museums

welcome to introspection ft. harsehaj! ⭐️ i’m harsehaj, a 19 y/o always up to something in social good x tech.

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btw, feel free to reply with topic ideas you want me to write about for future posts.

onto today’s topic: museums 🖼️ 

i’m not a huge museum person. i’m the type that will walk right through galleries and just take a second glance at something if it looks interesting. architectural focuses are more fascinating to me — the type where the museum’s building itself is the exhibit, rather than artifacts on display in glass cases.

as much as i want to be, i’m just not inclined towards artistic interpretation or history which are both significant for the museum experience. in a lot of the museums i’ve been to, it also just feels like information overload without a cohesive narrative guiding the whole experience while walking through the museum. maybe there is a specific theme or historical event at the root, but i’m still just receiving bits and pieces of information or art strewn randomly. at least, that’s what it always feels like to me.

today, i immersed myself in the history of hiroshima, the japanese city destroyed by an atomic bomb in 1945. i went on a walk through the shukkei-en garden, hiroshima castle, peace memorial park, and finally found myself in front of the peace memorial museum. 🕊️ 

i wasn’t particularly eager to enter, but i felt this responsibility to educate myself and learn the history of the city that i’ve had the privilege of enjoying great food, company and views. i’m glad i decided to go to the museum despite my initial hesitancy — this was the first time i was engaged throughout an exhibit and actually read the descriptions for each photograph and artifact on display.

a narrative was crafted through the museum. the beginnings of war and japan’s involvement, the nuclear bomb’s development, 8:15am on august 6th in 1945, the victims and their stories, the aftermath and dealing with radiation, and the movements towards abolishing nuclear weapons. each key point filled with stories of children, families, and artwork that served the build an emotional connection to the catastrophe.

photographs, artifacts, testimonials and artwork combined to create a narrative that successfully conveyed the scale of devastation and catastrophe experienced in hiroshima. i wasn’t just being shown relics from the hiroshima bombing, i was experiencing and feeling it. ❤️‍🩹

this museum proved to be one of the few times i’ve actually been able to connect with an exhibit and a historical event. i was impressed and found myself wanting to learn more.

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