S is for ... Small ... Significant ... n ...Six ...

 

Hello and welcome! to another A-Z series on M-i-V... 

All through April I'm posting on the broad theme of Museums & Monuments Across the World - mostly those I've been to and a few on my bucket list that I haven't been able to visit yet. Museums are one of my favourite ways to get to know a culture, they sum up what those peoples want to preserve and pass onto their grandchildren, the facets they want to show their foreign visitors, how they perceive, present and preserve their own storyline and that of their interactions with the world. Come museum hopping with me!

S is for the Sixth Floor Museum

Museums tell stories and not all of them are about fantastic, feel-good stuff like painting and sculpture, or about the heady, forward sweep of civilisation. There are some stories that are super scary or baffling or both. And even the feel good ones - like the touring exhibition of Dutch masters I talked about earlier, have their darker side. The backstory of museums and their collections, the story of secular still life in art  - well, those stories are underpinned by colonialism and slavery, by violence and unimaginable hardships for colonised and marginalised populations. The Dutch, French and the British East India Companies were private corporations with vast trading networks and their own ruthless militias. Entire European economies were built and supported by colonialism from the 16th to the 20th century, for nearly 500 years. One must be aware of this aspect of museums also. 

So today I'm switching things up and going to the Sixth Floor Museum -  a tiny museum telling a dark story from the sixties - that of an assassination which changed the history of the USA and shocked people right round the world.

'JFK was here.' Commemorating the President and his last motorcade. 

The Sixth Floor Museum is located in Dealey Plaza in Dallas, at the crossroads of Elm Street and Houston Street, the exact spot from where President Kennedy was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald on 22nd November, 1963.  I was there in winter 2023 on the 60th anniversary and there were banners marking out the route the Presidential motorcade took on the day.  Inside the museum, both the magic and the turbulence  of that era are highlighted through photos, press clippings, artefacts and videos. The key areas of the crime scene have been recreated.  A Mannlicher-Carcano rifle of the type that was used as the assassination weapon is one the exhibits. 

The main exhibit on the sixth floor: John F Kennedy and
 the Memory of a Nation.

There are over 90,000 exhibits including oral histories, images, artefacts, video and films, press clippings and narrations. All in all it is a compact bird's eye view of the few days that changed the course of history as well as an exposition of the life and legacy of JFK and the overall churn of the sixties. Thought provoking and a little gut wrenching at the same time. 

Images of the inauguration in 1961.

I was born the day after the funeral, obviously I have no memories of how my immediate family might have reacted to the news. My mother was a fan of Mrs Kennedy and JFK, they were the ultimate power couple of that era. Like many other stories, she was the first one to tell me this one too. It was sombre but somehow also satisfying to visit the museum and the JFK Memorial and to connect the two - the stuff I'd heard with the stuff I was seeing, albeit decades later. 

A sense of the issues.

The annual visitor numbers to the Sixth Floor Museum varies between 250,000 and 325,000. In 2023, the year I was there, the museum recorded 258,000 visitors. The Sixth Floor Museum has a detailed website which can be accessed by clicking here. Much of it is digitised and can be viewed virtually as well. 

S is also for St Fagan's National Museum of History

St Fagan's is an open air museum located in St Fagan's, Cardiff, Wales. Its exhibits consist of buildings from all over Wales, from the past centuries to post WWII, which have been dismantled and brought into the museum and reassembled exactly as they were at their original sites, showcasing Welsh lifestyle and architecture and their evolution over time. The oldest structure in the museum is dated to the 12th century, restored to its 16th century form - a Church still being used for worship at Christmas and Easter.  

The oldest structure I saw was a farmhouse dated 1470, restored to 18th century state. There is an Elizabethan castle located there, the grounds are basically where the reassembled buildings have been placed. The castle is being roofed and is closed at present due to the construction work. There are working mills - wool and flour, craftspeople plying there trades weaving, smithing etc. a toll gate, a pigsty, a row of workers cottages depicting the interiors from 1800 to 1980s. In all over 40 different buildings. 

The Kennington Farmhouse

The detailed label explaining the history of the building and its use.
The paint is red ochre, and it indicates that the famiiy was relatively
wealthy as they could afford colour, most people couldn't. 

All very interesting and quite a unique take on presenting history to the lay public, especially young people who are always the main targets of museums. There were docents in period appropriate costumes to answer any questions visitors might have.  

The oldest building I saw.

And its label. The record keeping is meticulous and superbly impressive.

One of the things that struck me as I moved in and out of the various houses is how dark (literally) and  hard life must have been for the common people who lived in them in the past centuries  - without electricity and running water, without a scrap of mechanisation. Especially for the women, but also for the men, tending to animals and keeping farms running 24/7 without a break.  Coping with serious diseases without antibiotics and vaccines. Makes one uber-glad and grateful for being born in the 20th century! The  so called 'good old days' were good only for a tiny sliver of the rich elite, for the hoi polloi it was a horror show of daily drudgery at best and an early death at worst.

The fire was real and kept going by staff. Beyond it, everything was darkened. 

St Fagan's recorded around 570,000 visitors in 2025, generally its visitors number more than half a million annually. It is Wales' top rated cultural attraction and one of the most popular in the UK. Read more about St Fagan's at their site by clicking the link here.

Another candidate for S is the Science City in Kolkata, a science museum  which I've been to innumerable times with the son and his cousins when  they were small. very popular with children for its interactive displays and other moving and touchy-feely exhibits. It attracts over 1 million visitors every year. 

~~~ 

Did you know that the Welsh language was suppressed by law? Following the Acts of the Union in the 16th century, English was made the official language and the use of Welsh was banned in court. Students were discouraged to speak it in classrooms. Fortunately that changed in the previous century. Everywhere I went there were bilingual signage and labels in both English and Welsh. However, it is still classified as 'Vulnerable' by the UNESCO and a minority population, estimated at various points to be 20% to 33%, speak Welsh. 

Thank you for visiting and reading. Have a wonderful A-Z if you are taking the Challenge and a wonderful April if you're not!

Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2026