Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Museum Post


During this semester, my boyfriend and I attended the city museum.  Actually, it was a really fun time. The city museum is a museum that is created largely with repurposed architectural and industrial objects. Upon arriving, we paid for our tickets for the inside as well as the roof. The experience is almost indescribable. It was like a giant adult playground/ maze. It was a jungle gym on steroids. The inside was filled with a fake “jungle” scene where you were able to go under the ground and climb up into the trees and even the tree trunks. Upstairs, there was a circus room with kids doing trapezes.  There were ginormous slides; it felt like I was a giant child in a giant playground. After Chad and I became bored, we decided to go to the roof to see the new obstacles. There was a school bus that was placed so it looked like it was falling off the roof, you could walk in the bus and look down. There was a pond with stepping-stones that you could hop on from one to the other. There was a gigantic slide that you could walk up by pulling yourself up with a rope, and then slide down. There was also this giant metal, ladder, tunnel contraption you could climb to the very top in. At the very top was a spectacular view overlooking Saint Louis. At first thought, I decided that there was no way this could possible relate to my women’s studies class, but then it dawned on me that the museum was absolutely not accessible for people in wheel chairs. People with this disability in particular, sure they could get from floor to floor with the elevator but they couldn’t enjoy any of the attractions other than looking. The secret passageways that led to the underground or the maze weren’t wide enough to allow a wheel chair through. The roof wasn’t any better. There wasn’t a wheel chair ramp to get into the bus, and there wasn’t a way for someone in a wheel chair to get the very top to look at the beautiful view. We’ve talked in class about how society makes people with disabilities feel disabled because society doesn’t adjust, and the city museum seems to be a perfect example. They should make the museum more accessible to the best of their ability.  I think they could do this by widening the walkway in the maze, and also adding a ramp to the school bus. They could also make a ramp that lets a person get to the top of the roof. It isn’t fair that people who might be handicapped wont be able to experience the City Museum the way they might want to!

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