Festival 500 part 8 - The Rooms
Jul. 24th, 2011 06:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
baker_kittyWe basically had four free days in St. John's that didn't involve daytime Festival stuff. Sunday was a wander around downtown day, finishing in the East Meets West concert. Cloudy, cooler than the other days (hurray!!! was waaaaaay too hot for most of the week!) but winds gusting to 100 km/h!!!!! Pretty crazy! Made me very glad for the chin strap on my Tilley hat! UV index of 6-8 (high to extreme) almost the whole time we were in St. John's, so I wore sunblock (SPF 60) and UV-proof Tilley all the time. The other three days were at the end of the trip.
The Festival 500 Grand Finale concert was from 8-11ish on Wednesday night. Needless to say, slept in Thursday! Didn't waste the day, though. After lunch at the Gypsy Tea Room (the second one - see link), we went to The Rooms. It's a combined art gallery, museum and provincial archives building - with the archives also having displays open to the public. We only had a few hours before it closed, so we only got through the museum section. :( (Wednesdays it's open after 5 pm, but for obvious reasons Wednesday was out!) SO glad we went, even if we only saw a third of it. The permanent display was about Newfoundland - integrating natural history (geology, biology, ecology, etc.), anthropology (First Nations, Viking settlements, etc.) and history (British and French colonization, British, French and Portuguese fisheries prior to that, world wars, etc.) Around the outside of the room was the natural history, with some really well done diorama setups. In the center was the human history part. Well done, uncluttered but full displays of artifacts with useful descriptions, then display cabinets with drawers you can pull out to see more artifacts if you're interested in a particular topic - pottery from early British settlements, spear heads from early Native settlements, and more. It was a particularly miserable day (pouring rain and 70 kph winds) so not too busy, either.
There was another exhibit on the same floor describing in detail the Irish contribution to Newfoundland since the 1600s. On another floor was an experimental exhibit - designed to be more interactive in some ways. Lots of pieces of paper around (and boxes to put them in) so people could write feedback - what items they were interested in learning more about, what topics they wanted featured, even for writing stories about what their lives are like now, as part of archiving the entire history of Newfoundland, including modern day. I wish I could have spent another day there exploring more of it, and seeing the art gallery and the archives exhibits. As it was, when the museum closed, I was DONE. My brain was full. I couldn't have absorbed more even had it been open later. *sigh*
Humorous note: the Newfie we sat next to on the plane in told us about The Rooms. The Rooms is a big, three part, blocky square-ish structure just uphill from the Basilica. The official story is that the architecture is supposed to reflect the old fish processing "rooms" - hence the square, blocky structure. Apparently, the locals' name for it is "The Box the Basilica Came In." *lol*
The Festival 500 Grand Finale concert was from 8-11ish on Wednesday night. Needless to say, slept in Thursday! Didn't waste the day, though. After lunch at the Gypsy Tea Room (the second one - see link), we went to The Rooms. It's a combined art gallery, museum and provincial archives building - with the archives also having displays open to the public. We only had a few hours before it closed, so we only got through the museum section. :( (Wednesdays it's open after 5 pm, but for obvious reasons Wednesday was out!) SO glad we went, even if we only saw a third of it. The permanent display was about Newfoundland - integrating natural history (geology, biology, ecology, etc.), anthropology (First Nations, Viking settlements, etc.) and history (British and French colonization, British, French and Portuguese fisheries prior to that, world wars, etc.) Around the outside of the room was the natural history, with some really well done diorama setups. In the center was the human history part. Well done, uncluttered but full displays of artifacts with useful descriptions, then display cabinets with drawers you can pull out to see more artifacts if you're interested in a particular topic - pottery from early British settlements, spear heads from early Native settlements, and more. It was a particularly miserable day (pouring rain and 70 kph winds) so not too busy, either.
There was another exhibit on the same floor describing in detail the Irish contribution to Newfoundland since the 1600s. On another floor was an experimental exhibit - designed to be more interactive in some ways. Lots of pieces of paper around (and boxes to put them in) so people could write feedback - what items they were interested in learning more about, what topics they wanted featured, even for writing stories about what their lives are like now, as part of archiving the entire history of Newfoundland, including modern day. I wish I could have spent another day there exploring more of it, and seeing the art gallery and the archives exhibits. As it was, when the museum closed, I was DONE. My brain was full. I couldn't have absorbed more even had it been open later. *sigh*
Humorous note: the Newfie we sat next to on the plane in told us about The Rooms. The Rooms is a big, three part, blocky square-ish structure just uphill from the Basilica. The official story is that the architecture is supposed to reflect the old fish processing "rooms" - hence the square, blocky structure. Apparently, the locals' name for it is "The Box the Basilica Came In." *lol*
