The most appealing exhibit was the Butterfly Garden. It was very beautiful and so calming to walk through despite the amount of people inside. It was appealing because of its innate beauty with the water and plants as well as the overall calming atmosphere of peace and graceful butterflies. I loved taking pictures in this exhibit and all the different kinds of butterflies captured my attention.
Through this exhibit i feel like i learned quite a bit. I learned what true peace felt like and how to just exist rather than stress about everything else going on in life. Due to its atmosphere, I learned how beautiful the natural world is and how delicate it is and timeless. I most enjoyed looking at the butterflies and captured their beauty through the lens of my camera.
There was another exhibit besides the butterflies that was a room filled with skeletons of animals. Through this exhibit I caught a glimpse of life outside of my generation and saw a very different world. I saw a group of creatures that had been greatly affected by humans. I felt like they had not be respected in the way that Leopold understood. I felt sad that these animals no longer existed and that they seemed fake in a way. I also felt frustrated with humanity that they could continue to allow things like this to continue to happen; innocent animals dying at our hands.
As I walked through the museum I saw a very different side of humanity and the world we live in. I saw a selfish world that is very arrogant and narcissistic. Others did not act in the same manner. There were several who were just amazed at the creatures themselves and didn't look beyond their skeletons. Other people seemed bored and uninterested. I felt like the museum did a very good job of connecting the visitors to nature because there were opportunities to be outside in actual nature such as gardens of the butterfly exhibit and be surrounded by live nature. However, they also presented a past nature in a way. one that wasn't alive but still has an impact on our lives today.
After my visit, I felt a slight moral obligation to help nature in a way that Leopold imagined because our world is not respected in that manner and that needs to change. Nature should be more respected, especially the life that exists in nature.
This museum assisted visitors in stepping outside of their cultural boundaries ad the comfort zone and exposed them to an alternate world in a way. The museum inherently exposes the viewers to different forms of life and tries to invoke sympathetic emotions among the visitors. The museum, through its many exhibits, allows the audience to experience something new and therefore enable them to understand the world a little differently. It helps them appreciate nature and the world we live in by challenged their presumed biases. they can not have a new outlook on life and the world we live in.
Credits:
Photography by Carrie Binkley (the author)