City Museum of New York
Post 2 of 5
REWRITE
The tour portrayed New York’s timeline, as well as a focus on four integral parts of New York. The journey began with an analysis of Diversity, Money, Creativity, and Density. Diversity and density, in particular, are very applicable to the theme of our class as a whole. The timeline consisted of descriptions along with visuals portrayed each significant decade/period in New York’s history. Overall, a lot of the information we received could have been easily expressed in class; so the question must be asked: what is the point of going to a museum anyway?
Museums offer visual and physical aids to go along with information studied. The basic idea of a museum reminds me of a famous philosophical issue known as Mary’s room. Mary is a brilliant neuroscientist and knows everything there is to know about color vision. However, she spent her entire life living in a black and white world. One day, Mary escapes her monochrome room and sees color for the first time. Does she learn anything new? The point I am trying to make is that no matter the vastness of our conceptual knowledge of a topic or ability to formulate thought experiments, the real-world physical observation is critical to gain a better understanding. A museum is our gateway from the conception to reality.
The physical reality can then be connected to gain a further understanding of theory. While viewing the items on display, I could easily understand diversity just by the variety of the objects presented. From the Jewish readings, Asian art, European trinkets, and many more, all symbolize the range of cultures since the beginning of New York. Another example would be a model of the Empire State Building, which served as an excellent depiction of density. Once area became an issue, it became clear how expanding to another dimension could maximize the number of people in a given area.
All-in-all Museums connect theory to experiment. Sure, we could’ve directly read the information from a textbook, or watched a video clip about the topics, but nothing beats experiencing the real thing; just like the moment, Mary must have seen color for the first time.
Questions:
Why is creativity so synonymous with city life?
How does money and business relate to density?
