After an amusement park yesterday, today we went a-museum-ing instead - visiting three in total. Firstly was Kiasma - Museum of Contemporary Art, which is housed in a beautiful minimalistic and grand building, made out of concrete, glass and steel - as you would expect for such a place. The second was Paradox Museum, which is an interactive museum aimed at children and is filled with tricks for the eyes and patterns. And lastly, we dropped by the Museum of Natural History, which we have visited a couple years ago, so it was a good refresher.
For me, the contemporary art was the best experience, but a lot of the art on display was not really of my preference. The building though, well, I could live in that place, with white walls, curved lines and straight angles, glass and steel and immensely high ceilings.
It would make a nice summer house.
The problem I have with some of the newer contemporary art, is that it looks more like a high school kid with little life experience is trying to be profound. It isn't that it was all bad, but a lot of it was just a little immature in some way. It seems that for art to really have depth to it, a person has to have lived a life, or it just comes across as run of the mill and childish.
Paradox was recommended to us by people with kids, and Smallsteps did enjoy a lot of it, but it was a bit gimmicky in some way and it didn't really challenge the mind too much. Of course, it was for kids, however considering the price to visit for what was about an hour worth of distraction, I personally don't think it was worth it. But, at least it was colourful and there were some photo opportunities to capture something a little bit different.
It was good to try things and also for Smallsteps to work out how they were creating some of the illusions, but otherwise I don't know - it was a bit underwhelming. I think they have them in other countries too, so maybe they are like a chain looking to capture the tourist dollar - and the class science trip market.
And the natural history museum is pretty small in Helsinki and doesn't house much, but it didn't matter today as we only had around 30 minutes to run through. Luckily, we have been before, but they have summer opening times and it closes a bit earlier than we expected. Still, we got to see enough and spend the last bit of our mini trip doing something still interesting for us all.
The only thing I was disappointed with was that their new exhibition which has been advertised and will be in place for a year, is literally a collection of photographs of old trees. I think they could have done a bit more than that for it - even if some of the photos were cool.
And this poor walrus has a sad story. A few years ago it wandered into Finnish waters and is the first sighting of one ever. However, the fellow was ill and malnourished, and while they were transporting it to a zoo hospital, he unfortunately died. Well, at least he lives on in memory - and taxidermy.
I like museums, and I love galleries. I am not much of a scientist nor an artist, but there is always something interesting to see, do, or be inspired by and hopefully it is impactful enough to drive a new action, or even occasionally a change in behaviour. I think kids should spend more time in these kinds of places, without them being geared toward having fun. However, I also think that parents should ensure that their children are respectful of the place, and the other patrons - so many just let their kids run wild, as if they are in an amusement park.
It is okay to be quiet sometimes.
Taraz
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