Visiting a museum anthropologically

Today is 4 April, which is Children's Day in Taiwan. Coincidentally, there is a half-day team outing to visit Brighton museum instead of sitting in the classroom and debating something controversial.

Therefore, I felt a bit excited last night just like a child before going outdoor fun. 

This museum tour aims to examine whether it can represent local community, city history and culture. It sounds like a professional work, isn’t it? The museum offers a guide (a PhD student) to introduce current cross-cultural items and related information for us to rethink its meanings.

Why we have to look closely into these pieces with narratives on the wall? Because today, we are learning to be cultural anthropologists, we not only study people, but also inquire how these pieces are presented in the British local museum in the era of post-colonalism? 

Does all the selected collections display here fit into ‘political correctness’ in historical and cultural ways?

Have they been depicted in an unpolitical way without official discourses and can tell their own stories? 

To visit a local museum with critical questions is definitely a fresh experience, and has led us to view things in different angle.

For many children to say, museums are places for education, they ‘look at’ and ‘take notes’ from pieces displayed there, while when they grow up, they may ‘observe’ these pieces, ‘read’ narratives and then ‘interpret’ by their increasing knowledge. 

Therefore, no worries, we, sooner or later, will grow old to know.