I have visited many museums and art galleries but I am rarely moved by looking at old things and pieces of art I can barely understand.  I wish there was a place where I can go to enjoy the experience of just being somewhere else: an experience gallery.

An experience gallery is divided into several rooms.  Walking into each room, one can see, hear, and smell some far off places on earth or even completely imaginary landscape projected onto one or more walls.  Rooms are related around a single theme which could be location or something more abstract like emotions.

Imagine walking into a room to find yourself standing at a Japanese Zen garden or ten feet away from a stream of molten lava.  You can enjoy the gentle blow of wind accompanying the harmy of the garden or smell the surfur in the air above the lava.  How about walking into a broken down house in India to become part of a poor Indian family along with all the foul smell and despair you can take in.  Perhaps you will see something that will make your life more bearable.  Can a 5,000 year-old pottery or Mona Lisa smile do that?

The cost of putting on experience exhibition can be subsidized by foreign countries looking to increase tourist to their countries.  Experiencing the place will be far more compelling than brochures.

Update:

I think the same can be done in the street too.  Imagine walking into a tunnel, at a subway perhaps, and finding yourself in Fallujah with bombs falling and bullets flying.  You don't need a reporter telling you what is going on.  Just being there is enough.