The Little World

Go to your local museum – it doesn’t matter what type you choose; art, science, technology, cars, planes, boats, dolls. If you’ve got an interest, go spark it at the museum.

While you are oohing and ahhing at the exhibits, look about you at the facilities. The architecture of a museum can be as interesting as the things it contains. I know, I go with pleasure to museums in every place I visit, and have found some eye-opening and mind-opening exhibits in their aisles.

Of course there can be duds. And traps. I remember a shoe museum in an English town that was touted by all the guide books and that cost me an hour’s diversion on a busy holiday weekend. My wife and daughter may have enjoyed it, but the only thing I got out of it was me. And another time saw a visit to a Swedish glass museum brought to a horrifying halt when I pressed a button on the wall that said ” Press “. Out rolled a giant screen and a half-hour intense video presentation about the history of the sand mines where they get the material for Orrefors glass. It was in Swedish and I don’t speak the language, but with everyone in the place staring me down, I stood there for the half hour and looked at sand mines.

But I digress. I am making a museum to house my growing collection of model aircraft. And it has been the ideal way to organise things:

a. As it is my own museum, I get to decide what goes in there. As most real air museums have an eclectic mixture of exhibits, so can I.

b. I can have extra displays of accessories and other goods quite logically – real museums are desperate to fill their halls.

c. Visual can triumph over all. I can make my airplane models in pristine form, rather than having to weather them and mar their appearance. Or I can make dirty wrecks if I want to – real museums have a mixture of the two.

d. Out-of-the-box is quite acceptable. Also bare cockpits and closed doors.

e. I can have refreshment bars, offices, and toilets. Real museums do.

f. I can change exhibits – putting extra planes and exhibits up into regular bookcase shelves while I rotate the contents down onto the museum itself. To this end, each floor of the museum – there are eight of them – has top access and side windows to allow people to view the contents.

g. The museum buildings are dust-resistant and do not encourage awkward finger poking from viewers.

H. I can take museum pictures without having to get permission from the management. And then sell postcards of the place.

Best of all – I am not beholden to the state government for money for my museum. That means I do not need to solicit funds from anyone except my family at Christmas and birthday time.