Planet Word — Attraction in Washington

An off-the-National-Mall museum that charges (suggested donation) for tickets is suspect in a city full of world-class, free museums. Despite the stigma, Planet Word Museum is a must-visit while in Washington, D.C. The museum takes a potentially dry subject like language and brings it to life. Here's why you should visit:

1. Exhibits: The experience starts before you open the doors into the museum. In the outdoor plaza near the entrance is Speaking Willow Tree. Stand under it and hear hundreds of different languages.

Move inside, let the staff scan your ticket (most visitors reserve a pass online, but they do accept walk-ins at the top of every half hour) and take the library-designed elevator (or stairs) to start the inside exhibits from the third floor.

The exhibits are very interactive using screens and digital art to tell the story of language- how we form words, spoken word, etc. A few highlights:

The Spoken Word- iPads surround a lit globe with speakers from around the world on the screens teaching you their language (Russian, Turkish, Vietnamese, etc.).

The Library- a stunningly-designed library with all types of books is on the second floor. Pick out a book and bring it to the long table to learn more about it through digital art. Find the hidden poetry nook somewhere in the library.

Joking Around- A large room teaching you about the art of humor. You can even play a humor game with a partner to see who has a strong joke game.

I'm Sold!- on the first floor is a little room teaching you how writers come up with ad copy. A quick tests your knowledge as you walk through a little maze.

There are many other interactive exhibits throughout the museum from a photo booth to a recording studio to an area where you can do karaoke. It's a perfect museum for children!

2. Space: The museum is inside a restored 1869 Franklin School in downtown D.C. Designed by the same man behind the Smithsonian Castle, Adolf Cluss, it was one of eight public schools built in the city to use a standardized curriculum, setting the stage for education reform in the country. Eleven years later, inventor Alexander Graham Bell tested his first wireless communication from the Franklin School. Fast forward a few decades, and the Franklin School housed a homeless shelter before becoming Planet Word. The museum tried to maintain many of the original floors and design.

3. Location: It's just off newly renovated Franklin Square Park in downtown D.C. close to the McPherson Square Metro and Metro Center Stations. Because of its location, it's easy to get to- by Capital Bikeshare, walking, etc. If you're hungry, Immigrant Food is inside the museum as well as other great spots like- The Best Sandwich Shop, Slipstream and Michele's.

4. Staff: The entire staff are genuinely friendly and helpful. They are throughout the museum to help guide you and answer any questions.

5. Accessibility: They incorporate sign into their exhibits and is wheelchair accessible.

6. Price: When you reserve your ticket online, you can give a suggested donation between $0-$15. If you can afford it, give $15. Compared to other museums in the country, it's a reasonable price. If you can't afford it, you can opt to pay nothing, making it accessible for all income levels.

7. Gift Shop: On the bottom floor behind the main lobby is a gift shop with a diverse selection of books, D.C.-centric goods and language-centric clothing. For example, you can buy a Scrabble-designed purse. Budget at least 15 minutes to brose the gift shop.

If you plan to visit, reserve a ticket online. Note that it's open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday through...

Really cool idea to have a museum about language and the admission is free with optional donation. We arrived a little less than two hours before closing thinking we'd see a bit and have to come back to see the rest another day but I was sad to see it's not very big and we easily saw all we needed in under 90 minutes. A lot of the museum are screens on the wall with different topics related to the room (advertising tricks, telling a joke, etc.) which consist of narrated slides and a microphone so you can "talk back" to the display which offers some interactivity in that you can get the question right or wrong which elicits a different narration to start the next slide. Its neat but a little shallow, although I'd be hard pressed to tell you a better way to display language. The Word Wall is very cool but seemed to have a short (under 5 minute) presentation which just repeated but again had some interactivity through a handful of microphones each viewer could use (different answers from people to one question had the narrator say "Whoa whoa! I hear a few different things but lets assume you said...."). The highlight was a library which had mirrors which when you read a plaque out loud the mirror lit up and displayed BEAUTIFUL dioramas from the book your spoken line is from and it would then read another paragraph from the book and under the mirror/diorama was a drawer that when you pull it out talked about a theme or idea from that book. I'm not doing it justice, it was enchanting and cool and educational all at once. LOVE LOVE LOVE the library! Another room had great potential but didn't work right: paint buckets of adjectives which if you put the brush in then then waved over the wall it would change a projected scene to match that descriptor (tempestuous made it rain, magical made things sparkle and change color, ect).

If you're in the area with an hour or two to kill then I'd say its worth a look but maybe offer a donation at the end as it may be a little empty depending on your love of language, words, and how people communicate. I wanted to love this place more but it just wasn't quite what I wanted from a museum just to see a bunch of...

What a fun museum! I visited at 10am on a Friday. There were probably a dozen other people, so it was quite easy to space out and see everything. There were a few technical glitches and some displays were not working but this will all improve with time. It's still a great time to visit.

COVID safety precautions: capacity is limited, masks are required, there are sanitizers throughout, you can borrow a stylus when you arrive to touch the screens, and you can use your own headphones on most installations. I might have missed this but I think they should also have you agree to a list of conditions when you get your passes online, ie: you do not feel sick, have a temperature, etc. The passes are free and released on a rolling basis. I did not receive a confirmation so take a screenshot just in case. I don't think you actually need a confirmation email but if you want one, just DM them on social media.

The entire museum is digitally interactive. It takes some time and patience to interact with the exhibits. If you're like me and have a constant pull from your phone to multitask just try to focus and turn that mode of your brain off. I wound up spending an hour and 45 min and didn't even see everything!

The exhibits have speech recognition AI that is still learning. It was difficult to speak loud enough through a mask in a room with other people talking for it to hear me but you can always just click buttons to move to the next screen.

An unexpected high point of my visit was the music room that has a karaoke set up. I am not an extrovert or musically inclined and had a great time singing (socially distanced) with strangers. If you're not paying attention you could miss the educational explanations of song structure and elements of hooks and such but you will be entertained for sure! It was such a nice release from being quarantined for so long!

I hope in the future they offer language classes and an exhibit on preserving endangered languages, but right now they're doing great and the experience is really different from any...