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Hello -- I've just been to the National Museum Scotland and it's prehistory section is amazing! It combined work by Andy Goldsworthy with archaeological material culture.
What I found particularly interesting was the ways in which the past was presented on a three-screened televisual installation that played the same film on loop. It was about how people socialised the Scottish landscape, building, farming etc...

I just wondered what other people thought of it - do people like it? Did they stand or sit to watch the whole thing? Did it help them better understand or enjoy the past or the museum? Did your children like it more than you - or easily bored?

Did you respond more to the visual moving images or the other people around you?!

Just wondered! xxx

This is the musem in Edinburgh yes?

Probably the best museum I've ever been to, the exhibits are so well presented and thoughfully laid out. I was there in February 2004, and spent a whole day there, although at that time I didn't specifically go to see the pre-history exhibits I remember being very impressed by it. I would love to go back again and see the exhibits with more understanding than I had then.We even waited unitl closing to see that big clock thing do its party piece!

Are you talking about the National Museum in Edinburgh? Is it possible it's been revamped in the last couple of years? Loie and I were there in 2000 or so and thought the prehistory rooms one of the worst presentations of material culture we've ever struggled through. Maybe it's diferent now, I don't know.

When we were there, the lighting was so low many objects were very difficult to see. The glass shelves allowed objects to cast obscuring shadows on those below. The notes were in white paint on clear plastic and impossible to read. They were down below the cases at ankle level and we had to constantly be stooping and squatting.

The objects were grouped by type: all ceramics together, all stone tools together. Thus, it was impossible to get any sense of how different objects related to each other, or of a "culture" in any particular time or place. The damn place was like a huge jumble sale in somebody's dingy basement. Bad bad bad.

I don't remember any educational films. Maybe we missed it? Or is it new?