Never thought I'd be writing a semi-negative review for an art museum of all places but here we are...

I visited on a weekday with my two older, well-behaved children in tow. We are NARMs members so we get in for free. (I would recommend buying a membership thru a reciprocal museum as it gets you into hundreds of museums, historic sites, etc for free. We bought ours from a museum closer to us on either Black Friday or Cyber Monday for 20% off, which was perfectly reasonable given how many museums we can get into for free for a calendar year.)

We homeschool, & since I draw a salary of $0 & our town takes & keeps all of our tax dollars to educate other people's children in the public school system, I am always looking for creative, wallet-friendly ways to enhance our children's educational experience. Hence the membership & a mid-week trip to an art museum where we get in for free.

I reminded our kids that art museums are places where we use indoor voices, walking feet, & we don't touch the art. (They know this, but I wanted to remind them.) The guy at the front desk was friendly. The guy at the door was friendly. And it sort of went down & up & down & up & down from there... Was stared at by a younger-ish female "guard" in one area, even though everything was behind glass & there was no way we could touch it even if we tried, which we didn't. Trying to make us uncomfortable so we would "move on"...? Get bent. Myself & my well-behaved children have just as much right to be there as anyone.

(Honestly I wasn't even gonna bother writing a review, but after reading about other's experiences here with their well-behaved children, it seems there's definitely a culture of constant negative bias towards even well-behaved children, here, so yeah, I'll take the time. They should probably work on that...)

The cafe is absurdly slow even when no one is there & it's ridiculously expensive for the teensy portions of food you get. I might get a drink here sometime but I'd never get food here again.

We visited a sad, depleted little "children's" area, where the iPad was too slow to function & there weren't enough supplies to do the craft they had set out. (Maybe instead of pestering patrons & trying to make them feel uncomfortable, more on that in a sec., at least one of them could replenish this area... Just a thought...!)

We talked to two nice employees there, an older man & an older woman. They were nice enough. A little frustrating though to be followed & interrupted when I'm trying to talk with my children about the art. Whatever, they meant well though & were nice, so I was friendly.

There were two white men, however, who were just insufferable. 1.) Apparently, patrons are not allowed to lean on blank walls, even if they're far from the art & no where near knocking anything over or making a mess. 2.) I guess bring a laser pointer (???) to point out something specific on a piece, bc if you get "too close" to the art, even if you're a capable adult who is clearly not going to touch the art, you will be talked down to as if you're a toddler. 3.) There's one "guard" in particular who just had the worst "RBF" I've ever seen; he followed us around, staring daggers as if we were there with a can of spray paint or something. Seriously. And not like we were there doing what literally everyone else was doing, which was trying to appreciate the art. (What a novel concept... In an art museum. Wild...!)

They seriously need some training on how to not be lousy human beings to families. We will most definitely be back because ALL children deserve exposure to art, it's not just for the elderly & childless.