After a busy day at Kilkenny and Glendalough, we took our time this morning to go to the EPIC Irish Immigration Museum. Since this was a museum that many people, from our tour guide yesterday to our historic tour guides in the very first few days had praised, I was excited to see what it was about. However, personally, I was a little disappointed in the museum, though it had its good points. The EPIC museum was built on top of an old warehouse, which served as a double edged sword since while it was cool to see the top of the warehouse being converted into a small shopping area and the bottom the museum, I felt like everything there was squished together and very limited to the given space. I am very spoiled since I grew up in Washington D.C. with all the Smithsonian museums to my disposal, so take this with a grain of salt, but overall, I felt like there were too many exhibits and not much dedicated to each one, and overall feels a little lackluster from the museums back at home. Though it is an unfair comparison to compare it to the Smithsonians, It still felt lackluster in comparison to other smaller museums in Philadelphia.

Nevertheless, I think that the presentation of the EPIC museum was very modern, interactive, and cool to see. Every room had a different style of presenting their topics, whether that was interactive displays to read information, activities that tested your knowledge, or screens that showed interesting documentaries. It was not an usual informative museum, where there are blocks of text explaining the history and its relevant artifacts, rather, an interesting take on the museum industry as a whole. Since today marks a week since we have arrived at Dublin, many of the exhibitions, from sports to music, communities and politics are things that we have heard from tour guides and historians in the past, but one thing that stood out to me were the various narratives that the museum displayed. Every display was not focused on the general history, but the specific narratives of real people and how their unique backgrounds contributed to the painting of the general landscape. For example, in an exhibit about the Irish community, it was interesting that EPIC made a video with people, dressing up as historical figures, talking about their background, interests, why they moved out of Ireland, and their significance. It was a different take to museums that I am used to, which would rather give a broad view of what happened, occasionally having sections where it would detail an important person’s life, but even then that still feels narrative. Overall, I felt that while the EPIC museum was not up to expectations, it offered a creative, different, and fitting approach to presenting its material. Excited to see the Cliffs of Moher and Galway tomorrow!