Art museums differ from history and science museums in the way their collections are exhibited in many ways. Space is a major factor for all three types of museums. History and science museums have items in their collection that take up a lot of space. For example, the California State Railroad Museum has enormous items in their collection that take up a lot of space. One Locomotive takes up about as much space as half of the whole bottom floor at the Crocker Art Museum. However the Crocker Art Museum manages to get numerous paintings in the same amount of space as the one locomotive. I know that using a train as an example is extreme because of the sheer size, but it is an effective example. So space becomes a major problem. Art museums don't need a lot of space and railroad museums do. Another example, The Discovery Museum seemed about the same size as the Crocker Art Museum, but it still housed more artifacts than did The Crocker. Each exhibit in the Discovery Museum had numerous artifacts in a small space. While the Crocker had a few paintings on each wall and each category of paintings were separated in different rooms. On one wall there might have been ten paintings, while in one exhibit at the Discovery Museum there might be 50 artifacts in a 10 by 10 space. I also would like to point out that Art museums differ also in the fact that the paintings are not three dimensional, where a history or science museum has exhibits that are three dimensional. Art museums are more open inside than a history or science museum, so there is more room to move around and in some museums like the Crocker or the Nevada Museum of Art there are places to sit down and reflect on the paintings. Some history and science museums have this but not to the extent that art museums do. Another important difference is the way the museums flow. In an art museum the art can be displayed all together with different styles on the same wall and I think that it would flow nicely. I like the Crocker art museum for my example. On the second floor of the museum there is a European collection. In that collection there are pictures of Romans next to pictures of mountains in the United States. To me that shouldn't flow, but it was pulled off fantastically. Now in the Discovery museum, exhibits were very out of place and were not in chronological order so the exhibits didn't flow very well. This is a problem they are trying to fix because all of the exhibits had been moved around in the past and
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by Josh Owens
Art museums differ from history and science museums in the way their collections are exhibited in many ways. Space is a
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