60 Before 60 Project: #12 - Visit a Museum

The last time I went to a museum was years ago. We were visiting New York City and went to the Museum of Natural History. I remember my kids being so excited as they wandered around the building taking in all the exhibits and remembering the locations of some the movie scenes from A Night at the Museum.

Similar to libraries, we are surrounded by museums. In the United States there are 35,000 museums and 2,700 museums in Canada.

But museums have been especially hard hit during the pandemic. As they closed their doors or reduced admittance, staff were laid off, their retail stores sales dropped and fund raising events were cancelled.

It’s been so difficult that the United Nations is pleading for museums to not be overlooked in recovery plans. They shared;

“…(the pandemic) resulted in a 70 per cent drop in attendance on average, and a 40 to 60 per cent decline in revenue compared to 2019”.

They go on to share the important role that museums play to “…preserve heritage for future generations, promote lifelong learning, provide equal access to culture and spread the values on which humanity is based”.

With all of this in mind, I thought going to a museum would be a good experience for my 60 Before 60 Project.

The museum that I chose to visit was The Holocaust Museum. I had studied the holocaust in high school but felt that now, as an adult, it was time for me to be reminded of this time in history and to remember.

To say this visit was a sobering experience would be an understatement.

The museum tour started with interviews of some of the Jewish survivors as they described their everyday lives before the start of the holocaust. I then learned how democracy was manipulated and taken over by a dictatorship. I was shown how propaganda fueled and grew the population’s fears and thoughts and reshaped the policies of a nation. I was then exposed to the results that hatred can create culminating in the loss of an estimated 6 million lives.

But through all this horror, I also discovered human resilience and hope.

Many of the interviews I watched of survivors spoke of their continued resiliency and will to live along with their constant hope and belief that eventually this would end.

I left the Holocaust Museum emotionally exhausted.

But I imagine that’s what this experience was meant to do. It was created to document and share this time in history and to teach us how it could possibly happen again if we don’t learn the lessons from the past.

I think this is the significant value that museums bring.

Museums are there to collect, store, preserve and share our culture, experiences and heritage. They act as the reminders of our past, are the collectors of our present and help us to make better decisions for our future.

My 60 Before 60 Lesson: We can’t expect to have a better future if we don’t learn the lessons from our past

Interested in seeing all my 60 Before 60 experiences? Click here.