Over the past 30 months that we’ve been publishing The Cultured Traveler, we’ve found ourselves stressing two themes: “Hit the road” and “local is good.”At first it would seem these two pieces of advice are at odds with each other. But there’s nothing in the rule book that says hitting the road means having to travel a great distance. Sometimes it means nothing more than taking a drive or ride within your own metro area to explore local treasures.Which brings us to museums, the theme of this month’s newsletter. It’s the happy custom among most civilized people that at some point they formally set aside some artifacts so that strangers and offspring can come to know the story of a place. The result, especially in Europe and the Americas, is a landscape strewn with thousands of museums. Yes, many of them are small, or obscure or devoted to very narrow topics, but they still have the power to intrigue visitors with the insights they can offer into history or frames of mind.For example, the Musée Mechanique in San Francisco has probably the world’s largest collection of operating mechanical amusement arcade games from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The games lack any computer circuits or special effects, yet intrigue everybody who plays them with their clever application of simple mechanical and physical principles.
For a few moments it’s possible for visitors to feel that they’ve been warped back in time and are in a 1905 penny arcade. The best part of the museum’s subtle history lesson is that people realize their forebears could have just as much fun as 21st century people. If the end was mirth and enjoyment, the means didn’t have to be all that sophisticated. The Skyscraper Museum in New York City (what better place for it?*) is a small, very sophisticated non-profit institution dedicated to tracking the history, romance and lore of the high-rise building, from its origins in 1870s Chicago to the present-day erection of soaring behemoths in China and Malaysia. Like any museum whose specialty seems narrow, The Skyscraper Museum can be a revelation to the uninitiated: Who would have suspected the existence of so many skyscraper buffs and so many skyline rivalries (Chicago vs. New York, New York vs. Hong Kong, Melbourne vs. Sydney)?Or that Frankfurt, Germany, is fast becoming the skyscraper capital of Europe?Or that in 1926, architect John Larkin proposed a 1,208-foot building for Manhattan that was so absurdly stepped back as it rose that its top floors would have barely been able to fit two people working side by side?More importantly, as Sept. 11 taught us, soaring skylines have pride of place in many countries’ cultures. Shanghai and Hong Kong now vie to see which of them can project the most economic muscle by constructing giant high-rise office buildings and apartment blocks. Paris quietly adds buildings to its La Defense business district, making the French capital Europe’s second biggest skyscraper city. Within the seemingly narrow context of high-rise construction, a huge span of human concerns comes forth: aesthetics, how people live in a city, how power is symbolized, how science aids in the construction of large structures.
Then there's the seven-room James Dean Memorial gallery in Fairmount, Indiana, which honors the local boy who not only made good, but became a Hollywood immortal. And don't forget the Gallery Mint Museum in Eureka Springs, AK, which traces the history of coin-making, and Idaho’s Black History Museum in Boise, which pleasantly surprises visitors with its detailed account of black Americans’ influence on Idaho and the West.There’s a museum somewhere close to you that could turn out to provide a wonderful day’s entertainment and education. Many of them are kid and family-oriented, and happy to provide a multi-generational experience. One of the best web sites we’ve seen for finding close-by museums is Museums in the USA web site.
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