Cincinnati Museum Center

Just recently, my husband and I headed to the Cincinnati Museum Center to check out the Viking exhibit, Vikings: Beyond the Legend, before it left.

The museum center is in the old Cincinnati train station, a truly iconic Cincinnati building.  As of right now, it is heavily under construction.  The only parts of the museum that were open were the children's museum and this special exhibit.  

When we arrived, I said we had a Cincinnati Art Museum membership, which was supposed to get us a discount (almost half off our tickets).  The worker did not believe there was any discount with that, but had to be corrected by another employee.  I believe this has been in place for almost a year, so that's surprising.  She even made a comment that she had turned down someone before.  I was grateful for that as it basically halved the price of the tickets from $25 per person to ~$13.  

I did not find exhibit warranted a $25 price tag.  While enjoyable, it really just had a number of artifacts grouped by socio factors (e.g., how did they eat, what did they believe about life and death).  I had a hard time understanding the theme -- other than they pointed out that the vikings did not have horns on their helmets and that they were not necessarily more war-hungry than other areas of Europe at the time.  
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The exhibit did have a simulation that showed the resources required to create a viking war ship, which was quite interesting.  I also liked that it did emphasize that the ships were used for various purposes, and were built with varying levels of sophistication e.g., overseas warships versus ceremonial pleasure cruise boat.

The exhibit was quite comprehensive, but I did not find that it was necessarily a new angle or something that I had not seen before.

We are eager to check out the new exhibit coming soon though, Star Wars and the Power of the Costume.

Times visited: 1
Time spent in museum: 1.5 hr
Overall: B+

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