MOHAI Grand Opening

Hey, folks. Just a quick post today -- it's a very Seattle-flavored two days for me, so I don't have much time. I'm off to see Pacific Northwest Ballet's Nutcracker (the *only* Nutcracker, in my opinion) in about an hour, so I'm just writing a quick note, in preparation for some much longer posts coming later.

Yesterday I treated my family to Museum of History and Industry's grand opening preview and we LOVED it. The new, 50000-square-foot museum opens to the public Saturday, December 29th, and I think I want to live there.

When you first walk into the building, a former armory, you're absolutely struck by how BIG and spacious it is. The hardwood floor is amazingly friendly (How can a floor be friendly? I don't know, but I swear it said to me, "Come in! Visit! Stay a while. Play!"), and the main floor is wide open. In all, there are four floors, but floors 2-4 line the walls, rather than being full floors stacked on top of the first floor (That might make more sense once there are pictures involved... Just wait a couple of days, I'll get them up.).

Since this is supposed to be a quick post, I'm just going to briefly mention the highlights of each floor, and I'll go more in-depth on subsequent posts.
First floor: The Rainier beer R and bottle with bottle opener; an Ivar's clam; the Shaping Our City tower
Second floor: Getting Started (an exhibit about Seattle as a growing city); Seattle's Great Fire; the Personal Stories tower (oral histories! Yay! Awesome); a film about Seattle's past and future in the Joshua Green Foundation Theater (I must remember to gush about the awesome music in that film and between showings). Also, the current special exhibit on the second floor is "Celluloid Seattle," an exhibit about movies and films based in Seattle, as well as theaters in Seattle
Third floor: the current special exhibit "Punctum/Poetry," with poems written by Seattle high school students, many inspired by photos from MOHAI's collection, and an oral histories wall, with videos of students interviewing each other
Fourth floor: Waterways to the World/the Maritime museum. Best part: the periscope.

I highly recommend that anyone who's interested in Seattle history (or the history of a growing city, or how a city grows from wilderness and Native Americans) go to the new MOHAI at some point. If you go, plan to spend the day. Seriously, the day. It took me nearly five hours to go through everything at a leisurely pace, watching all the films, playing with most of the interactive exhibits.

And as a bonus, as my family was wrapping up our visit for the day, a beautiful rainbow emerged, above the lake and boats, visible from the gift shop at the back of the museum. (You can see a great picture of it here.)