Museum Etiquette 101

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to go view the Bodies Exhibit at the Maryland Science Center, in Baltimore. The exhibit was in DC last year and at the time, I was "unaware" of what the exhibit entailed, exactly, and couldn't find the time to go. When I found out that it was in Baltimore until Labor Day, I wanted to seize the chance to go up and check it out for myself.

For those of you that are on the fence about going to see the Bodies Exhibit - get off that fence and go - it was a fascinating experience and I did not toss my cookies...so it was all good.

As my friend and I were walking through the exhibit, we were reading up about all the different parts of your body as well as looking at the dissected bodies and how everything works together for a person. There was a lot of reading but not so much so that you had to skip over anything.

For the most part, we were able to get through the exhibit without issue - we read the fact boards, we looked at the bodies and we perused the display cases of organs. I had a few minor complaints that, if removed, could have made my experience more enjoyable - such as removing those people with body odor (there were a couple) and kids that didn't give a rat's ass about what they were looking at but instead chose to run around the space and be disruptive. I guess there's really nothing much you can do about these things - after all, they are paying customers too.

But the thing that really fried my cheese were those people that felt the need to read all the stuff aloud. There are two groups that come to mind when I think about this - one was a couple of mothers with their teenage children. Their kids CLEARLY were not interested or remotely fascinated by anything they were seeing. What makes them think that reading the information aloud to their kids would make them any more interested? It didn't...in fact, it only annoyed me more.

The other group was a family of two parents, their two kids and a set of grandparents. Any time they came into a section of the exhibit that I was in, I felt like the dueling banjos were going off in my head. They had thick 'southern' accents and they just had to comment about every little thing.
'Earl - look at this one...just like the sign said, he has six of 'em on each.'
'Grampy - I think this one was a smoker....her lungs are gray.'

I thought it was understood, in any type of museum or exhibit (for adults) that it was proper etiquette to use library voices when discussing displays or reading information....I know that I've been in museums where people have gotten shushed for being too loud. It's just what's done....

Seriously - had I wanted someone to read to me or provide a commentary, I would have paid extra for the audio equipment at the beginning of the exhibit.... At some points of the exhibit, I felt like it was me and my friend trying to play 'keep away,' or more like 'get away,' from these two groups. Thank goodness for speed reading classes (thanks, Mom) - so I could read, look and get the heck out of there.