Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner
The National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) has been by far my favorite museum we have visited thus far. However, it was not as physically accessible as I would have liked. While there is an elevator that is easy to reach from the museum entrance, it is not that close to the exhibitions and I did not notice any signage pointing to the elevator. If you did not take the elevator from the main floor, you may not know where it is on other floors unless you looked around or happened to pick up a museum map.
My main issue with physical accessibility at NMAI however, was the seating. While there were benches in the rotunda and in areas with video/audio installations, there were not many scattered throughout the object exhibits. The seating that was available in the exhibits was off to the side, in corners, or other obscure areas and not close to the object cases. If I wanted to take a seat, I couldn’t really view the artifacts or read panels from the bench. This made it difficult to see all of the objects I wanted to in a short period of time unless I bypassed the benches all together (which I ended up doing). Due to this, it felt awkward taking a seat and basically waiting out that need before moving on to continue your exhibit tour. It would have been nice to feel as if I was still participating in viewing objects while seated.
According to the website there are free wheelchairs available for visitors to use while touring the museum, however, it was not advertised at the information desk. Therefore, a visitor would not know about that option unless they asked or visited the accessibility page on their website prior to visiting the museum. I think that the museum is fairly accessible, but a few tweaks would make it better (put benches closer to object cases and readily display info about accessibility at information desk).
