Post-Visit Activity: Paper, Paper Everywhere

One of my favorite parts of visiting a museum, beyond the art, is picking up all their pieces of paper: calendars, maps, brochures, and especially family guides. Is it any wonder that my favorite part of my career has been writing museum materials, be it curricula for teachers, family guides, program listings, or museum brochures? (If only I couldn've gotten my hands on my last museum's labels!) The Met is always wonderful inspiration, in this and other aspects of education, for they offer an educator's dream-come-true of printed materials. Yesterday, we came home with pamphlets about animals, dancers, armor, sketching, and the wonderful family map containing full-color poster with minute drawings of the collections.

That is probably the only piece of paper that won't end up in my files unused. It is a sad but well-known fact that visitors pick up all the materials at the information desk and either a). read them when they get home or b). never read them. Neither helps facilitate their visit, which means that they either a). don't need the help or b). don't want it. Even as a professional, I behave as a normal visitor, which is why my unpacked bag still contains clean copies of all the brochures I picked up.

Except that we devoured that family map. As I have mentioned, we spent a lot of time the night before our visit discussing the trip and the rules of the museum while looking at the map we printed off their website with the sarcophagus on the cover. The next day, as we were waiting for the program to start, I grabbed two in-house copies of the map, even though I had ours in my bag. Thus, I was surprised to see the poster inside. For 15 minutes, Bud and Sis oohed-and-aahed over the little pictures. "Mommy, I found the musical instruments!" and "Mama, where is that building inside a building?" I could point out where we would visit the arms and armor, where Sis would get to see her beloved baby Jesus (I know I keep mentioning this but, as a non-Christian UU, I am still fascinated by her obsession with Jesus. I won't have the heart to explain the true meaning of Easter--well, that is, if you aren't looking at Easter's pagan origins. Thank heavens she's also obsessed with bunnies and won't notice anything else), and look longingly at the 19th-century wing we wouldn't be visiting (once a Victorianist, always a Victorianist). This is a great map and the kids' response to it was exactly what the educators must have hoped: they became extremely enthusiastic about the museum, did some very concentrated looking and studying of the materials, and then let the map be their guide during our visit. The only downside: the museum doesn't sell a slightly larger version of the map in the Met Kids shop, where I went looking for it at the end of our visit. So, I did what any other educator would do--grabbed extra copies!