I visited the Discovery Cube and you will be using Lindauer’s museum review to make a review of a hands-on museum. The Cube is a hands-on museum. According to the Cube’s website, their mission is to “inspire and educate young minds through engaging science-based programs and indicates to manufacture a meaningful affect the communities [they] serve. inch
The museum entrance is located on the black cube street level. This makes the museum feel less grand. Although from the the interstate, you can see a giant black cube which is a signature feature of the museum. That brings an awareness of shock to visitors. There is a blocked off path beginning from the parking lot reaching the entrance of the building. This is to some extent due to ongoing construction. It made it easy to find the museum entrance from the parking lot and also kept pedestrians, especially children, safe from vehicles.
The line and abundant families reminded me of an amusement park. I think this idea resonated with the visitors as well. Children seemed very excited to go inside and play with the indicates. I was surprised to see that unlike many other art and cultural museums, there were no fabulous gardens beyond the museum or plaques with contributor names etched. The exterior walls were painted a variety of rainbow colors. This further indicates that the museum might be more inviting to children and the colors also bring an awareness of excitement to visitors.
Upon entering the museum, I was slightly disoriented. I was not inside the main exhibit corridor but had to head up a flight of stairs to go inside again due to construction. The lighting inside the museum was poor. There was much noise all around and children excitedly running, playing, jumping, talking, and pressing buttons. The main exhibit corridor layout was a large sq room in the center of the building.
It was a little cluttered. There were indicates within feet of each other. They all have also been showing different types of scientific phenomena but there have also been little sense to how they were organized. A floor was carpeted perhaps for children’s safety. It gave an awareness of comfort as opposed to the typical stone or wood floors of other museums.
The first display I encountered was a seismograph. There was a machine to record the effectiveness of vibrations and a screen on which to see the same results. It was an interactive display. You must stand in front of the screen and jump in order to change the displayed line. Next to the exhibit was a plaque explaining the phenomenon and machine. Many of the other plaques in the museum were formatted the same way.
There were three articles of text in 18pt font. It was rather small. The reading level was about sixth or seventh grade, an easy task to understand. The articles explained what was happening and why. There again have also been inconsistency and lack of organization within the museum because some of the text boxes were only in English whereas sometimes these were in English and Spanish. It is probably useful to residents in your neighborhood who are Hispanic but not all indicates had a translation.