Why are under 10s not allowed to comment? Are they not part of our community too who are also entitled to an interesting experience at our national museum?

Good point: my eldest loves the museum. If I ask where they want to go and rattle off a list of national institutions, she always wants to go to the museum…

The NMA is reputed to be seriously haunted….

I wouldn’t have expected that, since the building itself is scarcely 10 years old.

However, if you allow for it’s significant collection of sacred indigenous artefacts, and it’s long history as a Hospital and Hospice site before it was a Museum, then perhaps there is ample justification for a few ‘ghosts’. There would have been quite a few traumatic deaths associated with that location.

Pity that the overwhelming noise and flickering screens do give it the sensation of a mall with very few products. If it were quieter, one might spot something really interesting!

Agreed, the layout is also horrible for tourists. It’s actually pretty simple – just one unfurling corridor – but most first-time visitors don’t seem to realise that.

Don’t even get me started on the GOAD, or “Garden of Australian Dreams” >:(

I take my three kids (aged 4, 3 and 1) there regularly and they LOVE it! They know exactly where their favourite exhibits are – K-Space, the Little Red Riding Hood story and the make your own backyard touch screen. They also love the cubbies and the story tree.

The layout allows you to explore different parts of the museum and create your own path. A prescriptive path might take you past exhibits you are not interested in. There’s no way you can see everything in one day anyway, so the floor plan allows you to explore a different part of the museum each time.

Chronological order? – give me a break! What could be more boring than tramping through history in order? The Australian Journeys gallery (upstairs) has a range of objects from Rolf Harris’s wobbleboard to a convict jacket, all connected through the theme of migration. Each story is fascinating and has an interactive aspect to keep the kids’ attention.

If it was a ‘traditional’ museum, with plenty of artefacts behind glass and text to read, there would be a whole lot of kids bored to their brains and you miss out on engaging the interest of a whole generation of Australians. I’ll continue to take my kids there and look forward to their interest and attention spans growing so we can explore the museum in more depth. It’s free, it’s air-conditioned, it’s educational and it’s fun.

The NMA is reputed to be seriously haunted….

If the last example of my existance was on display next to a Hills Hoist I would haunt the place too.

Are you saying that if it was more staid, considered and sophisticated it would be “un-Australian”?

I think, in comparison with Te Papa, the NMA stands up quite well. It’s a different institution, and whereas Te Papa suffers slightly from a sense of ‘niceness’ (I don’t mean that in a good way), the NMA is rather more bold and brash and more prone to causing offence, which reflects fundamental cultural differences between New Zealanders and Australians.

The big museums I’ve visited in the UK and US are much more staid and solemn affairs. They’re more educational, but artificially try to separate all emotion from their displays.
I like the New Zealand and Australian examples better. They’re harder to understand, but so are our countries.

On that basis, I think the NMA serves its purpose extremely well. Brash, awkward, aggressive and a bit clumsy, it reflects our national character. So I think the Australian public’s love/hate relationship with the NMA is an excellent reflection of our cultural cringe that causes us to at once both love and hate our own identity.

Last time we were there a good chunk of the first bit of the first floor (ie just beyond Circa) was closed for a revamp and have not been back since.

I’d also like to petition management to bring back the original Circa!

I see you’re not a fan of capitalisation either. I shall contact the NMA and comission an interactive on grammar

to paraphrase Jebus, let he who is without typos cast the first stone

There is one excellent room tucked away in one of the basements. It’s several bays of orange metal floor-to-ceiling display cases absolutely chockas with aboriginal and islander artefacts (spears, boomerangs, masks etc). But you can only get into the damn thing if they forget to close the door after school groups have walked through it. And the lights go off every 10 minutes.

But my big whinge is… who is responsible for the floorplan? I say responsible because I don’t think anyone designed it. Every time we try to follow a path that sees us visit each exhibit – once. And every time we’ve had to backtrack at some point. What kind of sadist implements a museum without an optimal search path?