Could you please give me a feedback on this independent TOEFL essay?
Many people visit museums when they travel to new places. Why do you think people visit museums? Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.
When you ask me to present my vision on this matter, I would have to say it is a rather complex question. I would have to operate the notions of culture, heritage and perception as a reading and recognition of symbols, understanding of which is very wide and has a lot of layers of interpretation. It is hard to imagine, how to give a general impression of such complex categories in a short time, but I will try.
My first point refers to the understanding of museum as a print, as a concentrate of the culture of the particular time period, theme or even civilisation of the acknowledged geographical region. Originally invented as the collections of curiosities, museums were designed to present something unique and unusual, as well as the most beautiful art pieces, which belonged to the royal families and wealthy traders. As the rime go, they became more open to the general public and started to represent most valuable artworks of its period, the most important and talented artists and visionaries. The themes of the artworks were dedicated to historical personalities and most memorable events, and, of course, the religion plots and stories. As we can see, all of them had a strong link to the culture, and can be determined as its visual implementation, the revived images of the époque.
Second, which basically follows from my first point, is that all the images of the concepts mixed together are combined into a symbolic system of art, helping people to understand and communicate each other. Our mind is a system of associations and empiric knowledge, we perceive and evaluate the surrounding reality through the system of symbols. Some of them are very old and have a long history, so they work with our vision as instincts, others we learn during the socialisation processes, along with the absorbing the culture we live and grow up in. Thus, all the artworks can be interpreted by a human with this system of symbols, which they represent.
Finally, museums attract people as a place, where you can easily get into the local background, take a general yet deep impression of the main events and characters, and see about the cultural codes, which in the end will give you the spread vision of the place you visit.
In sum, I hope that this short essay has managed to present an adequate image of my understanding why museums nowadays are so popular places to visit while travelling.
