London: “Sneakers Unboxed” and Margaret Calvert @ the Design Museum

That’s right, I’m back to visiting museums again! Unfortunately, my first time in a museum as a visitor since December was a bit of a letdown, but it was my own fault for choosing the exhibition poorly. I pre-booked “Sneakers Unboxed: Studio to Street” way back in March in hopes that museums would actually be able to open in May, and there weren’t a lot of exhibitions available for booking that far in advance, so I chose something that I would have probably not bothered with otherwise.

 

When the day in May finally arrived, we turned up to the Design Museum at the appointed time and were let straight into the museum after scanning the Test and Trace QR code. The Design Museum gives you a bit more freedom than some other museums in that once you’re in, you’re in, and you’re welcome to look at the free exhibitions as well without booking a separate ticket (unlike at the British Museum, for example). Admission to Sneakers is normally £12.50, but we only paid £6 with Art Pass. The exhibition is located in the basement exhibition gallery where we’ve seen quite a few other things here, and we were the only people in the first room when we walked in; though we were quickly joined by others, it was definitely much less crowded than other exhibitions I’ve been to recently, possibly because we were there on a Monday afternoon.

    

When I booked tickets, I was anticipating that the exhibition would be about the history of sneakers, with maybe some fashion elements thrown in, but it ended up being more like a shrine to the cult of expensive kicks. Honestly, I’m not even super into sneakers – I wear a lot of dresses and jumpsuits and things, so I tend to opt for slightly dressier shoes most of the time, and sandals 100% of the time as soon as it’s warm enough (I hate socks), so I only own a few pairs of sneakers that I wear regularly, which are black Vans slip-ons (I’m wearing them in the photo at the start of this post, but I was still breaking them in and they tore up the backs of my heels so bad that blood started gushing out and pooling in the bottom of my shoes on the way to the museum. Fun!), black Converse high-tops, and black Ash high-tops, which are like a more comfortable version of Converse with buckles instead of laces – so I am probably too boring sneaker-wise to have been the target audience. This was more for the Air Jordan/other overpriced sneakers crowd. Most of the shoes here were the ugliest things I’ve ever seen in my life, especially those white ones, above left, with the giant gross treads. They seriously remind me of the bottom of a horseshoe crab or something else disgusting.

  

Because most of the signage just consisted of a label under each pair of sneakers with their name and date of production, we ended up going through this pretty quickly. The most interesting parts were the section on Converse, because I liked looking at all the old advertising posters and the early models of the shoes from the 1910s and ’20s, and a short video at the end about the evolution of sneaker shapes, which was the only bit of the exhibition with the history I was looking for (and I think the video was part of an advert for a sneaker brand, rather than something the Design Museum had created). There was also a small section about the sustainability of the materials used in sneaker production, and some great photos of various subcultures that placed an emphasis on specific types of sneakers, like hip-hop culture in the 1980s, and intriguingly, a Latin American subculture where teenagers wear clothing featuring religious iconography and elaborately decorated Converse. I would have loved to learn more about these subcultures, particularly the latter group, but I forgot to take a picture of the sign with their name, and Google has gotten me nowhere (I’m not even sure which country these teens are from – I thought it was Mexico, but I could be wrong). The rest of it was decidedly meh, and I was glad we only paid £6. If they had spent more time focusing on the evolution of fashion and the development of the aforementioned subcultures, rather than just displaying loads and loads of sneakers, I think this exhibition could have had some real potential, but as it is, unless you’re really into sneaker collecting, I’d give this a miss. 1.5/5.

 

However, the trip wasn’t a total loss (it wouldn’t have been a total loss anyway, because it gave me an excuse to go to High Street Ken and get reunited with two of my loves – Ben’s Cookies, and chocolate chip muffins from Whole Foods – after an absence of more than a year), because the museum also had a free temporary exhibition on typography, specifically the work of the designer Margaret Calvert, who developed some of the most iconic signs and typefaces in Britain, including a new font for National Rail, the pictograms for British road signs that have been in use since the 1960s, and the typefaces for British airports, British Rail, and the gov.uk website. It’s pretty crazy to think that one person designed so many fonts, especially a woman who started her career in mid-century Britain, and I was completely fascinated by this exhibition. It detailed Calvert’s design process, which involves hand-drawing so she can have more control of design; her desk space, with many quirky signs; and the research that goes into the design process to determine how big fonts have to be, whether they should be all upper case or if upper case and lower case letters should be used, and where signs should be positioned in a train station or airport.

  

I honestly wish this could have been the main special exhibition instead of Sneakers so it could have had a larger space devoted to it and we could have learned even more, because words and fonts are so much more my jam than elaborate sneakers, but I’m glad it was here at all so we could learn about Margaret Calvert (who is still alive – she starred in a short video in the exhibition). Definitely recommend seeing this – it runs until August, and I think you can book a free ticket to see this and the small temporary display on artificial intelligence without having to pay to see Sneakers, which I would advise doing if your footwear preferences are the same as mine.

 

London: “Moving to Mars” @ the Design Museum

You won’t find me climbing aboard a rocket to Mars any time soon, but I did recently go to see “Moving to Mars” at the Design Museum, which runs until February 2020. Because it was at the Design Museum, the primary focus was of course the design of items that could be used to travel to Mars, live on Mars, etc, but there were plenty of science aspects to this exhibition as well. Admission was £7.25 using the National Art Pass, but it is normally an expensive £14.50 on weekdays, and £16.30 on weekends(!) so definitely aim to get some kind of a discount (National Rail 2 for 1s work at most London museums)!

 

The first gallery was about the relationship between humans and Mars throughout history from Galileo on up to the present. It had lots of old astronomical charts I didn’t really understand, some Mars Rover prototypes, and the obligatory orrery or two.

 

My favourite part was the wall of film poster and scifi books about Mars, including a fair few alien ones. I have a bit of a soft spot for Ray Bradbury because he loved Halloween as much as I do, and I love campy ’60s movie posters, though I often find the movies themselves quite boring.

 

The exhibition description mentioned how interactive and immersive “Moving to Mars” was, and though I didn’t find it particularly so overall, I suppose the next area was. It contained a large screen showing footage of the surface of Mars with a voiceover describing the Martian environment, where you were invited to remove your shoes and step on a mat that was apparently meant to resemble the surface of Mars. Because I wasn’t wearing socks (with high-tops, yes, I’m gross), I didn’t really want to take my shoes off and expose everyone to my horrible cheese Dorito-smelling feet, but Marcus tried it and said it just felt like a gym mat. I did climb inside the rocket ship in the gallery after this though, even though it was probably meant for children.

 

This next gallery was about how the first rockets used in space flight were designed, which segued into spacesuits and equipment that had been used on the International Space Station. The thing in the middle that looks like a trampoline is actually a communal dining table with foot straps and rails to lean against to hold yourself in place. Despite the strict hierarchical system that existed on ships during voyages of exploration (historically the closest thing mankind has done to prolonged space flight), current thoughts about life in space emphasise the need for everyone to be on an equal footing (which makes sense!), hence the round table so no one can be seated at its head.

 

I enjoyed looking at all the space suit designs (the one that looks like it has blood circulating through it is actually filled with water pipes to regulate the astronaut’s body temperature) and trying out some of the prototypes, like space gloves that feature the smells of home. The glove maker had chosen to use two of her favourite smells, which were fresh grass and the smell of her horse. The grass one was fine, but the horse would certainly not be my choice!

 

The largest gallery was devoted to what life on Mars might actually look like, and included miniature mock-ups of Martian homes (depressingly futuristic, and designed to minimise exposure to solar radiation), everyday space clothes (ugly, and made of futuristic fabrics), and the excellent diagram of how the technology behind a Martian home would work, with all waste products being recycled as much as possible, including the .128kg of feces and 1L of gasses that a human apparently produces in a day. This made me laugh.

 

There was also a life-sized version of a Martian living room where you could sit on the 3D printed furniture (at least, I assume you could sit on the furniture, as there was no sign saying you couldn’t. Obviously I did anyway). The couch was more comfortable than it looked, though there was a weird divot for the butt that I could imagine getting uncomfortable after a while. Needless to say, I don’t think life on Mars is for me, unless there’s a major ecological catastrophe (and let’s face it, there probably will be) on Earth that makes life here impossible. However, the settlement of Mars plan is definitely a long term game, with robots being sent up about a decade in advance of humans to build housing and start growing crops, so it is highly unlikely any of this would come to fruition in my lifetime anyway.

 

The final gallery contained a short video about the experience of flying to Mars, and all the prep work that would have went into it. There was also an interesting video showing the way different plant samples from Earth might evolve on the Martian climate, and a wall featuring all the different variations that could occur (there seemed to be a lot of spidery looking things – apparently those evolve anywhere!). There was also a brief discussion of why we would need to colonise Mars in the first place, and whether we should be doing so from an ethical perspective (if we’ve destroyed Earth, why do we need to destroy another planet too? Either improve as a species, or give it up).

 

I’m not a hugely scientific person, and I suspect Marcus enjoyed himself more than I did, but it was nonetheless an interesting exhibition, and I liked seeing the more eco-friendly ways we could try to begin again on another planet (by necessity, because of the difficulty of getting supplies to and from Mars), though I think we’d be better off implementing some of those ideas on Earth first, whilst we still have a chance! As I’ve said, Mars life would definitely not be for me – all those futuristic/dystopian novels give me the creeps, and some of the ideas in this exhibition made me feel the same way – but thinking about the different ways things might evolve and the technology needed for it to happen was an interesting intellectual exercise, and some of the 1960s space art in here was really cool. Get a discount if you can, because this exhibition is definitely not worth 15 quid+, but for what I paid, I was perfectly satisfied, even if I did think it could be a bit more interactive. 3/5.

Hamburg: MK&G (Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe)

The Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, in addition to being fun to say, is a museum of art and design very much like the V&A (right down to their use of initials with the ampersand). I’ll admit it wasn’t on my initial list of museums to visit since I could go to the V&A any time for free and this seemed like more of the same, but we were forced to book our flight back to London for 9:30 at night because all the earlier flights were too expensive, meaning we had a whole day to kill in Hamburg after checking out of our hotel at the latest possible time (noon. I was watching Frauen Tausch, the German version of Wife Swap, all morning, whilst eating lemon gugelhupf. Don’t judge), and as it was the coldest day of our trip yet, there was no way I was spending all of it outside. So walking around a big ol’ warm museum for a good few hours was starting to look awfully appealing.

Admission to MK&G is €12, or €8 with the Hamburg Card. However, this includes all special exhibits, which works out much better financially than the V&A, which is free but charges anything from £10-£24 for exhibitions, though I have to say that the V&A’s temporary exhibitions seem to be of a much higher calibre generally. At least almost everything here had English translations, except for a few of the temporary exhibitions (including the one I was most excited to see, of course). The gallery immediately in front of us when we entered the museum was a special exhibition on Greek vases (this one did have English labels. Shame I’m not more interested in ancient history) but after that we were a bit confused about which way to go, as we couldn’t actually see any other galleries. Turned out we had to exit the Greek vase gallery from the back of the space, which led to galleries branching out in two directions.

Marcus really enjoys taking photos of silly-looking lions (of which there were many), so he was happy enough, but I wasn’t super interested in most of the Baroque stuff or the Christianity gallery (except for some creepy religious imagery with a skeleton, as seen above), and the exciting sounding hall of mirrors was just a fancy reception room. It wasn’t until we got up to the Modernity and Art Nouveau galleries on the first floor that things started to improve.

And boy, did things improve. Robots! These were actually full-body costumes that a husband and wife dance team created in (believe it or not) 1919-1924. Considering Karel Capek didn’t even introduce the word robot (which had been coined by his brother) to the world until 1920, these were remarkably modern looking, and frankly, awesome! Sadly, their creators committed suicide due to financial hardship in 1924, so the world never got to see what else they were capable of producing.

I normally really like looking at clothing, but the stuff here was fairly run-of-the mill, so instead I’m going to show you this sweet sad little lion dog, above (I have kind of a soft spot for lion dogs), and the set of knight figures from the Art Nouveau section.

The special exhibition I was keenest on seeing (the one that didn’t have any English in it, as I mentioned above) was “Therefore, Vote!” which contained posters for Germany’s first democratic elections in 1919. Fortunately, they were such a bold graphic medium that you didn’t have to be able to read them to understand the messages they were conveying. There’s something really visually appealing about propaganda posters, even grim ones with skulls and dire warnings about the Bolsheviks, which I realise is obviously intentional.

Also upstairs was an exhibition on social design, which I think featured students’ plans for remaking Hamburg (it was hard to tell as nothing here was in English either), and “Pure Luxury” which explored the art of lacquer, though the actual preserved beetles that had been lacquered made me feel sick. The rather hilarious tapestry in one of the other galleries featuring a girl and a blue bowl made up for it though.

The second floor is also home to the far-more-fabulous-than-the-hall-of-mirrors Spiegel Canteen, which is the actual 1969 canteen of the former Spiegel Publishing House. Sadly, you can’t actually go into the room unless you rent it out, so all hopes of having a cheeky franzbrotchen and tea in there were smashed.

After viewing the photography and furniture sections, we headed back to the ground floor to see the medieval and ancient galleries, which we had missed when we were initially down there (you had to pick whether to go to Baroque or Medieval, as the two don’t intersect or lead into each other), and I’m happy we made the effort to see them, because the Wunderkammer room had some interesting artefacts in it, as you might expect from the name. Love a Wunderkammer!

I also liked the creepy disembodied eyes in the Egyptian gallery, and the ceramics part of the musical instruments room (poor ceramic boar head). This museum felt nearly as large as the V&A (though maybe had less on each topic, as the photography section was teeny, and most of the galleries seemed to be smaller than their V&A equivalent), and we were pretty tired from walking around, so we were grateful there were comfy seats scattered around, especially the sofa, below. The general tiredness is also why this post is less in-depth than many of my posts, and more me just pointing out things I liked. I couldn’t be bothered to read much at this point in the trip. Sorry.

There were definitely many cool things in here (those robot costumes, the best!), and I think €8 was certainly a reasonable price for all we saw. I’m glad we came because it was a nice respite from the cold, and even though it was similar in many ways to the V&A, the few galleries that were specifically on German art and design made it different enough that it was worth our while. Apparently, the MK&G used to have a lot more so-called “degenerate art” until the 1930s when the Nazis decided to destroy it all, so it’s sad to think about all the things we were missing out on, but I’m glad at least some of it still survives. 3/5.

 

London: “Hope to Nope” @ the Design Museum

When fishing around for things to do, I came across “Hope to Nope: Graphics and Politics 2008-2018” at the Design Museum.  I’m normally not the biggest fan of graphic design (see my review of the graphic design exhibition at the Wellcome), but if there’s one thing I love, it is looking at unflattering caricatures of Trump, so I was intrigued.

  

Admission to the exhibition is normally £12, but National Art Pass holders get half off (ignore what the website says; they claim you only get £3 off, so just wait til you get to the museum to buy your tickets!). It’s even cheaper if you turn down the voluntary donation, but then you get the shame of having declined to donate printed across your ticket. “Hope to Nope” was in the same basement gallery where we saw “Imagine Moscow”, although the configuration of the space was slightly different, as it was split into three main areas rather than a bunch of smaller rooms – one each for power, protest, and personality.

  

As you can probably see, this was a very bold display, and the first thing that caught my eye was The Sun‘s Brexit version of the Bayeaux Tapestry. The Sun was decidedly pro-Brexit, and I am decidedly not, but it was still amusing, not least for its caricatures of leading Tories at the time. I was also quite taken (if that’s the right way to put it, considering how terribly they treat their citizens) with North Korea’s anti-American propaganda, some of which was quite Soviet in style, and even included things like stamps(!) that showed Kim Jong Un smashing the American flag (I guess I should be more offended by this, but really I just thought they were kind of funny because they were so campy). There is also an ongoing flow of balloon propaganda between North and South Korea, in which each side sends clear balloons filled with propaganda materials over the DMZ (this is not officially sanctioned by the government of South Korea). This is fairly controversial, because the South Korean government worries that North Koreans caught with these materials may be punished. At any rate, some of these balloons were here, so we could see how they worked. And there were some great Russian Pride posters that re-purposed all the old Soviet propaganda posters to great effect.

  

“Protest” was dominated by a giant rubber duck hanging from the ceiling, which was used to protest corruption in the Brazilian government and drive Dilma Rousseff out of power (I had a temp job at the Science Museum during the 2012 Olympics, and Dilma Rousseff actually came for a visit one day whilst I was attempting to sell guidebooks at the front of the museum, so I may have appeared on Brazilian (or British) TV, because there was a crew there filming everything. I’ve never seen it if so though). The centre of the room was filled with protest newspapers, and there was an entire wall re-creating the graffiti put up in the wake of the fire at Grenfell Towers. There were also sections devoted to the Women’s March following Trump’s inauguration, the “gay clown” version of Putin, and Occupy Wall Street.

  

But my favourite, favourite thing here (and the thing that made the price of admission completely worth it), was the All-Seeing Trump, located in the “Personality” room. In fact, I could hear him talking before I got there, and skipped past part of “Protest” initially in my haste to reach him (I knew he would be there, and watched a video of him before arriving, so I knew what joys awaited me). All-Seeing Trump is a Zoltar-style fortune telling machine that makes pronouncements (only slightly exaggerated for comic effect) on his proposals (you can watch one I filmed (poorly) here, or a better version here), or insults whoever pressed the button in classic Trumpian style. The machine totally nailed his voice and mannerisms, and I loved the MAGA-hatted eagle perched on his shoulder. The whole damn thing was hilarious perfection, and I pressed the button about ten times (and heard a different speech every time, so he clearly has quite a few of them. Probably more than the actual Trump, to be honest).

  

“Personality” had a lot of great things in it though, other than just All-Seeing Trump. There was an iPad game where you were Jeremy Corbyn trying to collect “donations” from bankers whilst avoiding Boris on a zipline, Theresa May hurling flags from a helicopter, and the ghost of Margaret Thatcher. There was a whole wall of magazine covers depicting Trump, including the fake TIME cover he had framed for his office. And there were cartoons of British political figures as well, though the voice of All-Seeing Trump did tend to pervade, as you might expect.

  

It was a rather small exhibition if you paid the full £12 (being just the three rooms), but for £6, I think it was well-worth my while (again, mainly because of the fabulous All-Seeing Trump). I can’t really say I learned very much, but I was entertained and I laughed a lot (admittedly in a kind of rueful way), and sometimes that’s all you need. 3.5/5.

London: The Design Museum

Back to blogging about London again! So, it was the day of the presidential inauguration, and rather than sit at home feeling simultaneously infuriated and dispirited (before this whole mess, I wouldn’t have said it was possible to feel both those things at once, but apparently it is!), I turned, as I so often do when feeling down, to a museum.  The old Design Museum, which was in Bermondsey, was not somewhere I had ever been, mainly because they charged (hefty) admission to all their exhibits.  However, the new Design Museum, located on Kensington High Street, which I think only opened around last November, not only has a couple of free galleries, but is also much more conveniently located for me (and is dangerously near to purveyors of delicious cookies and muffins. If ever a day called for a chocolate chip muffin, it was that one (I may have eaten cookies’n’cream ice cream for breakfast too.  Don’t judge!)).

  

Appropriately enough, the museum is housed in a very designery-looking building, but it wasn’t purpose-built, having originally been constructed in the 1960s for the Commonwealth Institute, which apparently hosted a permanent exhibition on (appropriately enough) the nations of the Commonwealth, until it closed in 2003.  So although the building has always included a museum space, the interior was given a complete revamp before the Design Museum moved in (of which more later).  The museum currently features two exhibitions that charge admission fees: “Fear and Love,” which looks interesting, but costs £14, and “Beazley Designer of the Year,” which costs £10.  Needless to say, I didn’t see either on this visit (though I will consider coming back and paying for the Soviet exhibit opening in March; it sounds pretty good!), but instead stuck to the free permanent gallery, and the three free “displays” (really only two, because the one was just a small selection of photographs of the building’s interior being constructed.  Big whoop).

  

Ironically, although the design of the museum looked very grand when we walked in, I wasn’t all that impressed with the practicality of it.  For one thing, all the free exhibits were on the second floor, so you had to walk up three sets of stairs to get to them (either one of the floors counted as a sub-floor, or we somehow came in on the “lower ground floor” or something, because there were definitely three sets of stairs).  And there was only one set of stairs per floor, which were inconveniently located on the opposite side of the building from the staircase you just climbed up, so you have to walk around the entire damn building twice just to get up there (there are emergency staircases on the sides of the building, but I’d still hate to be in this place if a fire broke out).  And because all the other exhibitions were located on the ground floor or in the basement, except for a cafe and a few other empty rooms I could see that they probably rent out/use for classes, it made for a lot of wasted space, which doesn’t seem like good design.

   

However, once I actually got up to and inside the “Designer Maker User” permanent gallery, I was a lot more impressed.  It was very visually appealing, for one thing, and much bigger than it seemed at first glance (all you can see when you approach is the wall full o’crap from the start of the post, and a timeline, and I was worried I’d be done with this place in five minutes.  It opens up and winds around a lot once you get inside).

 

It was meant to be showing the highlights of the museum’s collections (mainly 20th century inventions or innovations), divided up into areas focusing on the designer, maker, and user, but to me, at least, there wasn’t really a clear delineation between these things.  There were objects scattered throughout the entire exhibit with information about their designers, so it all felt like it was focusing most on the “designer” aspect, with a brief nod to the “user” (I assume by “maker,” they meant the manufacturers of these products?  I didn’t get much of that aspect at all).  However, that wasn’t really a huge problem, because the objects in the collection were interesting enough in themselves, especially when the history and evolution of the design had been provided, like with Harry Beck’s Tube maps (those seem to pop up a lot in London museums, unsurprisingly) and how they influenced the New York Subway map, or the classic fitted kitchen, which was first invented in post-war Germany.

  

I have to say, for such a new, modern looking museum, I was kind of surprised that there weren’t more interactive displays.  There was a video screen, shown above, that “dressed” you up in fashions of the past (though I could only get it to bring up that ugly 1980s outfit, even though I walked back in front of it a couple times), and a few other computer screens here and there, but not really to the extent I was expecting.  It seemed like there were more activities encouraging you to draw or write things using good old paper and pencil.  Which is great, nothing wrong with that, it just seemed a little out of keeping with the museum’s otherwise ultramodern character.

  

We spent about half an hour walking through “Designer Maker User” (that lack of commas really irks me) before heading over to the small side gallery housing “Designers in Residence.” This was, for lack of a better term, just weird.  There was a coat made out of hair that had been collected from schoolgirls (by a woman who was working on the project with them, so less pervy than it sounds) and more felted hair that you could touch.  I did touch it, because I can’t resist a “touch me” sign, but I felt like I needed to wash my hands after. (Speaking of, I was hoping the bathrooms here would be really odd, like the all-black seatless toilet in Bob’s Burgers, and they were definitely designer-y, if that makes sense, but not quite as out there as Bob’s toilet, which was kind of a shame. Even though I have no desire to use a seatless public toilet (I’ve been forced to do it in Italy on multiple occasions, and it is not fun.).) There was also some other ugly “futuristic” looking clothing in here. Let’s just say that I wasn’t real thrilled by this section.

  

The final free display (since I’m not counting those lame photographs of the building) is a pop-up called “New Old,” which is only there until 19 February.  I had read an article in the paper about it the week before, so this was what I was most excited to see. It featured the attempts of designers to meet the challenges presented by a “rapidly ageing society,”and there was definitely some cool stuff in here, though plenty of creepy dystopian stuff too (although we appear to be rapidly moving towards Orwell’s 1984 now, so maybe it’s all fitting).

  

The creepiest thing was definitely this concept called “Spirit,” which seemed to be envisioned as a series of robotic implants that would sort of take over your body.  There was an insulated pod where you were supposed to talk into a microphone as a computer asked you questions (I initially thought the pod was for privacy, but then when Marcus started laughing at me, I realised my answers were appearing on a big computer screen as I said them, for everyone to read. D’oh!), and this “friendly” voice to keep people company was somehow meant to eventually evolve into hearing aid type implants, and most disturbingly of all, a kind of matchmaker service, wherein it would learn all about you and store the information in a database, and then you’d get an implant in your stomach that would create the feeling of butterflies whenever you met someone who was compatible with you.  I didn’t quite understand how this aspect of it was supposed to help an ageing population specifically, but whatever.  There was also that seal pup robot that has already been used in some nursing homes (though he was too cute to be creepy, or maybe I just have a soft spot for animal robots.  Has anyone else been watching Spy in the Wild on BBC1? I want spy crow as a pet!), and this gross metal structure that was supposed to improve people’s quality of life by giving them access to an outdoor space, but it was so small and grim-looking that it would just depress me if I had to sit outside on that instead of actual grass.

  

More useful, I think, were things like a completely collapsible wheelchair, a (relatively) discreet bodysuit that aids mobility, and a convertible scooter.  Apparently every day between 12 and 3, there is a random person sitting at a table in there who you can ask one question of, and they ask a question of you in return (I suppose to show how we can learn from other people’s life experiences, and to show how older people still have an important role to play in society), but I was there just after 3 so I missed them.  Had I known, I would have gone in this exhibit first.

 

Relatively poor practical design of the museum aside, I thought that the permanent exhibit and the “New Old” pop-up both exceeded my expectations (which were admittedly not that high).  I guess I initially found something off-puttingly pretentious about the whole concept of a design museum, because I presumed it would just feature really out-there designs, and though there was some of that sort of thing here (like the hair coat), I also learned how design, both good and bad, shapes the world we live in, and I am now convinced there is a very valid reason for the Design Museum to exist.  I’ll give it 3.5/5, because there is some room for improvement, but for a museum that just opened in this location a few months ago, I think it’s doing quite well.