Friday, April 22, 2011

Nature, Art, and Screaming Children


This morning, I decided to take a solo adventure downtown to see some museums.  The great thing about Brisbane is that many of their museums and galleries are free, except for special exhibits.  I toured the Queensland Museum, Art Gallery, and Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA), with a quick stop in the State Library as well.  All of those buildings are right next to each other, along the South bank of the Brisbane River – an easy walk from my bus stop.  Because it is Easter weekend, several of the museums were offering special programs for kids and families, so it was packed with people and the noise level was rather high.

Walking across the river, to get to the museums

My first stop was at the Queensland Museum.  It is mostly a natural history museum, with a huge collection of taxidermy specimens and fossils, though it also has displays on Aboriginal history and culture.  I really appreciated the conservation focus of many of the exhibits, and how well they made complex ecological concepts accessible to the general public.  There was an entire room about endangered species in Australia, and one about marine conservation.  The other nice thing was that the displays were written for all ages – they didn’t significantly “dumb down” any of the information directed at children, and they also included plenty of interesting and relevant material to keep the adults entertained.  The Easter holiday program at the museum had to do with dinosaurs, so there were digging sites for the kids as well as other activities, and you could watch staff at work excavating actual dinosaur bones from rock.

I next stopped at the Art Gallery, which is similar to other fine art galleries I have visited, though with a focus on Australian artists and history.  It was nice and quiet, since they weren’t offering any special programs for kids.

I really liked this water feature outside the Art Gallery
- It reminded me of dandelions

Finally, I visited the Gallery of Modern Art.  It was one of the coolest modern art galleries I have seen, with a definite focus on making art interactive and accessible to everyone.  They were also having special workshops/events for families (including free ice cream, from a solar powered machine - the colors of the ice cream were designed to look like colors from a sunset watercolor painting by a particular artist).  This was probably the loudest of the three museums, but I really enjoyed it anyway.  There are definitely still art pieces reminiscent of the classic “blobs on a canvas” style, but most of the art is either interactive or designed to make you think.

There was an entire wall covered with these ribbons.  Each of them has a different wish printed on it, everything from world peace to a better night's sleep to wanting a tail.  You could take one, and tie it on your wrist; supposedly when it fell off, your wish would come true.  In return, you had to leave a different wish written on paper, rolled up, and stuck into one of the holes in the wall. 


 A massive table, where you could build cities out of lego-like blocks.


A 3-story slide, in the foyer

 There was a fair amount of art that was intended to make a statement on consumerism, or human interactions with the planet.  This is a walk-in supermarket, about the size of a gas station store, that looks normal - until you figure out that everything on the shelves is empty packaging.

There was a huge arch made out of nested cardboard boxes. 

A massive, ceiling-to-floor display made entirely out of plastic bags. 

Part of a display of "birds nests," all made out of shredded money.  A statement on the economic importance of our ecosystems, perhaps? 

A room, filled to perhaps 6 feet deep with balloons.  There are people in there; it is essentially like a ball pit, only cooler. 

Top view of the lego-city-building table.  Fun for adults & kids alike!

This was a performance by an "iPhone orchestra."  They played song medleys, using 'pianos' and other 'instruments' on their iPhones, broadcasting it through a speaker system.

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