Dear Readers:
About two weeks back, I wrote a Facebook post about the exhibit “Race: Are We So Different?” at the Science Museum of Minnesota.
This exhibit includes a video artwork highlighting all black Americans killed by police in 2020. It’s a striking piece heavy with its message, and my concern was how this political artwork—weighted with emotion and urging viewers’ adherence—undermines the purpose of this institution for dinosaur fossils and learning the laws of thermodynamics.
From behind a monitor, me and several others discussed this exhibit. But beyond just writing about it, I went to check it out myself to experience it in the context of the museum—and see what came up.
Plenty did. And I recorded my reaction right there in the museum, seen in this new video at the top of this post.
That exhibit (top left of photo) was the trigger, but it represented something broader: The deterioration of the institutions in my state.
I remember being in 6th grade, coming to “the cities” for this special field trip, and how surreal it felt to see actual dinosaur skeletons. And since then, I’ve enjoyed several other exhibits and films at the Omni Theater. So, to see this museum violate its purpose, to see its attendance fall by half in just the past seven years, to see the president of the museum steering these changes making $600,000 a year, and seeing, from what I can tell, no action to address all this—particularly by the museum board; it all motivated me to get my butt there and make this video.
I sense fear in our state keeping us from snapping Minnesota out of this deteriorating trajectory. Maybe this video can help a little with turning the museum around.
Thanks for watching and caring.
-Brandon
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I think you are on to something here, Brandon. The truth is we are all one race. So the question, "Can't the races get along?" seems to be racist at the beginning. If looking different, or even behaving different, meant someone belonged to a different race, one would have to believe there were oh, 5 or 6 billion races in the world (making allowances for some strangers who seem to look like twins). That doesn't seem very scientific, it seems political, and malignanty so.
Are there people who wish to divide us? And why?
Currently there are many divisive messages on all sides. The one I can't figure out for the life of me is the signs that read "Science is Real". Who is that intended to divide?