Amber's responses to our confusion regarding some of the culture halls' seeming inconsistencies got me to re-framework them, to a certain extent. First of all, the idea that keeping everything in present tense is very purposeful because such depicted events and rituals ought to be fluid...This is something I agree with. Perhaps it's "better," or less judgmental, ethnographically, to withhold from placing definitive labels on cultural phenomena about which we will never fully know. It is not as if the Hall of African Peoples is completely open to interpretation but the information is limited. This might be for a real reason of which we're not aware.
Again, such a re-frameworking applies to the way I thought of the halls before. I wondered why there was hardly any consistency: why are there mannequins in some halls, and not in others? Is there a way to tie all these cultures together, like patterns - a wedding in one culture, a wedding in another? Why are the layouts and lighting so different in each hall?
Thinking back, these questions were a little ignorant. To keep each hall consistent might imply that there really are "patterns" in these cultures. That's a narrow way of looking at them: everything is set up differently because everything IS different.
That said, the Culture Halls need, desperately (I think) some technological updates...
(I apologize for the late response.)
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