We went to The Tech Museum of Innovation today to see Leonardo: 500 Years into the Future, which I highly recommend.
We planned our trip to arrive for the 10:30am guided tour — the group was large, but fortunately the director of special exhibits for the Tech wandered by and took half the group (including us). His original plan was to take us to the paintings downstairs at the Tech proper and then rejoin the group, but he decided just to keep us, and I’m glad he did — he offered a lot of insights into the exhibit, especially how it came together, that I doubt most of the guides could offer.
After the tour (which lasted an hour or so), we wanted lunch. Since there is no re-entry to the exhibit, that meant we had to eat in “Leo’s Cafe”, which had a limited menu of rather overpriced items. If I had known, I would have planned to go to the exhibit for the noon tour and had lunch in Cafe Primavera or out in the Real World instead. But we survived.
We spent another hour or so wandering around the exhibit on our own (definitely not “by ourselves”, the place grew steadily more crowded); I was very glad we’d taken the guided tour first, because the signage wasn’t very good (the director mentioned that he’d gotten that comment from many people during the run of the exhibit), but after our orientation, it was sufficient. I probably could have spent more time in the exhibit, but I was tired.
Much to my amazement, there was a gift shop at the exit; even more to my amazement, it was positioned so that you didn’t actually have to go through it. But we did, escaping without buying anything.
After we left the Tech, we spent a few minutes gazing at the horse outside, which was a full-size production (I can’t call it a “reproduction” because the original was never built — the story was told in the exhibit, of course) of the Sforzo Monument. And then we headed back to the 21st Century and a trip to Magnolia to look at HDTV stands. But that’s another matter.
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