Santa Barbara Maritime Museum

I arrived at the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum (SBMM) at 1:50 p.m. and approached the front desk. I was directed toward the gift shop where I received my receipt which served as my entrance ticket. 

The front desk attendant was very helpful and gave me a short history of the museum, a couple of pamphlets (one on the brief history of oil in Santa Barbara and another listing the film schedule for the Munger Theater on the second floor), and suggested where to start for guidance through the museum. There was no facilitation during my entire trip, but I found this more effective considering the layout of the museum.

After the briefing I headed toward the Munger Theater on the second floor immediately. There was a showing for the film Incredible Suckers, a 1996 documentary about a videographer's exploration on cephalopods. I was a little late. I think the pamphlet showtimes were misprinted and I was the only person in the theater, anyway.

I started looking at exhibits on the second floor around 2:30 p.m. There were exhibits at every corner of the museum; not a single inch of the museum didn't have some educational aspect to it. It felt almost like hoarded materials rather than a curated experience. The exhibits, furthermore, did get repetitive at certain points. They were also text-heavy, with concepts that wouldn't be straightforward to everyone. For example, Finding Solutions To Environmental Problems was a wall of collected materials behind a glass wall. There were buttons with designated concepts you could press to start a monotone dialogue about: urbanization, shipping, resource extraction, or recreation. A screen depicted corresponding images to those concepts in the style of a 90's infomercial.

My favorite second floor exhibit is Try Out A Ship! which allowed guests to pretend to be a captain. The reason is because with imagination, I truly could pretend to be a captain. The issue is that the video, supposedly the seas you were navigating, was just a 2D picture being zoomed into slowly.

At 3:00 p.m. I went back to Munger Theater to watch a second film, and was late again because the pamphlet times were indeed off. This time they showed a 2011 documentary on Santa Barbara called Santa Barbara and the Sea. A couple came in for about 15 minutes midway through the film then left. To be honest, I actually enjoy boring things, so I wasn't surprised they left so quickly. I learned a lot about Santa Barbara: the oil spill, clean air and water acts, surfing, biodiversity, marine preservation, urbanization, and local fisheries.

At 4:00 p.m. I went down to the first floor and tried out the exhibits. I played on an exhibit called Sportsfishing for 30 minutes. Yet, my favorite first floor exhibit was Tattoo Parlor because I finally learned what my dad's tattoo meant (he never told me why he got it only that it was an anchor).

The SBMM was enjoyable for me, nostalgic even. The sentimentality probably contributed to my enthusiasm and thus impacted my desire to learn. I think that's the purpose of the movies as well, to imbue emotions into guests that will make them care about the ocean. At some point, a field trip of kids did pass by, and they didn't seem to be able to freely enjoy the museum. They were in a tight knit group following a facilitator from the museum who halfheartedly talked at them. He would ask a question and immediately answer it himself without so much as a second wait while quickly delivering complex information. There was a kid who asked a question about surfing, because the signage didn't have the answer the facilitator responded "does it even matter?"

At MOXI the exhibits are interactive, rather than stationary with text-heavy signage, caged off against the wall. MOXI is also very modern, well-lit, colorful, and experiential. I always see kids enjoying their time and learning happens through the memorable movement, colors, pattern, and growing ideas about exhibits.

- Samantha Brown