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| - The museum tries hard to stay relevant, but it seems like they do this through their special exhibits only. Little effort has been made to change the museum in the past decade. In fact, most of it still looks as it did thirty years ago - with the one major change being the dinosaur exhibit.
Although the dinosaurs now look more professionally displayed, they also look very sterile in their great white room, rather than in dioramas that showed how they might have interacted.
It's also disappointing that so much of the display is merely replicas, while the actual bones are either off site, or in storage.
There is a small kids area, but it is so cramped that it doesn't offer much room to explore. That said, it can be fun to put your child in a dinosaur tail and watch them wander around. So fun, in fact, that you might want to buy one in the gift shop. Of course, rather than offering dinosaur tails in the gift shop, they - instead - sell $4000 suits of armour, or $2000 rings. Just what everyone wants on a day out with the family.
The museum doesn't seem to know what it wants to be, who its target audience should be, or how to engage the general population of the city. It gets points for trying, but I'd like to see it try harder - emulate museums that feel engaging and fresh - and focus less on seeming desirable to those who make six figures, and focus more on those who could actually use the museum to enhance their own experiences.
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