Museum Men

On November 29, a new series premiered on H2 (formerly the History Channel) called Museum Men. The show follows an exhibit design company in Florida called Creative Arts as they conceive, design and build museum exhibits. The first episode, which you can watch here, details their efforts to build an exhibit for a struggling St. Petersburg history museum around its 3000 year old mummy.

I was a little disappointed with the first episode in that it concentrated on fabricating replicas for the exhibit rather than anything regarding interpretation. However, it still illustrated the entire process of creating a museum exhibit from start to finish. The fact that the exhibit was about King Tut irked me a little bit as well. The mummy housed in the museum had nothing to do with him except that they are both ancient Egyptian mummies. All that is said about that in the episode is that "When the public thinks of mummies, they think of King Tut". I can't dispute that, but if the exhibit is on King Tut, then why put the actual mummy on display if she had nothing to do with him? Wouldn't it make more sense to do the exhibit specifically on her? Or, it could have been done on ancient Egyptian burial customs more generally. In the episode, it is briefly mentioned that the museum has fallen on hard times, so I can understand the desire to get visitors into the doors to raise money and that sometimes interpretation has to take a back seat to keeping the museum afloat.

That isn't to say that I disliked the show, however. I still found it entertaining and engaging. I understand that it's intended for a broad audience, not necessarily for public historians. The design team in the episode is shown talking with the museum director about what he wants the exhibit to do which I think is very true to what exhibit design is really like. They also do a terrific job of recreating King Tut's coffins and other objects with painstaking historical accuracy. This series is definitely worth checking out, especially for anyone interested in exhibit design.