London's museums

There are so many museums and galleries in London that even people who have lived there for a long time do not know them all. Some are traditional museums, but many are now making their exhibitions interactive, or hands-on, to encourage people to touch and understand what is on display. At the Science Museum, visitors can carry out experiments. At the Natural History Museum, visitors can find out how to look for fossils on the beach. At the National Gallery, the country's main art gallery, visitors can call up paintings on computer screens, find out about them and then print out a plan with their location indicated. The Clink Prison Museum is a reconstruction of a seventeenth-century prison. Visitors can look at a typical cell and heavy leg irons and chains.

At MOMI, the Museum of the Moving Image, almost all the things on display move. You can see how the first film was made, listen to the latest stereo systems and watch the news from the 1960s. You can design your own cartoons, read the news on TV and fly like Superman over London. The museum is moving to a brand-new building, which opens in 2003.

1  Do you like museums? Why (not)?

2  Which museum would you prefer to go and see? Why?

Michael Vaughan-Rees, Geraldine Sweeney, Picot Cassidy: In Britain; Cornelsen Verlag, 2000, page 78