Impressions on Tenement Museum Trip

The visit to the tenement museum was enlightening. First, the actress was excellent. And then, there was the real image, a snapshot of how life for immigrants was then, projected through the tenement itself. I did not expect that the museum, as Thalia said in her post, has no exhibition at all but was actually a restored room with a role-playing interaction and an informative session beforehand. It was fun to be put in the shoes of an immigrant family, but sad at the same time, after realizing the incredible difficulties immigrants might have faced back then. Being an immigrant myself, I am relieved that things for me are much better than it used to be. The experience obtained in this visit was much more vivid that it have could been, were the museum made up of exhibitions instead. In fact, before the visit, I imagined myself bored at walking through some place with pictures of immigrants and some of their objects. To my surprise, it was a completely different exposition. Victoria’s life shocked me as much as the apartment itself, with its narrow and dirty-looking hallway and the claustrophobic impression of the room with 10 people in it.  I even felt for a moment that I was indeed talking to some real Victoria rather than to an actress, and imagined with realistic depictions her arduous life in that cramped room. I also felt uneasy about having to move to an outside place to take a shower, or not being able to shower everyday because of lack of money.  The only real problem with the museum, or I had rather say its shortcoming, is the limited interaction (shortness) and few things to see. Otherwise, it was ingenious what they offered.