The Wagner Institue

 I can safely say that the Wagner Institute is the coolest museum I have ever been to, and I've been to a lot of museums. It wasn't interactive, organized, or really that informative either. But the stuff in that museum not only took me back in time through its displays; it took me back to around 1850  through the museum itself. I think that it was a great example of what we have been reading in the text and discussing in class about how the museum building itself sometimes is the exhibit and the history being seen. In this case not only was the building original, the organization of the displays have been kept untouched to give you a view back in time of how museum culture was once looked at; sophisticated, complicated, and not for the lower class. That was an interesting aspect of the museum that I have never noticed before in other museums which directly relates to one of last week’s discussions about culture. Culture through the idea that since museums have been around, the majority of that time, the works inside them were meant to show off wealth and power and not to educate or be welcoming in anyway. The Wagner is one of the museums from the enlightenment period that was meant to educate the public! The interesting part about that is because it has been kept in its original organization, you can see the reflections of the past (sophistication, complication, confusion and the showing off of power) that shadow over the mission of the Wagner Institute which is to educate and share with the public. I am sure without seeing and analyzing a museum like that, most people today would of never have guessed the original culture of museums.


Don't get me wrong, the majority of my interests in the Wagner were the displays themselves. The old school cluttered style of arranging a variety of specimens from the biological world was intriguing and beautiful to me because I am a man of nature. If I could get away with it, I would be walking around naked all day chilling in the woods catching and viewing the animals and plants that make up our beautiful ecosystem. TMI....