Art Museum Review

For our second exhibit review I chose to visit the Cleveland Museum of Art, mainly because I had never been to the Art museum before. Originally, I had wanted to review the Pharaoh: King of Egypt exhibition that is visiting the museum. I have always been fascinated with Ancient Egypt history, and the website states visitors can “uncover the stories behind ancient Egypt’s legendary rulers through stunning objects from the vast Egyptian holdings of the British Museum.” Who doesn’t want to experience that? However, upon arriving to the museum, we realized that patrons have to pay for admission to that exhibit- something we were not prepared for since the Art Museum itself is free. So, I spent the day at the museum trying to find a certain section …show more content…
But what was nice was that the gallery had an info panel with a general history of the time period the artifacts were from- something that was there throughout the entire museum. This panel was especially helpful, and I would often seek it out before really looking at any of the gallery pieces so I could put what I was seeing into some sort of context in my mind. And then, of course, there were further descriptions and information regarding each artifact in the gallery. In my museum adventures, I have found it very uncommon for exhibits/galleries to feature text that was difficult to understand, Armor Court is no exception. Granted, some of the text was a little small, thus making it slightly difficult to read, but in no way making it a hindrance to the experience. Again, I’ve not experienced exhibits that have an argument to them before- the goal has always been to educate patrons on the specific topic, and as a patron, I always leave knowing more than when I came …show more content…
The gallery didn’t have any multimedia or interactive sections. It was very traditional in the way it was presented: here is an artifact, here is a info placard on the artifact, and maybe here is some additional information about the history of the piece. The Cleveland Museum of Art does have a companion app called Art Lens- and it was available for Android devices this time, unlike the Poison Exhibit app. I did download the app (disclaimer, it will drain your phone battery due to the amount of pictures it updates) but I didn’t use it very much while at the museum. I wanted to be present in the museum and not be staring at my phone the entire time. Once I got home, I did play around with Art Lens, and it has some interesting features: you’re able to select galleries and view professional photos of the pieces, if you open a certain photo the app will tell you about the piece and show you related pieces based on time period or medium, and there are video tours available set up by different curators. Unfortunately Armor Court was not one of the tour topics, but it is a pretty nice app, especially to reference for an art history paper, or something