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| sent from: Mexico City, Mexico. destination: Esher, Surrey, UK |
Hey Juan-Luis,
Today was a museum day.
There was a while in uni when I wanted to be a museum curator, having to real idea what that meant, how, or why. We were at the National Museum of Anthropology this morning, a pretty old school nation-building, narrative-writing museum, and I found myself reminded of every other such museum I’ve ever visited. I’m not sure I know how to engage with stuff from before… say… the late 1800s?
That said, it was pretty cool to visit the Pyramids yesterday. We don’t have any permanent structures in Canada that old. I’m from the newest new world.
Jess
Another guest contribution from Jess, from her recent trip to Mexico City.
I’ve been to the museum she talks about here. It’s a modern, imposing structure. I became ‘museum tired’ when I visited, which is what I call the mental and physical exhaustion that comes from walking around a space at about 1 mph for 2 hours.
That said, I’m surprised she says she finds it hard to engage with stuff from before the late 1800s. There has been such an advance in the way stories are presented that lead us to the past, that relate the choices that people have had to make throughout history in such a way that they become real and not abstract events from the past.
I’ve never thought of Canada as a ‘young’ place, the mountains and skies feel more ancient than anything I know of in Europe.
Read more from Jess on twitter and on Scaffolding and Postcards.
As a postscript, I should say that I had trouble engaging with a lot of stuff at the National Museum of Anthropology. It was that old school quality, I think, that threw me, and that throws me in a lot of similar museums – spanning places like China where there is a specific type of government running the show at national museums, to Canada where everything is supposed to be relatively free and reflective, but still fits into that old school nation-building, narrative-writing mold. I've been to better, more engaging history/anthropology museums before – presenting things and/or people from different points in time+space – but I can't recall a good example at this time…
And as a disclaimer/to mess things up a little bit, I'm usually being halfway ironic when I refer to Canada (and the Americas) as the new world. Obviously this place is sooooooooooooooooooooooooo old, but the Canada I experience on a daily basis (and was taught in school) is very much a Canada born out of the Commonwealth, and grown out of twentieth century migration, somehow absent of the people who were here first, and therefore actually relatively “new.” Occasionally I get glimpses of the old, but I sometimes find myself feeling rather relieved that I am not burdened by a crazy long history the way some people(s) are, on an everyday basis.