Museums don't always have to be frilly buildings with girly tchotchkes in the gift shop. Recently, I had the opportunity to visit two of Puget Sound's rougher museums. Both the brand new Lemay - America's Car Museum and the recently relocated Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI) are industrial looking buildings filled with the kind of stuff that interests small boys. Yes, neither were my choice; however, both were entertaining.
Lemay - America's Car Museum is also sometimes referred to as the giant metal slug. The museum sits between downtown Tacoma and the Tacoma Dome. When we first visited Tacoma in 2010, the building was under construction. We had a lot of wild guesses as to what this long flat metal building next to the interstate was going to be. It looks a little like an upside-down sardine can on a pedestal. In reality, it is just a huge garage. The museum, which opened in the summer of 2012, houses more than 300 cars, trucks, and motorcycles most of which are from the first half of the twentieth century. Much to my delight, it was a romp through some of my favorite eras. There was a wide array of the earliest automobiles, sleek and stylish cars from the roaring twenties, behemoths of the fifties, and in good taste, very few cars from the sixties, seventies, and eighties. Stylish and cars just didn't go together in those decades. From a 1906 Cadillac to the 1994 Flintmobile, built for the Flintstone's movie, it was a feast of our country's gluttony for rolling autonomy.
The Museum of History and Industry was exactly how it sounds - a little boring. While they had many interactive exhibits, the topics - business, innovation, city planning - are not necessarily my interests. The new location, they just moved to a former Naval Armory on South Lake Union at the end of 2012, is rather nice. The entrance opens into a four story atrium. Right away there is a giant wall of dioramas about Washington that can be lit up one at a time by the patrons. They also have business building boards that look like air hockey tables and allow patrons to assemble tools for a business and see if that business would succeed. From a room about Boeing to a periscope to earthquakes to film in Seattle to the World's Fair to Microsoft, the museum is a hodgepodge, which is perhaps why I didn't love it. There seemed to be no topical organization or central focus for us to connect with as we roamed through the artifacts. The absolute BEST thing was the musical medley about the Seattle fire complete with light up artifacts. I haven't seen anything so amazingly hokey since the Salem Witch museum's rendition of the Salem Witch trials complete with lit up wax figurines in dioramas. All kidding aside, this was their best exhibit because it logically moved from the fire to how Seattle rebuilt. I also really liked the 3D map of the Puget Sound area that was set up to change from the natural area to the man-altered area. Probably, I set myself up for disappointment because somewhere I got the idea that the museum would have a real train, which it didn't. Although, for a museum full of topics I am not interested in, I was entertained for the better part of a day.
Lemay - America's Car Museum is also sometimes referred to as the giant metal slug. The museum sits between downtown Tacoma and the Tacoma Dome. When we first visited Tacoma in 2010, the building was under construction. We had a lot of wild guesses as to what this long flat metal building next to the interstate was going to be. It looks a little like an upside-down sardine can on a pedestal. In reality, it is just a huge garage. The museum, which opened in the summer of 2012, houses more than 300 cars, trucks, and motorcycles most of which are from the first half of the twentieth century. Much to my delight, it was a romp through some of my favorite eras. There was a wide array of the earliest automobiles, sleek and stylish cars from the roaring twenties, behemoths of the fifties, and in good taste, very few cars from the sixties, seventies, and eighties. Stylish and cars just didn't go together in those decades. From a 1906 Cadillac to the 1994 Flintmobile, built for the Flintstone's movie, it was a feast of our country's gluttony for rolling autonomy.
The Museum of History and Industry was exactly how it sounds - a little boring. While they had many interactive exhibits, the topics - business, innovation, city planning - are not necessarily my interests. The new location, they just moved to a former Naval Armory on South Lake Union at the end of 2012, is rather nice. The entrance opens into a four story atrium. Right away there is a giant wall of dioramas about Washington that can be lit up one at a time by the patrons. They also have business building boards that look like air hockey tables and allow patrons to assemble tools for a business and see if that business would succeed. From a room about Boeing to a periscope to earthquakes to film in Seattle to the World's Fair to Microsoft, the museum is a hodgepodge, which is perhaps why I didn't love it. There seemed to be no topical organization or central focus for us to connect with as we roamed through the artifacts. The absolute BEST thing was the musical medley about the Seattle fire complete with light up artifacts. I haven't seen anything so amazingly hokey since the Salem Witch museum's rendition of the Salem Witch trials complete with lit up wax figurines in dioramas. All kidding aside, this was their best exhibit because it logically moved from the fire to how Seattle rebuilt. I also really liked the 3D map of the Puget Sound area that was set up to change from the natural area to the man-altered area. Probably, I set myself up for disappointment because somewhere I got the idea that the museum would have a real train, which it didn't. Although, for a museum full of topics I am not interested in, I was entertained for the better part of a day.
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