Transit to The Maryland Center for History and Culture

 Baltimore, MD

Gameday in Pigtown

Today is gameday but it is raining and colder than it was 2 weeks ago when the Ravens played at home so things were a little more subdued.  The smokers were still going and the music was pumping but it ended just after the game started.  2 weeks ago it went well into the night.  This afternoon we were going to The Maryland Center for History and Culture Museum.  We could either walk there or take light rail so I suggested we take light rail.  It was raining (a little) and we hadn't taken it before and the time estimate was about the same amount of time as walking.  The only cost would be $2 each for the ticket.  We made our way by the stadium through the crowds and passed the people trying to sell us tickets and ponchos.  It was the beginning of the 2nd quarter and the Ravens were up by about 11 so things were buzzing.  We got to the Stadium / Federal Hill Light Raillink station and started our wait for the train.  We used the transit app to time our trip but by the time we got to the station the app was telling us we had a bit of a wait.  We ended up waiting about a half an hour which was much longer than the 5 minutes we had intended on waiting and we could have walked to the museum in that time but we were committed and there were a number of people shows going on. We got to watch a middle aged man and woman leave the game during the beginning of the 2nd quarter.  I thought this was odd because football tickets are expensive in my opinion.  The man was helping the woman along and then she stuck her head in a trashcan and rested for a bit.  This happened twice.  I am not sure what she got into during the tailgating but her day was not going well and they missed out on the game.  We also got to watch a 30 something man and woman have an argument that lasted their whole time at the train station.  We couldn't tell what they were arguing about but it wasn't going well for them.  They were wasting VIP football tickets.  We could see them hanging around their necks.  I joked that I should walk over there and ask if they were going to use their tickets during their big fight.

Scooterville!

The Maryland Center for History and Culture

Our train finally arrived and it sat in the station for another 5 minutes while someone worked on the platform ramp in our car.  When he was done is slowly rolled out of our station, went about 200 yards and stopped at Camden Yard Station.  Donna and laughed and said, "we were just right there" as we pointed to the previous station still in view.  We were going about 6 stops and it was the same for each stop.  We decided that it travels at about walking speed.  It wasn't a good day for Light Raillink.  

Dang, this is a terrible photo.  I had 5 minutes to take this photo and this is what I got.

We arrived at our stop and got off and headed to the museum.  We brought our NARM pass so entrance was free for us.  The museum focuses different areas of Maryland's history.  The outside sports some really cool neon signs that were behind dirty glass so I didn't take any photos of them.  I figured I would get an opportunity to take photos of them on the inside but nope!  I liked the museum but I thought it was going to be more iconic items like the neon signs and less reader boards about events that happened.  We still learned a lot and really enjoyed the museum, it was just a different experience than I thought it would be.

This is on top of the museum so it kind of sets the tone for the museum but it was the wrong tone.

There were 5 areas with 5 themes to explore.  The first area was Furniture built in Baltimore.  Leigh and Leslie Keno would love this area.

Horatio Greenough Medora 

Medora was significant in that it launched the American school of sculpture, pushed the medium beyond simple bust forms, and included nudity, which was highly controversial in the United States at the time.  This sculpture was commissioned by a prominent Baltimore collector Robert Gilmor Jr.

This isn't a bar, it's a Grand Harmonicon!  The glass bowls are filled with water and it becomes an instrument.

This Circus miniature was just kind of shoved in a hallway in the furniture area.

The 2nd area focused on all of the wars that Maryland has been involved with and it is more than I had thought.  There wasn't a ton to photograph in this area as it was mostly paintings of people and boards with words.  We did learn a lot.

These are ship caulking tools

Workers would cram rope in-between the wooden boards to make the hulls water tight.

This was an interactive video display of the history of the Baltimore landscape.  

This is Lady Baltimore.  There is a lot of symbolism going on here that the museum spells out.

The next area focused on Baltimore Movie Theater History.  It was connected to the John Waters talk we watched online last week.

This is what I was expecting to see in the museum.  "King Gambrinus, 1879 originally stood in a niche above a door at John Frederick Wiessner and Sons' Baltimore brewery. It is the earliest surviving zinc sculpture of this popular icon of the brewing industry in the United States."

The 2nd to last area was focused on the founding of Maryland and things Maryland is associated with like Oysters.

The "Pull My Finger" gag was invented in Maryland apparently.

Duck Pin Bowling came from here

There were also dioramas depicting early life here.

The last area focused on Civil Rights in Maryland.  Maryland was a slave holding state but didn't secede with the Confederacy.  Segregation was very common in Maryland into the the mid 1960s.

Black Newspapers shined a light on civil issues including public lynchings in Maryland.

Turns out when you call out lynchings in a public newspaper, the cities that have them get a bad reputation and get all whiney about the negative publicity but not about the actual lynchings.

We enjoyed our time at this museum but if you only have time for 1 or 2 my advice would be to go to the Baltimore Museum of Art and then the American Visionary Art Museum first.  Then it is kind of a toss up between this museum and The Walter.  

That's it for today.  If you missed yesterday's post you can find it here.