Living In USA

If your idea of a museum is a dusty row of glass cases or rooms full of badly lit oil paintings, try going to some of the museums in U.S. cities and towns. The art of display itself has become highly developed in this country, so that museums have come alive to an extraordinary degree in recent years.

In addition to many fine art museums, look also for natural history or science museums. Children's museums are sprouting up all over the country and usually offer a wide range of fascinating, "hands-on" exhibits. Photographic exhibits are often a particularly good way to understand the social concerns of a country. Don't miss the many small museums of contemporary crafts, African American history, Native American history, musical instruments, or coins. While at the museum you can often join a group tour or rent a small tape-recorded guide, which will add much to your understanding (rental fees are generally modest). Sometimes they are available in several languages. Those going to Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, or San Francisco should plan to spend considerable time at the particularly fine museums in these cities.

Places like Williamsburg, Virginia, Dearborn, Michigan, and Sturbridge Village, Massachusetts, are whole villages, reconstructed as living museums to depict the life of our early settlers. At most times of the year there are live demonstrations of many old crafts, such as candle making, quilting, or the shoeing of horses. There are waterfront museums at Mystic, Connecticut, and the seaports of New York and Baltimore, where one may have the opportunity to board old sailing vessels. The old Spanish missions in California trace the history of Spanish settlements in southwestern United States. Smaller cities almost always have some sort of museum depicting the history of the area; Palm Springs, California, and Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona, for example, have desert museums.