on the history of the French Jewish community—opening with one about the origins of the community in medieval and Enlightenment times, and closing with a couple of galleries  exploring the modern French community, from emancipation during Napoleonic times to the influx of immigrants from North Africa and Eastern Europe after World War II.

But the bulk of the exhibition presents  Judaica (ceremonial pieces, usually characterized  by craft work of museum quality) most of it decidedly not French in origin.  One of the most impressive and imaginative displays of Judaica was a display of hanukiot (Hanukah menorahs or candleabras) in a special side gallery.

Being Jewish, I naturally felt a connection to the museum and sensed that the selection of objects, as well their description, reflected an almost exclusively emic (insider’s) view.  And as I had issues with the nearly exclusively etic (outsider’s) perspective in the Musee de Quai Branly, I had similar issues with the nearly exclusively emic perspective in this museum.

In both cases, a central perspective is missing and important themes go unexplored.  Certainly, key issues went unexplored in this museum.  Consider the exhibition about the Camondo family.  Although the exhibition highlighted the Judaica purchased by the second generation and their donations to the Jewish community, it merely hinted at a significant, though more troubling, theme:  the draft of that generation away from the practice of Judaism as the family tried to move further and further into the heart of Parisian society.  That, in turn, begs the question: what was the actual response of French society to these Turkish Jews?  Was acceptance easy, hard-won,  well-bought, or some combination thereof?

The third generation seems somewhat tragic; one family member had  two illegitimate sons he did not acknowledge; another had two children who tragically died, one by accident, the other as a result of the Holocaust—and after converting to Catholicism.  

Rather than merely celebrate the wealthy, the exhibition could have critically assessed their struggles and provided insights that might have more significance for the contemporary visitor.

Similarly, the permanent exhibition seemed to be a generic display of center-of-the-road European Judaism, rather than a specific re-telling of the French Judaism, whose history is continually interrupted by expulsions of one sort or another, followed by influxes of immigrants from various parts of Europe and, more recently, Africa.  A photo exhibit towards the end of the exhibit attempts something of this sort, but this perspective would be beneficial throughout the exhibition.

An etic perspective might be useful here, because rather than focusing on “How do we want to present ourselves to the world?” an eti-ly inspired exhibition would ask, “What makes this story unique? How do the objects tell that story?   How do French Jewish customs differ from elsewhere?  How did being the first country to “emancipate” the Jews affect the experience of being Jewish?”

One other concern:  inconsistency in labeling.  In some galleries, the gallery labels were bi-lingual; in others, they were not, as was the case with object labels.

But all in all, we enjoyed the museum and I wish we had a comparable institution to celebrate and share Jewish culture in Montreal.

Choco-Story—Museum of Chocolate (chocostory.free.fr).  When my partner learned that Paris had a museum of chocolate, it shot to the top of his list of must-see places.  And he didn’t even know that they give free samples.

This new museum is one of a “chain” of chocolate museums opened by a Belgian chocolate wholesaler (I think it’s called Belchocolate, but not sure that’s the right name).  Based on descriptions, the company seems to operate similar ones in Brugges and Prague.   The Parisian museum was brand new when we visited; it had opened about week before we visited.

I found the three-story museum to be fun, probably more so than my partner.  It tells the story of chocolate rather chronologically.  The first floor tells the story of the origins of chocolate—its biological origins (where it’s from, how it’s grown and harvested) and as a drink (and a somewhat spicy one at that) of Aztec and Mayan royalty.  The history is well documented and explained,  though many of the objects are not labeled (probably in response to complaints that the original in Brugges is a bit heavy on documentation).  They even include recipes, ending the story with the conquest of Mexico by the Spanish.

The next floor-sized gallery, tells the next phase in the story of chocolate—its life in Europe.  The gallery tells the story of its introduction  to Spain, how the Spanish royalty transferred the drink to royalty in other countries through the  marriage to Spanish princesses to royalty in other European courts, and from royal quarters to the general public.  The exhibit also tells the story of how the Europeans sweetened the original recipe and how, in the 1800s, chocolate morphed once again, from a drink to a solid candy.  The story continues with developments in the manufacture of chocolate.  The centerpiece of this gallery is a massive collection of pots and cups for serving the chocolate drink, with implements of every size, shape, and quality—from the finest porcelain to metal.

Some interesting tidbits learned in this section of the exhibit was that the Portguguese Jews who had escaped to Bayonne after the Inquisition played a significant role in the choloclate industry, and were responsible for introducing it there.

I also liked the great saying: Madame de Sevigne:

“Take chocolate in order that even the most tiresome company seems acceptable to you.”

And I learned that the term “praline” came from someone’s name:  M Choiseuil Comte Deplessis-Praslin.  In the seventeenth century, his cook wanted to prepare something for him, and cooked an almond and dipped it in sugar (maybe caramel).  The resulting concoction was a huge success.

The exhibition concludes on the bottom floor of the museum, which has three parts:  the health benefits of chocolate (it’s not bad for heart patients, it might have aphrodisiac qualities, and even diabetics can sort of eat it, with some restrictions—so they say), a second part describing contemporary practices in sustainable growth of cacao and chocolate connoisseurship (like wine connoisseurship), as well as modern manufacture, and the highlight of the museum, demonstration of chocolate making, complete with free samples.


Unlike the public museums, this private museum provide all labels in French, English, and Spanish.  To help visitors find the right language, they color coded the section of the labels with the translations in a particular language.

The museum closes with a small gift shop, which seemed all the smaller considering that this is a private museum and probably seeks every possible source of revenue.

Visitors to the Choco-Story in Brugges complained that it was a book on a wall and the displays were unimaginative.  On one level, that’s probably true.  But perhaps the museum went overboard in trying to present an academically sound story because it is privately owned and its ownership by a chocolate manufacturer seems quietly obvious to visitors.  For a nerd like me who wants the facts, that was actually an asset.

Musee des Arts et Métiers (http://www.arts-et-metiers.net/). This museum elegantly displays the extensive and superbly maintained collection of historical scientific and technical equipment of France’s 215-plus year-old Conservatoire des Arts  et Métiers in a former church priory.  Our decision to visit was last minute; we had some free time on our hand and my partner suggested we visit another museum.  We saw a street sign pointing in the direction of this one and followed it.

And I’m glad we did.

In addition to being housed in historic, once-religious surroundings, this museum  distinguishes itself from other science museums by its focus on the equipment itself, rather than its operation.  The elegant, spacious displays emphasize the beauty and craftsmanship of the equipment on display, and some of the displays generate as much attention from the imaginative way they present the equipment  as they do from the equipment on display.

This is no hands-on science museum with off-the-rack displays available in scores of similar institutions like it throughout the world; this museum displays and honors one-of-a-kind pieces, many of them “originals” that played pivotal role in the advancement of science and technology.

Among the many highlights:

• The first segment of the permanent exhibition, which featured scientific instruments.  
• A series of model rooms, commissioned as teaching aids in the late 1700s by a teacher who was particularly devoted to technical education and believed in experiential education, long before it became fashionable (thought that last fact was not noted) 
• The energy and communications exhibits, whose strength is in the older equipment (admittedly, the more recent digital equipment is almost invisible there)
• The eye-catching vehicles collection, which features a cross section of a car, and a display of  various bicycles during the formative years of its development (although the documentation was stronger at a special exhibit at Montreal’s Chateau Ramezay). 
• My favorite part, the last gallery, a chapel whose exterior walls are in excellent restored condition (with the original stained glass) and displays an eclectic mix of scientific instrumentation, one of the original Foucault pendulums, and three stories worth of cars—accessed by walking past a model of the Statue of Liberty.  

Some of the sections seemed kind of “what?” to me, but they were often the most surprisingly wonderful, like the galleries on mechanics, which explore the mechanical components in all machinery and then showed some phenomenal applications of them, like a room of fully automated curiosities.

Although the visual display of the objects focuses on their beauty, the arrangement of the objects is both thematic, both in terms of their purpose and their chronology.  In terms of the purpose, different groups of galleries focused on particular classes of equipment, such as testing, weights and measurements, communications, and transportation.

Within each category of objects, the material was grouped into one of three chronological periods:    before 1750, 1750-1850, 1850-1950, and after 1950.

In addition to the consistent chronological classification of objects across galleries, the museum followed a similarly consistent approach to labels within each group of galleries.  Each segment of the museum had a label, as did each room, each section within a room, each case, and each object.  The primary variation in labels was at the object level; some objects had limited descriptive information, others had expanded material, including integrated videos (something I had not seen at other museums).

Although many museums are able to provide a level of consistency within a group of galleries, this one achieves a unique level of consistency across galleries and throughout its entire permanent collection.  This provides a remarkable level of consistency to the story told by this museum.  In fact, the only area of inconsistency was in translation; all of the labels were in French, some would also include English.

In addition, the museum featured stations throughout the complex for demonstrations, learning corners with reading material and computers, and seats for visitors who needed a brief break.

Two issues could further improve this charming museum, one easily achieved, one not.  The layout of the museum is linear, and visitors must visit the exhibits in a predetermined order.  The design does not provide easy access to galleries in the middle of the museum.  Because doing so might require remodeling or reconstruction of the building, that one’s not likely to happen, although the museum could be set up to let visitors enter from either end of the exhibition, instead of just one of the two.

The other issue is more easily addressed: The museum could add an orientation gallery, which introduces the collections and their significance, and helps visitors distinguish this from other science and technology museums.

Chateau de Versailles (http://en.chateauversailles.fr/homepage).  What can one say about one of the largest, most lavishly furnished and extensively landscaped palaces in the world?  Visiting is almost the next best thing to living there.  And the place looks mighty spiffy, even on a cold Tuesday in February.

I expected the facilities to wow me, but I did not expect some of the pleasant and interesting surprises that I encountered.  One surprise was a temporary exhibition of photography.

Another was learning that the original intention of formally opening of the palace to the public  (not to be confused with some of those spontaneous visits from the public during the 1790s) was to forge a reconciliation following all of the political turmoil launched by the French revolution.

Visitors receive a free audio guide.  This guide was helpful, as few of the rooms had any documentation.   The audio guide provided a quick introduction to each major room in the palace, as well as signature objects—such as furniture and paintings—in the rooms.   The audio guides to the Dauphin’s apartments provided far more detail than those of the King’s apartments.  In fact, sometimes I would have moved two rooms before the audio tape for an earlier room in the Dauphin’s apartments finished.

According to the narration in the Queen’s apartments, the French had a royal tradition of public childbirths, thus ensuring that the child declared an heir was actually born to the queen.

The food worker in one of the snack shops in the gardens was, without doubt, one of the happiest workers I have seen in 20 years (since my visit to the Marriott Riverwalk in San Antonio, which seemed to have the happiest housekeeping staff).  This guy flirted with every customer—and was still able to provide great service.

We attempted to visit Marie Antoinette’s apartments.  But no matter how beautiful the grounds, a 40-minute walk on a 3 degree (Celsius) day in February is no picnic.  And I was too cheap to pay the 5 or so euros for the tram.  They already wanted  6.50 for admission to the apartments.

As we left the grounds, I realized that Versailles is more than an historical site, it’s more like a historical theme park.  

Summing Up: Future posts on this blog will explore some of the themes in this posting, themes that have particular interest to information, instructional, and experience designers:

• Museum admission fees 
• Confronting troubling realities of history, like colonial rule and defeat in wars
• Structuring access to exhibits

Next post:  The Museums of Berlin.