A Tale of Two Museums

Working in the museums industry I go to a lot of museums, and I have to say that it is very rare I get blown away when visiting a new museum. Yet this happened to me on a recent trip to the US at both the National Museum of the Marine Corps (NMMC) in Quantico and the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C.

As a military museum enthusiast the NMMC was epic; both in scale (it had an impressive atrium for aircraft and large vehicles in the entrance) and on the money spent on it (the building cost $60 million, and $42 million has been spent on the exhibitions). The results are a modern feeling museum that successfully combines traditional museum object displays with immersive experiences and large audio visual presentations. It has a theatrical feel to all of it, but you still feel like you are at a museum. I was also treated to a behind the scenes tour by the curators who showed me their respective object collections.

The other museum that stood out for me on my trip was the National Museum of the American Indian. The whole museum experience had been connected to the subject matter. The building and landscaped gardens were designed to pay homage to the Native Americans and their respect of the environment and the universe. The café served five types of food based on indigenous food of the Americas. Many of the exhibitions were curated by community curators meaning that members of the different tribes could tell their own story. You couldn’t help but leave the museum without a greater understanding of the awareness of the Native American Indians have with the environment and the universe.

My trip was funded by a bursary from the Trevor Walden Trust (open to prospective Museum Associations Associates) and it allowed me to visit the NMMC and five other museums in Washington D.C. It was a brilliant opportunity to meet the team at the NMMC and to see how they interpret and look after a similar collection to ours.

Anna Cummins, Curator of Artefacts