I visited the new museum for the first time today and was incredibly disappointed. I went specifically to see the visiting Ancient Greek exhibit which I thoroughly enjoyed, it was wonderful to see the ancient sculptures and pottery and was of particular interest to me because I have always loved Greek mythology. The Greek exhibit was amazing, I would give that a solid four and a half stars but unfortunately I can't separate my review of it from my review of the rest of the museum. It was wonderfully laid out with a logical flow of categories and information, it was calm and self paced and provided a calm and quiet space to learn and observe the beautiful ancient history before you. I could have spent hours in there, it was wonderful. But I was unbelievably disappointed by the rest of the museum.

The new architecture is sort of impressive from the outside but is bland and uninspiring inside and the buildings are incredibly confusingly laid out. The ground floor is disconnected from anything else and has areas where you have to exit one building and enter a completely new one for no reason and getting from floor to floor is also unnecessarily convoluted.

As for the actual exhibits themselves, they're incredibly boring, have almost no interactive elements, and are mostly poorly made plastic replicas. The original Perth museum had far more genuine specimens and artefacts and it appears as though they've just thrown away most of what made the old museum interesting. Maybe they just threw the actual ancient history in the bin, because none of it is on display in the new museum. I hope not.

There is almost no logical order to the way the exhibits are arranged, as well. I would have expected natural history to be in one area, human history another, etc but it's all jumbled up into incredibly nonsensical categories of "change" and "origin" instead, with displays of almost no connection next to each other. There is almost no flow or logic behind anything.

Also, there is very few staff around. During my visit, I encountered two staff at the front desk and one manning the paid Greek exhibition entrance, and that was it. There should have been staff at each exhibition at the very least.

It was also weirdly inaccessible for people with any sort of disability, particularly neurodivergent people like myself. The exhibitions are all far away from each other and anyone with a mobility issue would struggle to get between areas, and the exhibits themselves are incredibly overwhelming from a sensory perspective. There's too much going on in every area, with lights and sounds and sudden noises but none of it is of any substance and none of it provides any sort of interactivity, either. It's needlessly overwhelming.

Honestly, I wish they had left the old museum as it was. It may have been kitsch and old fashioned but at least the exhibits were interesting and you felt like you had learned something when you left.