Museum Hopper

this week, i went to the henry ford museum on friday with my friend kate and her two little kids!  kate has a membership to the museum and the village.  the littlest guy managed to sleep just about the entire museum visit...her other son is 2 and just loved the museum. i had never quite realized what a big place the henry ford museum is.  while we were there, people were walking laps around the outside to get exercise.  we did manage to see most of it although perhaps not with the greatest detail.   we saw the cars, trains, planes, tractors, doll houses and even an oscar meyer weinermobile!   as you can imagine, this is a 2 year old dream day.  i thought the museum had a great mix of things that could be touched and what could not be touched.  the little guy obviously wanted to get in every car, but he did end up having enough things he could climb in, like an old diner, plane, trains and inside a tractor.  a surprise hit was the ...

happy holidays!  over the break, my boyfriend and i decided to go to detroit and check out the detroit science center .  if you can't tell the trend, my boyfriend likes the science, hands on museums.  we headed down there for an afternoon of fun. we got there around 2 and were able to park in the lot right outside the front of the museum.  this parking lot was a "drop the parking money in the box" type of lot, so be sure to have exact change ($5);  otherwise you will need to go into the museum to get it. so, we headed in and checked out the speed section, which had famous cars, boats, motor racing as well as celebratory plaques of famous and innovators in the fields.  we then walked further into the rest of the museum.  we were first struck that a few portions of it were closed for repairs or maybe renovations.  i liked the energy portion about fueling cars.  we then wandered through the health and body section, which was interesting....

at the end of finals, i went to the exhibit museum of natural history with my friend, daphne!  i remember going to this museum as a 2nd grader after we learned about the dinosaurs.    we had lots of fun.  it is a very "old school" museum although i do think bits and pieces are being updated.  daphne noticed that it had a lot of words/descriptions, much more than you see in the newer museums.  we saw dinosaurs, wolly mammoths and lots of different rocks and crystals. we thought it would be great for any families that had young children.  while we were there, they had a tour for children and the tour leader was great.  we felt like it could use a little face lift, but it was lots of fun for a quick (free) excursion! times visited: 1 time spent in museum: a little under 2 hours overall: B

this past friday, my boyfriend and i went to the ann arbor hands-on museum for a little outing!  we walked over there about an hour and some odd minutes before it closed.   i had been to the museum once before when i was in undergrad (why...i can't tell you).   it was smaller than jason thought it would be.  jason really liked the optics floor and i liked the " world around you " exhibit.  we played with lights, some digital media.  it was very hands-on (obviously).  they had some really interesting noise exhibits as well.  the gift shop seemed fantastic. i think we wished we had gotten there about 15 minutes sooner.  we were a little rushed near the end.  also, some of the exhibits were slightly broken or not working properly, which was disappointing.  overall though, we had more fun than we expected.  times visited: 2 time in museum: 1 1/4 hrs overall: B+

i recently found this book, 1001 Paintings You Must See Before You Die by Stephen Farthing.  it contains a list of paintings from pre-1400s to current 2000s screened by experts in the field.  i love it!    i have converted all of the paintings in the book into an excel as i start to track which ones i have seen!  i have currently viewed 241 out of 1001, so i am riding right around 24%.   take a peek at which ones are on the list !

i went to the ford presidential library last week after having gone for some reason when i went to michigan for undergrad. as a little background, president ford went to the university of michigan for undergrad majoring in economics.  he played center on the michigan football team and was also named to the all-american team in 1935.  the library is quite lovely up north.  it is not very large, but what exists is quite well done.  there is a section covering the first lady ford, president ford's university of michigan involvement and his career in michigan politics leading up to his presidential career.  the library also has a few of the presents president ford received during his presidency.  the negative: it was tiny.  also, i was literally the only person in museum besides the museum employees.  while i was there, i was obviously looking at the exhibits and they were standing around one of the cases.  i definitely was not going to ...

i went to the kelsey museum of archaeology today.  what a gem!  i was very pleasantly surprised and could not believe that i had never been there before!  it reminded me of a smaller scale british museum with perhaps a slightly lower caliber of items.  it also was purely focused on mediterranean items whereas the british museum does have asian and other areas as well.  when i was graduating undergrad, they were just starting a remodel on this museum, and it appears that the money was well spent!   i was impressed with the quality and variety of the items they had.  they had great descriptions of each item as well as nice overviews of each particular set of objects and their importance in the museum as a whole.  they had sections primarily on greece, egypt and rome.  i liked that they had a mixture of objects: bowls to funeral adornments to pieces of ancient columns.   i will definitely keep my eye on this museum to see if ...