Spring Break
Egyptian adventure at a low price
by Caroline Hughes
Arts | 2/10/09
Posted online at 1:58 AM EST on 2/10/09
Planning a trip into Boston can be daunting and damaging to one's mind and one's wallet. Want dinner in the Back Bay? Plan on spending at least a week's worth of P.O.D. market grocery funds in one night. Fortunately, this Brandeis student grew up in a suburb of Boston and is an expert on where to go and how to enjoy it cheaply.
My friends and I flipped through a guide to museums in Boston on a Saturday morning, attempting to find a locale where we could be both sophisticated and culturally savvy; however, the high prices discouraged us from visiting the science museum and the city's various historical sites. Then, we found an establishment that sounded both exciting and sexy: the 5W!Ts museum, which featured a price tag that fit our college budgets.
Okay, okay, I have to add a caveat here. In case you are not aware, Brandeis students can attend the Museum of Fine Arts, an internationally renowned art museum in Boston, for free. So if I really wanted to embody the spirit of this particular article, I would have visited the MFA. However, the MFA closes early on the weekends, so it is not a viable place to spend a Saturday night. Also, the museum contains historical, beautiful artifacts, masterpiece paintings and ornate sculptures, and it takes a certain type of intellectual Brandeisian to visit this particular museum on a Saturday: the archetypal college student sleeps until 2 p.m. and wakes up with a headache instead. I often embody that intellectual Brandeisian who inundates herself with Roman art and American modernity, but on this particular Saturday I sought excitement and action.
The premise of 5W!TS is simple yet adventurous. 5W!TS, a production company, has installed its current exhibit, "TOMB," in a local studio and turned the building into an ancient Egyptian burial site in keeping with the exhibit's title. The waiting area contained picture books of ancient Egypt, plastic statues of Isis and Osiris and wooden inscriptions of hieroglyphs. I eagerly perused a book with images of a crystal-clear Nile and gently swaying reeds. Since the show runs every 15 minutes, we did not have to wait long to be guided into the "debriefing tent," where we learned about our task.
My friends and I flipped through a guide to museums in Boston on a Saturday morning, attempting to find a locale where we could be both sophisticated and culturally savvy; however, the high prices discouraged us from visiting the science museum and the city's various historical sites. Then, we found an establishment that sounded both exciting and sexy: the 5W!Ts museum, which featured a price tag that fit our college budgets.
Okay, okay, I have to add a caveat here. In case you are not aware, Brandeis students can attend the Museum of Fine Arts, an internationally renowned art museum in Boston, for free. So if I really wanted to embody the spirit of this particular article, I would have visited the MFA. However, the MFA closes early on the weekends, so it is not a viable place to spend a Saturday night. Also, the museum contains historical, beautiful artifacts, masterpiece paintings and ornate sculptures, and it takes a certain type of intellectual Brandeisian to visit this particular museum on a Saturday: the archetypal college student sleeps until 2 p.m. and wakes up with a headache instead. I often embody that intellectual Brandeisian who inundates herself with Roman art and American modernity, but on this particular Saturday I sought excitement and action.
The premise of 5W!TS is simple yet adventurous. 5W!TS, a production company, has installed its current exhibit, "TOMB," in a local studio and turned the building into an ancient Egyptian burial site in keeping with the exhibit's title. The waiting area contained picture books of ancient Egypt, plastic statues of Isis and Osiris and wooden inscriptions of hieroglyphs. I eagerly perused a book with images of a crystal-clear Nile and gently swaying reeds. Since the show runs every 15 minutes, we did not have to wait long to be guided into the "debriefing tent," where we learned about our task.
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