HOUSTON – I wanted to enjoy the shark special exhibit at the Houston Museum of Natural Science so badly.
For weeks, I led the charge on assigning coverage of the upcoming exhibit here at KPRC 2. The sharks exhibit looked amazing and my family had a great experience at the museum’s Trains Over Texas display over the holidays. I was excited to plan another museum trip for my kiddos who are both under 5.
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As a member of the museum, I was looking forward to getting the membership price of $20 each. It’s a little steep but we could handle that, right? The exhibit was going to have real sharks, after all?! Just so you know, the non-member price is $35 for adults and $27 for kids. (That price gets you into other parts of the museum as well.)
We went recently on a Sunday and got the 11 a.m. slot. I didn’t know the exhibit was timed, but no big deal, right? It was popular, I thought to myself. That was expected. It wouldn’t affect us. I initially thought the exhibit was in the main aquarium-looking area in the permanent exhibitions space where the trains are set up at Christmastime, but that area turned out to be the art of Texas State Parks exhibit (which I do highly suggest visiting). No, the sharks exhibit is in the lower level of the museum, past the space exhibit, down several hallways and past a random bear and wolf taxidermy and a long hallway of Egyptian hieroglyphics. The line stretched down the hallway. Children cried in strollers. My kids were so excited they could barely breathe.
We got to the counter, had our entry tickets scanned and walked in. There were two entrances which was a bit confusing. We, of course, went into the entrance closest to the megalodon, but quickly backtracked to the first room when we saw a line forming around the massive shark model. The first room reminded me of Ariel’s grotto in “The Little Mermaid.” On the walls were an interactive fish tank-like projection area. Sharks would “swim” by and visitors could get a closer look at them as they passed. Near the ceiling were large fish models that I think were in other museum exhibits, repurposed for this special event.
Selfies with “Meg”
In the long second hall is the main event – the megalodon. As I mentioned, the huge model dubbed “Meg” filled the long space with its massiveness, its jaws open. My sons wanted to look at the model’s mouth, but we quickly found ourselves apologizing because people were queued up for what seemed like miles to take photos with the fish. Selfies. “Would you take our picture?” “One more, one more.” My boys were so excited about the fish, so we joined the long photo line too just to see the model. Buzzkill. A woman in line took our photo. Dark. And likely not because of her photo-taking abilities. The exhibit was just dark. I was still smiling in that photo, but the joy didn’t last long.
Screentime limit exceeded
I wanted to keep going and keep upbeat after my little ones got a look inside the mouth. But there were so many screens in the exhibit that I felt my heart drop. We had just decided to limit screentime for our boys and here we were, opening the floodgates again. Good job with consistency, Mom and Dad. The exhibit didn’t know about that, but beyond our new family rule, I was just disappointed. Where were all of the exhibits with cool fish finds? The ratio of screens versus actual physical museum stuff was probably five to one.
Let me contextualize this all a little bit. I’m a big fan of 80s films that did not have CGI. I like the actual stuff of life. Please don’t simulate things and try to make me think it’s real. It’s not. In this case, when you’re paying for an additional exhibit at a museum, please don’t put me in a room with a big model, fill it with screens, call it an experience and, essentially, cash in. If the shark exhibit were anyplace else – one of these immersive experiences that you KNOW are going to be screen-based – that would be different. However, I hold HMNS to a different standard. They are an amazing institution and I think this exhibit just fell short.
Sharks are essential to our planet
The message of the exhibit, for instance, as you go through it is counter to the science of sharks in the world and counter to what the museum itself said the exhibit should be. The exhibit seems to play into the shark narrative of the man-eating killers of the ocean, as “Jaws” so infamously created in the ‘70s. One screen area actually shows the sharks coming up and slamming into the screens to frighten people waiting in line to see the living sharks. The screens had a warning over them that people with sensitivities shouldn’t interact with the exhibit. Imagine this: interacting with pretend screen sharks that are waiting to slam into the cage you’re in -- potentially to pretend kill you -- and then immediately interacting with living sharks -- albeit smaller ones. It’s just a completely jarring juxtaposition. And there were TONS of kids in the exhibit. This is the association that you’re setting up for Gulf Coast-area kids’ potentially first interaction with sharks, HMNS?
The scientific world urges that saving sharks is essential. The truth is, humans are the killers of the world’s oceans. National Geographic notes that 100 million sharks are killed each year in the world’s oceans.
Sharks are overfished and often get caught in nets or are killed in other accidental ways. I’ve learned more about sharks from my kids’ picture books and simple facts books than in this exhibit. The screen-based quiz on the wall seemed to begin to address this, but another group was using the lengthy quiz and my kids didn’t want to stand there and wait until someone else was done with it. Who would want to stand there and watch someone else answer questions at a packed exhibit? Not a child and not an adult. But this was where the actual knowledge about sharks came in. A true missed opportunity in presentation. Why not take out a few of those attack shark screens and make more touch screens for the quiz?
Education is critical to conservation. Creating an EXPERIENCE that feeds people’s fear of sharks doesn’t help.
Even the description on the HMNS website harkens back to the “Jaws” narrative:
“We’re gonna need a bigger exhibit hall.
“Debuting on a floor all to itself is Sharks! The Meg, The Monsters & The Myths. We’re making your dreams come true and bringing you up close and personal with live sharks for a hands-on experience that will be – dare we say – jawsome. You’ll get a chance to touch a shark and discover what makes these creatures unique – from bait balls to bioluminescence.
“Further immerse yourself in the world of sharks as every order of shark known to mankind is represented within the exhibition, including a life-size model of the ancient behemoth, the Megalodon. And don’t forget to pick up a few Megalodon teeth of your own in the island shop.
“Don’t miss out on the frenzy and purchase your tickets today!”
The world should see beyond that to understand these misunderstood ocean predators before they are extinct. This exhibit could have helped that narrative, but instead it continues to foster fear of these animals.
Out of reach
After waiting in that line (with the scary sharks slamming loudly into pretend tanks), we made it to the tanks to see the real sharks just before their rest time. But it seemed the sharks were already resting. These nocturnal sharks chosen for this exhibit were already dormant. You could touch them, but only if you could reach into the tanks. I brought two small children into the exhibit. They were excited to touch the sharks, but I could barely reach into the tanks as an adult. What were my choices then? Lean my children – the beloved ones I’d carried for nine months -- over the tank in an attempt to reach the sharks or hold them up to see them and try to explain that they could see the sharks but not touch them. The choices were both bad.
By the way -- I loved the idea that the sharks had rest time. I’m not the type of parent that’s upset if the animals are resting at the zoo. I hate visitors who prod or taunt an animal to have it perform. That’s so not me. But I’ve been to touch tanks and this was NOT an ideal setup. The tanks were large with access only on one side and the sharks were so far out of reach that you really had to lean over in order to reach any sharks. The museum had to know children would want to get close to the animals as advertised, but I felt like I needed arm extensions to touch them. How many other disappointed parents were there who actually did dangle their kids over the tanks to reach the sharks because they wanted the full ‘experience’? Yikes. My kids were upset that I wouldn’t dangle them. The thing that I’d talked about for months -- touching real sharks -- did not happen. We held them up to see inside and got them as close as we could.
After hustling through the exhibit to make sure we saw the living sharks before they rested, we had to go upstream against visitor traffic to go back into the exhibit to see the rest of it.
Cool things up high
There were some pretty cool prehistoric sharks with crazy mouths that I spied on my way in, so we decided to look that over. There was also a shark model that I wanted to show my boys that demonstrated sharks’ sixth sense. The shark model’s head lit up when your hand came close to it. A very cool, tactile thing that kids could see to understand a more complicated concept. This was probably my favorite part of the exhibit, but it was up high – like so many things in the exhibit.
I picked my 35-pound son up to see it and felt something crunch in my back. I hadn’t realized how much I’d been picking up my kids to see things. And then that happened.
After that, we looked around a little longer -- I loved the model of the shark in the womb -- and then I just gave up, back aching.
Here’s an idea, museum exhibit creators: Please employ flip-out stools in your exhibits like you do in your museum bathrooms to help kids see the exhibits you market so hard for them to visit. It would make everything SO. MUCH. BETTER. for everyone -- especially moms who have to visit the chiropractor after visiting your exhibit.
The gift shop
We exited through the gift shop -- the only option. My sons did what nearly every child exiting did -- went straight for the large bin at the center of the shop filled with $90 shark stuffed animals.
Let the crying symphony begin. My kids and other visitors’ kids really wanted those sharks. The large ones were $90. One dad I overheard trying to reason with his child: “You can get a better shark than this on Amazon, right?” These are the stories we have to tell, the logic we have to try to spin.
My kids aren’t fans of logic. My husband and I decided we were not paying $90 for a stuffed shark, and especially not $180 plus tax for two sharks. My boys really wanted those sharks. I wanted out of that grotto-looking gift shop. Trapped like Ariel, I found a porthole and -- just like Dory -- kept swimming. Like we always do. My kids, tears streaming down their faces, eventually followed us out.
If you had a great time at this exhibit, go you. We found some commenters on Facebook who enjoyed it. One wrote: “We loved it! Next time I’ll go without the kids so I can read everything!”
As for my family, I’ll take my kids to the library next outing, and we’ll learn something. And next time at the museum, we’ll stay in the permanent halls of HMNS where, it seems, the spirit of museums still lives and leave the “experiences” to the selfie crowd.