All I knew about the Tenement Museum before I went there is that it’s a museum about immigrants in New York and that many friends recommended visiting it. So, naturally, I expected a museum similar to the Jewish Museum or the Museum of Jewish Heritage – a medium-sized building which would take you throughout several galleries in which you can explore what it meant to be an immigrant in New York through pictures, text, artifacts, videos, etc.

If you have been to the Tenement Museum before, you can imagine my surprise when I got there. I first thought: is this it? This museum shop? It was hard to tell which entrance was the one to the museum because there was no big sign or logo indicating it. I decided to go into the museum shop to ask about how to get to the museum’s main entrance. The help desk was inside and I could get a ticket and more information there. I was still in denial though, and assumed this is just one entrance and the museum was in the same building, probably on the superior floors. I was wrong. All the tours go to other buildings in the neighborhood, depending on which tour you choose. So it’s more like a museum without walls in a sense, but with wall because you visit buildings (if that makes any sense).

I was a little irritated with the tour guide structure. When I got there they were sold out of tickets and I had to wait for about an hour to get on the next tour. Also, the tour made me feel very restricted. I know I always write posts about how much I enjoy clearly delineated gallery tours in museums, but this was a little too much even for me. I had to wait for the tour guide to show me anything and I didn’t have any freedom of wandering around at all. Also, the tour wasn’t even that long, we only visited a few rooms.

I did like the discussion opportunity with an expert since the guide was there, and I understand why they would structure the museum experience in this way. The buildings are old, so they need to be careful about the volume of people passing through them. I also enjoyed the authenticity of the display of the objects throughout the apartments and I think they would have had to put hard cases and many guards if they would decide to let people around. It’s also important to note that the story is what is most important about the experience there, so I assume they wanted only expert guides telling the story so that the experience would always be a good one. It’s easy to not read some text or look at some objects around you, but when you have a guide you generally listen to everything they have to say.

The technology use in the tour seemed a little out of place. Here we were in this very very old building that looked like it was about to collapse any moment and the tour guide starts this very ridiculous slideshow projected on a window with some very loud music. I can understand the songs were relevant to the tour and the story, but I think it would have been much more effective to use only sounds and the pictures wouldn’t have to be projected, they could just be displayed in cases to preserve the feeling. There was another awkward use of technology. During the tour, an older woman asked if we were allowed to take pictures. Kate, the tour guide, replied that it’s not allowed but that they have some Flickr pictures posted. It was obvious that the woman didn’t know what that was. Also, at the end of the tour Kate encouraged us to look at their blog. Again, looking at the audience they get, that didn’t seem something of interest. However, I do think that it’s better to have these options then not to, for people who are interested. Still, it felt a little awkward.

From what it looked like to me, most visitors fall into the statistics we discussed in our first class: mostly white older visitors and groups of children on school field trips. The group tours at the museum are intended for this audience. I went on the Moore Irish Family Tour and there were especially many U.K. tourists on that tour. Kate, the tour guide, asked at the beginning why we were on the tour and if there was a special interest in coming to the Tenement Museum. Two older women replied: “We like going to museums.” I thought this was especially relevant to the audience that the museum gets and it was in conformity with what we discussed before in Cabinets of Wonder.

Different Perspectives

Person with a walking disability: “I cannot go to the Tenement Museum because the buildings are so old they don’t have elevators and I can’t get through with my wheelchair.”

Person with a vision disability: “I really enjoy the touch and verbal description tours at the Tenement Museum. The museum also has a Braille brochure which is very helpful.”