When dealing with the price of admission at museums there are a lot of things to be considered. The value of this experience is the most important aspect in my opinion. Will you be experiencing a top of the line, first class learning environment, or will you be walking through a run down piece of ancient history. A complete highly maintained museum environment is one that I would be willing to pay more for than one with broken exhibits or missing information.
In the case of the Milwaukee museums that we visited we experienced two very different environments. On one hand we went through the Milwaukee Public Museum. This mine as well have been a time capsule in it self. This museum has not been clearly renovated for quiet some time. There are a few newer exhibits that are poorly plopped in to this museum where they could find the space to fit them. The butterfly garden and the IMAX Theater are about the only modern looking aspects in this facility and everything else appeared to be very dated. The level of quality definitely faded as you moved up the stairs and the age of this museum really started to show. Information was displayed in a terrible manner and the types of information display were not cohesive in any manner. Maps were displayed in 3D, 2D, and in a variation of other forms somewhere in between. Typefaces were a mess as nothing seemed to be cohesive throughout the museum at all. The most disappointing thing is that some of the information seemed dated and in some cases has been removed for one reason or another and now stands incomplete.
This leads me over to the Discovery World museum at this point in time. I went there expecting a more interactive and up to date experience and that is surely what I got. Before I leave my last point of missing or disappearing information I will note that this was also the case in Discovery world. On a number of occasions the signs with the information about items on displays were completely missing. With that point set aside I hade a much more enjoyable experience at Discovery world. The exhibits were modern, and up to date. The information was relevant to modern history and the facility was new and felt more welcoming than MPM did. This would be the museum that I would choose hands down to take my children to someday when I have them. They will be lucky not to fall asleep in MPM. That is of course of they don’t close that building down in 10 years to remove all of the cobwebs and dust from their 60 year old displays. The design of this building was a bit confusing in the aspect that it was split into to sections that were not connected to each other, other than the main walk way and were very separated from one another. However the signage and exhibits had wonderful design and were much more legible and to the point that the ones at MPM. All of this leads me back to my point of the price of admission. I was able to get in free to MPM on the Monday that I went. I would gladly go to this museum for free anytime. When you are going to ask me to pay the same price of admission that I would pay at Discovery world you are going to loose me for sure, unless there is a reason I need to be at MPM. The only reason I was able to get in for free was the fact that I lived here in Milwaukee County.
In one more note about the reading. I think that the price of student admission should be free to little charge. This goes for all ages with proper identification. I find it surprising and yes, discriminating that they would only grant this admission to younger students in some countries. I am sure the same goes for various areas of the United States, but this needs to be fixed. The price of knowledge for those who truly seek it, deserve it at a price they can afford. A college student regardless of age is going to have finical restriction in most cases. Give the students a free admission once a year if anything. It would be a great service to any education system worldwide.
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