Sunday, November 21, 2010

Reflective Post Week 13

During our class on Thursday, we spent the beginning talking about our experience in the lab to the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. During the discussion, there were two questions that Professor Jackson had asked that I kept pondering on…

“Do the exhibit resemble more of a history or art museum?”
While looking at the different exhibits in the museum, one of the things that I noticed was that most of the pieces presented an object with a short description of the artist’s name and the title. Similar to art museums, the audience is left with their own interpretation of the piece. It was not like history museums in which most of the exhibits have a paragraph-long description about the piece’s history. A description that describes the story behind the exhibit and why it is important. Therefore, I thought that the exhibits resembled it to be more of an art museum even though the museum itself tells a history of Native Americans.

“Do the exhibit tell more about the American Indian’s past history or their modern lifestyle?”
After visiting the museum, I felt like the exhibit told more about the Native American’s modern lifestyle. Even from the beginning, (the short introduction video in the fourth floor), one gets a feeling that the exhibits were trying to show the struggle that native Indians went through to get to where they are and how they adjust themselves in today’s society. My favorite part of the museum was the third floor, where it shows exhibits about different modern Native American communities around the United States. Many of the exhibits in that floor talked about how they are adjusted in today’s society and how they have different traditions in addition to modern American families. One of the things that I noticed is that Native Americans in the United States are similar to any other foreign American families. While we are living with American traditions, many of us also celebrate our own cultures.

No comments:

Post a Comment