Looking at artifacts in a museum is entirely different than looking at the same artifacts in their natural state. What a museum does is put these various artifacts into a historical framework that can help the viewer to understand what context to put the knowledge of the artifact into. A museum uses a variety of ways in which to do this. It can be as simple as the layout of the museum, the way the lighting focuses on the artifact, the way the objects are dispersed throughout an exhibit, or the amount of information and background presented with the object. When I was in Hawaii, I visited Pearl Harbor to see the USS Arizona Memorial, which is also considered a museum. The order in which the artifacts and information were presented created a large emotional impact on everyone that was there. It began with a walk-through of various artifacts taken from the wreckage and from WWII in general. After giving the visitor a sad background into the war's beginning and end, groups of visitors are brought into a theatre room where they watch a video of the United States' entrance into the war. After watching actual footage of the Japanese attacks, the video concludes with a few modern day facts about the memorial site. After this, a shuttle takes the viewers out to the water where the Arizona is submerged in water. Lists of the names of the men that died are listed on the memorial, giving the viewer a somber depiction of WWII.
http://www.nps.gov/valr/index.htm
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