I was struggling to find an attraction between Monroe, LA and Dallas TX to break up today’s drive. I settled on a small museum, near the State Fairgrounds in Shreveport, LA, called the Louisiana State Exhibits Museum mainly because it was highly rated on TripAdvisor and close to the Interstate. Their website was not detailed and seemed to focus on their 23 dioramas. Dioramas are nice but didn’t seem particularly distinctive.<\/p>\n
The museum is small but in a beautiful circular building constructed as part of the “New Deal” and finished in 1939. I had planned to stay one hour but left, much more knowledgeable about Louisiana, after two. The reason for the lack of detail on the website became apparent as I progressed around the gallery. It simply seems to cover almost every major activity in Louisiana from ancient times on.\u00a0 Natural history, human activity, farming, industry, home-making, development, geology, Mardi Gras costumes etc. etc.<\/p>\n
The small dioramas of which they are so proud are excellent, showing daily scenes from cotton growing to oil exploration and salt mines. The strange thing about the museum, and probably why it has “Exhibit” in its name, is that each exhibit simply presents a factual snapshot of life without discussing cultural issues or the social environment in which the activity happened. For example, farming dioramas showing life in the 1800s simply show black people working in the fields with no discussion of slavery. In a way it was weird but the “just the facts” approach was instructive to learn about many aspects of life in the state.<\/p>\n
![\"Louisiana](\"http:\/\/relativerest.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/Louisiana-Museum-Interior.jpg\")
The building is beautiful and a single circular gallery with the dioramas on the outer wall and other exhibits in the center and along the inner wall. Two laps were needed to see everything.<\/p>\n
![\"Dioramas\"](\"http:\/\/relativerest.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/Dioramas.jpg\")
The craftsmanship of the dioramas was superb – all done by the same model maker. This one shows a pulp and paper mill.<\/p>\n
![\"Louisiana](\"http:\/\/relativerest.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/Louisiana-Museum-Diorama.jpg\")
You can see the amazing perspective in this one although they were only about four feet deep.<\/p>\n
![\"Louisiana](\"http:\/\/relativerest.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/Louisiana-Museum-Cedar-Log-Boat.jpg\")
A cypress log boat built in 1035 by local Caddo Culture Native Americans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Monday, March 14 2022 Map of route and road video I was struggling to find an attraction between Monroe, LA and Dallas TX to break up today’s drive. I settled on a small museum, near the State Fairgrounds in Shreveport, LA, called the Louisiana State Exhibits Museum mainly because it was highly rated on TripAdvisor … Continue reading A Fascinating Museum<\/span>