The Museum of Arts and Crafts has a bit of a misleading name in English. It houses items related to work trades and scientific discoveries across various fields of study, including: mathematics, chemistry, mechanics, construction, communication, transportation, and physics. It is interesting to note, the museum was originally established as a conservatory, where practice as well as learning of these different crafts could take place. Today the museum is divided into seven sections that showcase these scientific and technological developments along with the culture surrounding them - as information and tools became more publicly available and widespread.
I really appreciated the depth and diversity of material this museum had. There were plenty of side-by-side models and artifacts of inventions as they developed over time; Visitors could see art of problem solving in the development of things such as the marine clock and the bicycle. It was also cool that they included iconic pieces such as Pascal's calculators and Lavoisier's apparatus for the synthesis of water.
Knowing the museum's origin as a conservatory, it was cool to see a few interactive models (found mainly in the mechanics section: rotating systems, and some electrical motors). I wish they had added more of these throughout the museum to bring a little bit more life back into the building's heritage of workshop style learning.
Posted by AEbert
It was very interesting to see how the museum was divided. I found that it seemed to tell a story as you walked through it because of the ways the different crafts evolved over time and how that was displayed in the museum. Being able to see this development in inventions by seeing early models as well as more modern models really helped me to picture what steps were taken to improve each thing, as well as what may not have worked and was changed over time.
ReplyDeleteWhile the museum was great, I also agree that having a more interactive style would greatly improve the experience. A lot of the other museums we visited did a great job of this, most especially the lavazza museum. While it would be hard for a lot of their content, I think it could be greatly beneficial for them to look into.
ReplyDelete- Morgan
I thought it was very interesting how the museum was separated into so many different sections and covered so many different topics. I really liked how they had enough to get the point across about
ReplyDeletethe evolution of different areas but didn't focus too much on one topic over another where you felt you got too much, or too little, information.
I had completely forgotten about the maritime clock section! Relating to both our readings and likely what we would have seen at the maritime museum in genoa, accurate timepieces were hard to create, and seeing the progress as they were shrunk from the size of a piece of furniture to a small desktop or pocket-sized instrument was pretty cool. As with many things, with increased production comes increased improvements (or whatever the specific wording of the engineering department is, but I like my version more.)
ReplyDelete-William