As the title of this blog may suggest, I enjoy a good museum.
What came as a surprise to even myself, however, was that I enjoy museums to the point of writing about them, reviewing them, and creating something of an informal ranking of them.
In particular, I enjoy open air museums. The interplay between the everyday lives of the people who once lived in the houses throughout history, and the wider social, economic, and political landscape of the time creates an in depth and fascinating, yet rarely considered, picture of the country in question.
Why museums? You may be wondering. In my view, museums, like bookshops, are a look into the narratives and mindsets prevalent within that society. They are a window into what a nation embraces, what it shies away from, and what it is ashamed of. For a visitor such as myself, I can only speculate about why museums are curated as they are, but with a little time and research, I can uncover whether there is any truth to what I have determined.
It’s a fantastic look into a place, into a time, into a people. It’s by no means comprehensive, and I wouldn’t ever suggest that it was – but for me, it’s a wonderful start. As such, with every museum that I recount, I will do my best to include some book recommendations that helped me begin to further my knowledge and understanding of the subjects I encountered.
It became my goal, a few years ago, to travel around, visiting museums and bookshops, learning about places and people, and reading further into all that I see and learn and experience.
I will not deny, however, there can be roadblocks to my journey. I recently encountered a particularly sizable one on a recent trip to Japan. There, I had the pleasure of visiting not one, but two open air museums in and around Tokyo. We spent two days in each museum: quite a sizeable percentage of a two week trip, but well worth the time spent. The challenge, however, was that I could neither read nor speak more than very basic Japanese. While the patrons of the museums were lovely, welcoming, and largely bilingual, and I had a wonderful friend with me who speaks the language fluently and was more than willing to undertake the arduous task of translating everything I was curious about, my conundrum still reappeared as soon as I set foot into the gift shops.
You see, I enjoy books. Books are the main way in which I learn, and I have long enjoyed collecting them, much to the despair of my bank account. The problem for me was this: all of these books, bar a very select few, were in Japanese. All of this knowledge, relevant to what I had just seen and explored, completely inaccessible to me. So what did I do? I bought the books anyway. My darling friend offered to translate them for me, which I truly appreciated. Of the three books we bought that day, she kept one with her to translate for me, and I returned home with the other two.
Now, I could, of course, unlock my phone, open any number of translation apps, and read the books in that way. I could do that, and it has been suggested to me on a number of occasions. However, and perhaps it’s my stubbornness, or my quiet fear that one day these apps will no longer be accessible and I will be left unable to gain more knowledge, but I refuse to do this.
The long and short of this all is, while I understand that a blog does best where a niche is found and cultivated, I will also be learning the various languages that I wish to read in, and will be documenting this as well. Life is rarely niche and cultivated! And the best discoveries happen when you allow yourself to wander.
I will be starting with Japanese due to the sheer volume of books I have purchased, but an earlier visit to the Zheng He Museum in Malacca (though not open air, one of my best experiences), written Chinese is a close contender for second. I am aware that I have chosen languages that are quite difficult to learn, so if anyone has any suggestions on how I should go about this, please do offer them! Ideas are always warmly welcomed.
I also like to take photos of museums (and various other things), so there might be some of that scattered about too.
Back to the blog! Congratulations for making it this far. This blog doesn’t truly have a target audience. I hope there’s something in here for you!
The Museum Nomad 