Sunday, October 3, 2010

Air and Space Museum

Today I was fortunate enough to visit The Air and Space Museum, which was pretty great. The stark reality of the war exhibits brings into perspective the horror that war entails and is often overlooked in history books. I've read about wars, various destructive bombs, war casualties, etc. and while I respected what war entailed, it remained something discussed in books. However, at the museum today, while looking at the life-size fighter planes and the real bombs that were used in WWII, and reading all the excerpts, I got a morose feeling of how devastating war must be...and I do not even try to understand how horrific it truly is for all those involved as I feel that would be extremely ignorant of me to assume I could understand something I have not experienced. Having visited the National Holocaust Museum in the past and WWII museums in England, when I combined the imagery from all the exhibits together, I was given a sick feeling of the devastation that occurred, and all I could do was observe it from the outside and still not achieve any sense of what it must have been like to live in such an environment.
The new exhibit, Beyond, in the "space" portion of the museum was amazing as well. The "artist" had taken a variety of pictures and data of the planets and solar system and compiled them into awe-inspiring pictures that are visually fascinating and intriguing. The other exhibits were entertaining as well....although not as much as when I was younger. I regret that I've apparently reached that level of adult-hood where I can no longer be intrigued by displays and huge amounts of information. It is a pretty great museum though and I would like to go back before I leave.

C Caldwell

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