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National Museum of the U.S. Navy

Griz882

Griz882

Frightening children with the Griz-O-Copter!
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I was kinda surprised by the location they picked. It’s a pretty small parcel of land jammed in between an old vacant warehouse and the Navy Yard fenceline. It’s currently a semi-vacant lot used for overflow parking for Nats games, not very big, off on a kind of side street. Certainly not enough room for anything on the scale of the Army or Marine museums. Nowhere for a parking lot for visitors, so they’d have to either park in pay garages and cross M St or make the longish walk from the Metro.
 
Uncle Fester said:
I was kinda surprised by the location they picked. It’s a pretty small parcel of land jammed in between an old vacant warehouse and the Navy Yard fenceline. It’s currently a semi-vacant lot used for overflow parking for Nats games, not very big, off on a kind of side street. Certainly not enough room for anything on the scale of the Army or Marine museums. Nowhere for a parking lot for visitors, so they’d have to either park in pay garages and cross M St or make the longish walk from the Metro.
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This is all true. The navy was desperate to be the first and only service museum in DC itself. They’d have done better somewhere else in my humble opinion. Besides, a naval museum without an actual ship is kind of a bummer.
 
Uncle Fester said:
I was kinda surprised by the location they picked. It’s a pretty small parcel of land jammed in between an old vacant warehouse and the Navy Yard fenceline. It’s currently a semi-vacant lot used for overflow parking for Nats games, not very big, off on a kind of side street. Certainly not enough room for anything on the scale of the Army or Marine museums. Nowhere for a parking lot for visitors, so they’d have to either park in pay garages and cross M St or make the longish walk from the Metro.
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The designs look tiny compared to other military museums.
 
Flash said:
The designs look tiny compared to other military museums.
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The new “thing” in the museum business is to go with fewer artifacts and more sensory, hands on stuff. In truth, the Army museum is much smaller than planned although it was designed for expansion space. The USMC museum is compact, but has that world-famous circular design to give it a feeling of more space. If it were me…I’d put an easily identifiable ship (WWII destroyer or similar) in a dry dock and build the museum around it so both are preserved. The visitor would start on an upper floor with each level representing an era in naval history - the warship is the icing on the cake…people love visiting ships.
 
Griz882 said:
This is all true. The navy was desperate to be the first and only service museum in DC itself. They’d have done better somewhere else in my humble opinion. Besides, a naval museum without an actual ship is kind of a bummer.
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Well, if they really wanted it to be in the District proper, there's Anacostia Park directly across the river, adjacent to JBAB. It's already Fed land (the Park Service runs it) and mostly just open space. Enough room for parking, or water taxis.

Jamming the museum into the space they picked is only going to move the 'meh' museum on the Navy Yard to somewhere more accessible to the public.
Griz882 said:
The new “thing” in the museum business is to go with fewer artifacts and more sensory, hands on stuff. In truth, the Army museum is much smaller than planned although it was designed for expansion space. The USMC museum is compact, but has that world-famous circular design to give it a feeling of more space. If it were me…I’d put an easily identifiable ship (WWII destroyer or similar) in a dry dock and build the museum around it so both are preserved. The visitor would start on an upper floor with each level representing an era in naval history - the warship is the icing on the cake…people love visiting ships.
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I was kind of underwhelmed by the Army museum at Belvoir, albeit I went right after it opened and maybe it's been filled out a bit since. In contrast to the Marine museum, particularly the "immersive" Korea and Vietnam sections (which are really very well done), the Army museum seemed more just "look at stuff in glass cases."
 
Uncle Fester said:
I was kind of underwhelmed by the Army museum at Belvoir, albeit I went right after it opened and maybe it's been filled out a bit since. In contrast to the Marine museum, particularly the "immersive" Korea and Vietnam sections (which are really very well done), the Army museum seemed more just "look at stuff in glass cases."
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Ouch! I helped design many of those exhibits. Indeed, the entire “Global War” gallery was my work. There is a little known secret about the design at NMUSA - each gallery is sized according to the population’s participation in each war. This is why WWII is the largest and Global War is the smallest. We decided to go with more personal touch screens rather than immersive like the Marines. If you are doing NMUSA “the right way” it would take you a full day to get the whole story. Really, it is intended that visitors will come back.

I also have a lot of me in some of those exhibits. If you go the the largest gallery called “Army & Society” (the one with the Wright Flyer and the early helicopter) and head over to the right hand wall you’ll find a NPS Park Ranger hat - that used to be mine! In the Civil War gallery you’ll find a camelback telegraph key that came from my “military crap” collection. In the Global War gallery there is a Bradley FV. I went down to Red River Army depot to find it in a lot of hundreds and yes, it is really the first one into Baghdad. In the back of that gallery is a reddish, checkered pattern saddle that I used in Afghanistan (but not with the famous “horse soldiers,” months later). Along the left wall is an Iraqi Border Guards flag that I brought home - traded the commander a bunch of MREs for that one!

It takes a lot of work to find the items, make a comprehensive story, and piece it together that makes sense. The teams that do this do it like a jigsaw puzzle. It took about 15 contractors and sub-contractors to get just the exhibits done. Amazingly, most of the “good stuff” is in private hands but once found most people are willing to donate it.
 
Griz882 said:
Ouch! I helped design many of those exhibits. Indeed, the entire “Global War” gallery was my work.…
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Well, certainly no offense intended or disrespect for the work you and others put into the museum. I didn’t mean to imply it was in any way a bad job of work, just a matter of taste.
 
Uncle Fester said:
Well, certainly no offense intended or disrespect for the work you and others put into the museum. I didn’t mean to imply it was in any way a bad job of work, just a matter of taste.
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No offense taken and I was only joking with the ouch. Like any museum design you have a small box (exhibit space) to fill. Some people like walls of guns, others like pictures and others like stories. No matter who did it they wouldn’t get it right for everyone.
 
Museums are hard. The audience has a huge gap in their knowledge of the subject. For me, I know the story. I'm interested in the uniqueness of the objects. Most don't know the subject, I get that. My problem with most museums these days is turning them into a children"s playground.
 
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