Hello!
Recently, my Dad and I went on a trip to Saratoga Springs, NY. We dove deep into the horse racing world while we were there! It was also the week of the Belmont Stakes, so being downtown and everything really put you in the mood. We also did a day at the racetrack, which was my highlight of the trip! I did a post about it, you can check it out here. And I did a post here about the TV show we watched while we were there, “Race for the Crown.”
Before we left for the airport, that morning we went to the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame. Not only did it have a lot of cool information and items from horse racing over the years, but it’s also the home of the Hall of Fame for horse racing. It includes horses, trainers, jockeys and other important people in the sport. There are around 500 total people/horses in the Hall of Fame.
It was really modern, organized and well designed! It had a nice mix of stuff to read and stuff to look at. They had a lot of items and trophies from famous horses, so that was neat! They also had QR codes around the museum that you could scan and it’d take you to audio recordings for whatever gallery you were in, which was a good idea.
Overall, it was a nice museum! I would like to go back and see more of what we missed.
What’s something you liked about it (and why)? I liked the video that we watched! It was about horse racing and the Hall of Fame. It was very cool, they had a whole theatre for it. We sat on the outside perimeter and it projected onto the four screens that dropped down and on the walls. I liked it because it was about a topic I love, obviously, and because it was very well produced and inspiring, I’m a sucker for stuff like that! The theatrical experience was very neat too- how it projected onto the screens and all above you. They also had touch screens around the room where you could dive deep into the horses and people inducted in the Hall of Fame, which was cool. We didn’t get to look at them much, but from the little we saw they were very well organized and a great feature!
I also loved the starting gate replica they had! That got my attention right away, it’s super interesting and very cool to see what it would look like in the moment that the starting gate opens, to feel that power and to have the opportunity to walk around the life-size replica. That was a very neat addition!
What’s something you disliked about it (and why)? I didn’t really want to spend more time there in the moment, but now that we’re gone, I wish we could have looked around a bit more. We saw quite a lot but I would’ve liked to go deeper into the galleries we saw, and also to see some of what we didn’t see, including the Steeplechase Gallery and the Anatomy Gallery because they looked pretty interesting. I’d love to learn more about Steeplechase, that really interests me! But it’s not always fun to go deep into everything in one day, especially when it involves lots of reading. I also wish they would’ve had some less stuff to read, I didn’t really like that because it’s not my favorite part of museums. But it’s still a museum, and as for how they go, that one was pretty well designed and had lots of cool items and things to look at too!
What was your biggest takeaway or lesson? One of my biggest takeaways was learning more about the Hall of Fame, I didn’t know really anything about it before this! I still don’t know a ton, but being introduced to it, the categories, some of the people and horses in it and how people and horses who are still alive can be inducted were all new things I learned!
Also, after seeing all the colorful jockey silks that they had hanging up and also that picture below of the sheet of paper with all the jockey silk designs someone had made, a big takeaway from going here was the desire to design my own silks! I love the idea of mixing creativity, color and the systematic nature of them all. They all have to look pretty similar. But I love their bright colors and how you can play with which ones you choose and which patterns you do.
What is something you’re curious to learn more about as a result of this experience? As with the post about our day at the races, I’m curious to learn more about horse racing! Our whole time in Saratoga Springs, including visiting this museum, was the reason for that. I had been wanting to learn more about it before, but all this certainly intensified it! Seeing all of the neat items, the cool jockey silk stuff, watching that video and seeing the real-life people who love horses and love what they do, and all the other stuff they had that just immerses you in this world, it really makes me curious to learn more!
Thanks for reading! God bless!
Lucy
