this is aaronland

Things I did not mention at the time

The Mile High Museum

For a while now I have been venturing the opinion that we should simply move all the museums out to the airport. The argument is centered around the idea that the kinds of infrastructures we need to store and transport and rotate our collections, in the service of a meaningful public access, might best be found in the contemporary airport or more specifically the so-called Aerotropolis.

If not all the museums then at least the Smithsonian. We have so much stuff in our collection that we wouldn't even need to remove anything already on display on The Mall in Washington. We could simply get things out of storage and fill every large and mid-sized airport in the United States which would be an interesting way for the organization to fulfill its mandate as a national institution.

If nothing else airports have semi-decent seating which would be an improvement over most museums.

SFO alone has 17 exhibition spaces, all part of a museum operated by the airport's parent company. The recently opened Terminal 2 at Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport houses a collection of 7,000 artworks. This list goes on.

Which makes these photos, taken at the airport in Hong Kong, so great. Although they are just a catalog of items whose trade is prohibited or which are deemed too dangerous for plane travel — I am not sure why those watches are classified as dangerous weapons but maybe I am just not trying hard enough — when you stop to consider the history and bent of places like New York City's Mmuseum or the V&A's Rapid Response project or you know... the Smithsonian there isn't much to suggest that you aren't in fact looking at a pair of display cases in a museum.

This blog post is full of links.

Singapore

I had occassion to visit Singapore, recently. This is some of what happened.

This blog post is full of links.