the old palace of fine arts exploratorium had a working TESLA COIL !
Sure, a tesla coil is flashy and a pretty awesome (in the biblical sense) demonstration of man's harnessing of electricity, but they don't really tell you much about how electricity works. A simple snap-together circuit with a battery, some wires, and some incandescent light bulbs does a much better job of that.
They don't add substance to the exhibits, they don't attempt to educate, they just attempt to tap an adjacent market for the same dumbed down slop.
(Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of the _idea_, just a huge critic of the _implementation_.)
I want the actual exhibits and content to be able to teach things to adults and not just signs with “wacky trivia” meant to engage kids for two seconds while they sprint to the next thing that has a button for them to push (e.g., one of the worst genre of “wacky facts” are stupid size comparisons about how things are bigger than X football fields or Y school busses).
Tl;dr You could get drunk while you’re watching Zoboomafoo, but that doesn’t suddenly make it it for adults the way that an Attenborough documentary is.
“SCIENCE FACT! Republican voters are known to be morons who don’t want to learn anything! Like and subscribe!”
"Scientists find super duper magic unobtanium which does mystical things that will revolutionize the world!" Click through and "Bob found a conductor with slightly lower resistance than a previous material. It's created by a 500 step process which results in an organic chain that breaks down in temps above -40C."
The issue with the medium is every day needs an exciting headline. So they make them up rather than waiting for them to come.
It often seems like these adult themed exhibits are generally just a bunch of signs which are copy/pasted from wikipedia.
On a more serious note they do or did offer free lectures that were much more in-depth; one of the things I rather miss now that I live abroad.
On the other hand, zoos seem to have become more adult-oriented and less children-oriented over time.
I'm still unsure whether changes I see are all about the facility or partially about my changed perspective. I visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the La Brea Tar Pits in the past decade, and I found neither of them stands up to my memory of them from 1980s school field trips.
(For what it's worth, there are plenty of non-interactive and thus boring-for-kids science, technology, history, etc. museums if you look around.)
However, I have to say the computer history museum in Mountain View was nice and felt serious. So I think placing all science museums under one umbrella is a bit harsh.
A lot of the weird, experimental, and experiential pieces seemed to scratch the novelty itch that they might otherwise get by running around or touching stuff. We were all ready to leave at the same time … or actually, I wanted to leave before they were ready, so it wasn’t like they got bored quickly. They are not uniquely quiet or well behaved kids, either—quite chaotic a lot of the time, really. I think a lot of people don’t give kids a chance to experience these kinds of places because they assume the kids won’t do well, which is too bad.
The current exhibition is "where visitors are invited into the artist’s imaginative world and encouraged to participate in a process of transformation — quite literally — through hats, masks, and performative gestures. The shelves overflow with peculiar faces and twisted creatures, and on the green monster stage, anyone can step into a new version of themselves."
"The exhibition marks the first chapter of CC Create, a three-year educational and exhibition initiative that transforms Hall 4 into an open studio for play, learning, and co-creation. Specially trained hosts are on hand to guide visitors in exploring their own creative potential in dialogue with Chetwynd’s art."
Last time I went, the interactive kids bit had a huge wall and a massive bucket of darts and visitors would contribute to the artwork by throwing additional darts at the wall. This is very kid-friendly if the kid is Danish.
https://copenhagencontemporary.org/en/cc-create-x-monster-ch...
PS - the Children’s Museum in Indianapolis is ridiculously good for kids.
The Christmas lectures are probably the most famous thing they do, and these have definitely moved in a more 'child' focussed direction. If you were attending the Christmas lectures in the 1850s however, the audience would have been middle class victorioans, and you'd have had Michael Faraday telling you about electricity, forces, chemistry etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Institution_Christmas_Le...
I would recommend attending one of their lectures if you happen to find yourself in London, just to be in the building, and to sit in the lecture theatre!
The Philadelphia Zoo also has events planned specifically for adults. My girlfriend and I went to one a few months ago. I'm not sure what specifically about the Philadelphia zoo, the Bronx zoo, the Shedd aquarium, etc. is for specifically geared towards kids, though.
Often there's little or nothing further even in the museum shop. It's a crying shame.
We pointed this out to a worker that day. Several years later, we went back to see that the exhibit had not changed. I'm not sure if it's still there today.
But back in the 70's, OP's museum -- Franklin Institute (fi.edu) -- used to have serious lectures, classes, and even some research. Upstairs there used to be lecture rooms, a library, and classrooms.
Now, if you go to a science museum and think "only a kid can enjoy that". Then the problem is not that it is a place for kids, it is that it is just bad. It is a thing Disney understood very well, its classics may look like they are for kids, but they are actually enjoyable by everyone, and it is a big reason for their success.
As for art museums, the problem is that they are usually just exhibitions, and to be honest, that's boring, especially if you are a kid. That's unlike a science museum where they actually try to teach you science. It is only interesting if you are already well into that kind of art, and most kids aren't (yet?).
History museums are kind of a middle ground as they can do the double duty of teaching history (mostly for kids) and showing off artefacts to people who are already into that (mostly for grownups).
I'm not sure how you can look at the current state of scientific literacy in America and conclude this.
> art museums, the problem is that they are usually just exhibitions, and to be honest, that's boring, especially if you are a kid
There are historical, thematic and philosophical aspects to art that make it beautiful beyond the aesthetic.
Those are in the eye of the beholder though. In many cases they are things I still don't care about after learning about them. An ugly painting doesn't become any more interesting to me when I learn about the struggles the artist went through - a lot of people do find it more interesting - good for them, but it isn't for me. (then again the paintings I'm thinking of most people thought were nice even before they learned about the artist...)
Personal struggles? Sure. An ugly painting that opens the door to me learning about a war or revolution or system of government I was previously unaware of? Or a style or medium enabled by a new technology of the time? That can be fun.
I live near a large collection of wildlife art. I can't say many of them are beautiful. But noting how wolves have been portrayed over millenia, and across cultures, was a genuinely interesting exhibit. (In America, they went from ferocious creatues to essentially dogs, to the point that most wolves in art today are not physiologically wolves.)
Adults outside a field do not go to conferences.
> As for art museums, the problem is that they are usually just exhibitions, and to be honest, that's boring, especially if you are a kid.
Some kids are interested in art. It can be well presented. You can have guided tours aimed at kids.
If you want science for grownups, you have conferences.
I work at a history museum, and we serve both students and adults: whole range of people. Conferences aren't designed to communicate science (or any specialized topic) to a wide audience.
Also, that it is for kids doesn't make it impossible to enjoy as an adult, especially if it is about things you are unfamiliar with.
This can be true, but children and adults learn differently. We have lessons and interactives that are designed for both, and activities that are geared towards kids. The way we write information for children in our programming is very different from what you'd see with adults, because of how we have to break the information down in ways that is understandable to them.
If you go to a science museum and think "only a kid can enjoy that". Then the problem is not that it is a place for kids, it is that it is just bad. It is a thing Disney understood very well, its classics may look like they are for kids, but they are actually enjoyable by everyone, and it is a big reason for their success.
I don't understand this line of reasoning: if a science museum appears to be designed for kids, there's likely a reason for that: they're working to communicate science to kids. That doesn't make it bad: it might just mean that they've put a lot of focus on their primary audience. Disney isn't designed for kids: it's designed for families, and they put a lot of time and energy and resources into that design. (Museums can take a leaf from their book and strategies!)
As for art museums, the problem is that they are usually just exhibitions, and to be honest, that's boring, especially if you are a kid. That's unlike a science museum where they actually try to teach you science. It is only interesting if you are already well into that kind of art, and most kids aren't (yet?).
History museums are kind of a middle ground as they can do the double duty of teaching history (mostly for kids) and showing off artefacts to people who are already into that (mostly for grownups).
I think both of these points are overly broad, and every institution and every exhibition is different: it all comes down to how well they design their programs and exhibitions. There are plenty of art museums that go beyond a mere exhibition.
As for history museums being a middle ground, I don't agree with that at all: kids are fascinated by physical objects! Adults love to learn about the history behind those objects! These aren't mutually exclusive things. It ultimately comes down to intent and installation and implementation.
So if I want to learn more about electricity which conference is a good one to attend?
Seeing the real Apollo 10 (I don't remember which module) sticks very clearly in my memory.
I also rode on a "heritage" train recently, and what struck me the most was that the interior decor of the passenger cars looked as though it had been designed for and by grown-ups.
The only part that made it back to Earth was the Command Module, so if you saw something from the actual Apollo 10 mission, it was the CM.
https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co40509...
The National Gallery used to do great guided tours for kids, explaining paintings in a fun way.
Anyway, among US museums of natural history & science, a prominent exception is the AMNH in NYC: yes there are things for kids, but also things for "grownups". After dozens of visits I still learn something new every time.
https://www.gla.ac.uk/collections/#/details?irn=16534&catTyp...
I was 33 years old... I'd love to go back and do it all again.
Science is universal. It crosses time and language barriers. The underlying physical principles are immutable. Kids can be expected to understand science museum exhibits after a few minutes of explanation. You can't explain the historical and social context behind a painting in just a few minutes to a kid.
To be fair, that's what I remember children's museums being like in the 1980s as well. A significant number of exhibits would be temporarily out of order on any given day.
I don't think screens are responsible for that. Maintaining physical exhibits that can survive constant physical contact with kids is hard.
I started to understand a whole lot of class or even guild warfare stuff from the past when I start to see what happens when skilled workers start to scheme for their gain against the common good. I also don't just accept unions as being good for everyone anymore for the same reason.
The sad reality is that skilled workers are just like the hot waitress index. When the economy is bad, it's a lot easier to get the cream of the crop for those who still have money. The fact that everything is still somehow decent for a few more months is exactly why it's insanely difficult to source any kind of labor for a reasonable price. Since no one can source this labor, they simply don't and do without.
Shit stayed open late during the recession. Good thing Trump is trying his hardest to put us into another one right now.
It's called "what the market can bear" and it's what corporations with marketing and sales professionals have always tried their best to do; charge as much as you possibly can without losing business. Of course, it only actually works when there is competition, and so the rising prices are kept in check by undercutting competition.... and then, _that_ only works when the undercutting competition is working to the same quality (by a code, ideally) and is subject to the same economic pressures so that it can level out fairly. If the competition is all fresh immigrants with lower CoL, or if the competition is cutting corners, all bets are off. You end up with a race to the bottom, where each individual is trying to be part of a race to the top at the same time... everyone wants more than they're worth, but those who are actually doing the best work still aren't getting what they deserve, lol!
A free market actually requires a lot of surrounding regulation to work, just like any other freedom. It's always been strange to me that Americanism seems to view freedom as the fundamental condition of man, hampered by law; ultimately most freedoms come from rule and order, because they can carve out space for one to enjoy freedoms with far fewer negative consequences.
I think mass market paperbacks in standardized sizes hold up pretty well considering everything. My collection mostly from the 1970s and 1980s held up pretty well up to 2010 but they are going yellow now because of the acid paper. Libraries rebind them and I notice they have a lot of rebound paperbacks of the same age that have the same yellowing mine have despite better storage conditions.
Some trade paperbacks are fine but because they're not really standardized quality is all over the place. I've bought some where the binding broke the minute I spread the book out. Hardcovers are more consistent than trade paperbacks but some still fail early.
Then there are just the accidents like the book I had in my backpack when I was outside in heavy rain but I think that was one book wrecked in about 300 circulations.
And it might even bigger than that: the wonder of the digital world may be retrospectively giving us unfair expectations of meatspace uptime.
I took my niece around the Natural History Museum in London recently, taking in the new 'Darwin' extension first. It was a liminal space of sorts with lots of broken screens. The tech had not been updated in a decade or more so you had Adobe Flash Player running, complete with the crash pop-up messages to let you know what version of Flash they were updated to.
The idea generally was to have a large touch table with a projector in the ceiling showing an image that could be interacted with. My 8 year old crash test dummy still enjoyed the screens, which was no surprise given that she is addicted to her tablet.
The touch table (however it worked) was not quite registered to the image projected on it. Some exhibits (screens) had a 'tell a friend' feature where you could enter an email address. However, all of the 'keys' were off, so you press 'Q' and you get 'W', or 'N' and you get 'M'. I persisted and entered my sister's email address.
Did she get the email?
What do you think!!!
Some of the screens had the toughest armour I have ever seen. ATMs are soft targets by comparison. I had never seen whole keyboards made of stainless steel before and found the level of vandal-proofing to be absurd.
Admittedly the throughput of the museum is absurd, in the UK every person gets to go there at least five times, once with mum and dad, another time with one set of grandparents, then with the school, then, as they have their own kids, they have to go again, then it is rinse/repeat when they are a grandparent.
The reason for going is dinosaurs. But they got rid of 'dippy' from the entrance hall.
Before you get to the entrance hall there is the begging chicane. This is a ridiculous entrance route back and fore between a dozen different begging bowls to support them financially. If you choose not to pay up, then you can then spend the next six hours not speaking or interacting with any humans apart from the ones you arrived with, except for maybe at the giftshop.
There were no annexes with staff doing talks, nobody apart from the beggars to greet you, but plenty of screens.
The brief for the new wing was to have scientists doing classification of specimens in such a way that they were on show, a 'working museum'. But nobody wanted to work in goldfish bowl conditions under the gaze of hordes of kids.
I don't want to dismiss the place in its entirety, the gardens outside were lovely even though they have a motorway-sized road next to you with considerable noise pollution. That's right, the place we send all our kids to for the big memorable day is made toxic with the filth of car dependency. The air is utterly disgusting there just because of car dependency. The whole area is full of museums and the whole lot needs to just be pedestrianised, but no, it is clogged up with those cheesy 'status symbol' cars people buy in London.
So there is this wall of cars outside and this wall of screens inside. Then the daylight robbery in the gift shop.
We didn't do the full tour, got to save some for the parents and school trip. But we did go to the earthquake room. It is modelled on a Japanese shop and shakes every few minutes. Shakes is being kind. A garden swing or any wheeled vehicle does a better simulation, clearly the hydraulics have lost some of their zest.
The 'climate change' room was also a little off. Maybe this is a leftover from when they had the likes of BP sponsor the place.
I was not going to let anything spoil my perfect day out with my niece, so I wasn't miserable about the place when I was there. However, on reflection, the dilapidation was a glimpse of the future, a future where museums have screens to interact with but no staff to interact with.
That reminds me of something I’d love to learn a bit more about: the Strong Museum of Play. It appears the Wegmans’ supermarket exhibit where kids are able to work with real point-of-sale equipment has actually gotten equipment refreshes over the years itself, and I was really amused to see how far they went to have a “fully working” setup in the exhibits for kids to play with.
https://www.museumofplay.org/exhibit/wegmans-super-kids-mark...
The checkout counters are actual IBM/Toshiba SurePOS lanes, with actual current Datalogic scanner scales, and they’ve got a OS4690/TCxSky install and SurePOS ACE running on every single lane. (Or, at least, one of those registers has to be a controller+terminal, the other 5 lanes have to bootstrap off at least one lane, so they’re all networked, too!) They’ve also maintained enough of the store configuration so receipts look just like a store receipt and all (of course, with the Strong Museum as the “store”). And yes, you’re told to only push certain buttons and only scan stuff that’s inside the environment… ;)
Over the years they’ve swapped out the lanes from the old white to the modern Slate Grey, upgraded the scanner-scales, but the UX is still the same as it always was.
Six months after the exhibit opening the Jenny was removed from that location, never to be returned to that exhibit. Because sometimes museum guests aren't just pushing things too hard, they are actively taking steps to destroy things, just to see if they can get away with it.
Can confirm.
It costs approximately $2,000 to frame a 36" piece of art to museum standards. A similarly sized LCD screen, on the other hand...
Art wasn't supposed to be a "by the square foot" kind of thing yet here we are.
Are these optional? If not, I don't see how this makes sense:
>It doesn't really have to cost that much.
Typical line-item cost ranges (USD) for a 36" × 36" piece
Conservation assessment / condition report: $150 – $1,200
Conservation treatment (if needed): $200 – $3,000+
Museum-grade framing (materials + custom frame + museum glazing): $800 – $4,000
Custom crate: $300 – $1,500
Fine-art transport (local/domestic): $200 – $2,000 (international: $1,500 – $10,000+)
Insurance while in transit/installation: depends on declared value (e.g., 0.2%–2% of value for a short transit, but many institutions roll it into exhibition insurance) — $50 – thousands
Installation labor / mountmaker / registrar time: $200 – $1,500
Misc (hardware, climate packs, small repairs, documentation): $50 – $600
Scenario totals (realistic museum contexts)
Modest / in-house, low-value work (museum does framing in-house or uses a local framer; local transport; no major conservation):
Estimated total: $1,500 – $4,000.
Typical world-class museum standard (professional conservation framing, custom crate, fine-art courier, conservator sign-off, installation by mountmaker/registrar):
Estimated total: $4,000 – $12,000.
High-end / high-value or international loan (specialist conservator treatment, museum-grade anti-reflective glass, climate-controlled international shipping, high insurance, specialized rigging):
Estimated total: $12,000 – $50,000+ (could rise much higher for multimillion-dollar works because insurance & security scale with value).
Incidentally, the building is featured near the end of the Shin Godzilla movie.
The Miraikan, in particular, is a fantastic science museum. I think it suffers a bit from what the OP is describing -- and also, a lack of English -- but for the most part it's interactive and uses technology in a really innovative way that goes beyond iPad fluff (an interactive seismograph room comes to mind, where you could move around and see the systems detect your movements in real time).
Good to know that there's another nice place to go.
And you just know that in board meetings of plenty of museums, someone is saying "We NeEd To MaKe ThE mUsEuM Ai-NaTiVe."
One must imagine their educators are crap
That said: iPads and screens do have their place and it really depends on how well they're implemented.
First up: "But these physical exhibits require maintenance, and I was dismayed to see that several are in bad repair; some of them weren’t even working anymore, some seemed worn out, or didn’t seem well-designed to begin with."
This is probably the key reason why there are so many screens in this particular museum: he answers his own question. Physical items, especially things with motion, will degrade with time and use, and maintenance can get really expensive. Physical models like a human heart aren't something that you can generally buy off the rack: museums and similar institutions will work with a company to produce something like that (I'm guessing fiberglass?) These are things that can run thousands and thousands of dollars to repair or outright replace.
But here's the other thing with a physical static or interactive display: once they're in, they're in. You can't really update them without actually replacing the entire thing.
Here's an example: at the museum where I work, we have a section about the Civil War: it had some uniforms, weapons, and a whole bunch of other items that told the story as it related to our mission. The panel that outlined everything stretched across the room -- it was about 20 feet long. When we pulled everything out to update it, we had to replace that entire panel. It was a good fix, because the room hadn't been updated in like 15-20 years, but if we had wanted to pull out any one item, we'd still have to replace the entire panel. That sort of thing can be an impediment to updates, because it requires a lot of work. We ended up putting in three panels, which will allow us to switch out objects more easily.
We also put in an interactive with an iPad that allows visitors to explore a painting in the exhibit in a lot more depth.
We've done a handful of these sorts of interactives, and as I noted up above, the experience really depends on the audience and how well it's presented. In our case, we aim for ours to be usable for a wider range, which means that we have to keep things fairly simple, so adults and children can use them.
"My wife — a science writer who used to be the only staff writer covering space for New Scientist and before that, worked at NASA — poked at one of these with my son, added too many boosters to their launch vehicle, and were told it failed “for reasons” in a way she found totally unhelpful and pointless." That doesn't entirely surprise me, because she's an expert and is really knowledgeable in the field! But you have to make sure that you're calibrating for your audience: most of the people using that likely won't have her experience or knowledge, and digging deeper and deeper into detail might be lost on most of their audience. (Not having seen it, I can't tell for sure.) It is good to have that depth of knowledge be available, if you have audience members who do want to go further, but it could come down to limitations or be an exception that they didn't account for.
Digital interactives can also be swapped out quite a bit more quickly: if you have a new exhibit that you're putting in for a short amount of time, it might make more sense to have something that doesn't cost a lot if it's only going to run for months, rather than years. (Or if you find an error, there's new research, new updates, etc. -- a digital interface is easier to update than a static panel.)
On top of all that: cultural institutions are facing real crunches right now. There's a lot of uncertainty (and outright lack of support) from federal funding sources (which in turn impacts the willingness of private/state/NPO donors), and staff shortages that means everyone has fewer resources and fewer people to utilize them with. From where I sit, if we have to implement more digital content, we'll be able to repurpose the screens that we've already purchased to new exhibits and interactives.
Finally, there's nostalgia at play here: I have a ton of fond memories of visiting museums with interactives and huge displays, and I'm glad that I can take my kids to them as well. But I'm also happy to see that these museums aren't stuck in the past and the only thing that they're doing is rehabilitating old exhibits that are decades old or out of date: they still have some of those things, but they're also making sure to bring in new interactives, looking at new scholarship and best practices for museums (because museums aren't static organizations or fields!) to change as audiences change. Like it or not, there are a lot of people who use screens as a way to take in information: museums have to keep abreast of those trends, because if we don't deliver information to people in familiar and accessible ways, they probably won't come in.
I think this is a really key point; I've definitely felt slightly disappointed at certain exhibits, and had to remind myself that these things are designed for everyone. It would be lovely if every exhibit was pitched at exactly your own level, but as an adult, there are definitely areas where you are more knowledgeable than the general public, and so that's not possible.
You have to understand your audience, not design them. I frequently hear from folks who stop by our museum who tell me that they haven't been to ours since they were a kid, and they're generally not someone who keeps up with the field. I don't like the phrase "dumbing down", but it's something that we need to do in order to reach patrons.
Thank you for all the work you do :)
As far as 3D printing, we haven't dabbled with it, but we have had folks come in to scan our objects, which is pretty cool. But we're also a small staff that doesn't have the time to really dig into the tech as much as we could.
I'm really not sure what the problem is, given that these exhibits are there, popular and obviously accessible. Ok, the author has an issue with screens, but, hey, a lot of real science is done on screens today...
I would be very willing to watch them in full, but like most other visitors, I have limited time, especially when visiting a new museum in a different city. If you say observing a painting/sculpture in person is different from looking at a picture, fine, whatever, but making these videos only available in museums is sad.
The last time we visited Chicago's museum of science, this was the only acceptable use of screens for me ( https://www.msichicago.org/explore/whats-here/exhibits/blue-... ). That was genuinely well done and awe-inspiring.
The rest of the stuff that is basically just a lame tablet app is a waste of my ( and my kids )time and, well, money.
That said, and I offer it merely as a defense, if the goal is to interest kids, you want to meet them where they are at. Apps is where they are at. Granted, thanks to parents, but still.
I did enjoy walking around the enormous steam loco in the basement. That one room, where they seem to have stuffed all the old 'museum' stuff was the highlight of my visit.
The best science museum I've been to in years is in Glasgow. Walking across the I-beam compared to the sheet (or was it a bar?) of steel actually taught my kids something.
If it wasn't for kids, nobody would go to most museums (non-famous ones especially)
Kids are simply the demographic, because every parent is looking for activities to entertain the kids every day.
Interactive non-screen based exhibits that are designed for kids are the best, but if you can't have that for cost/know-how reasons interactive multi-media exhibits are a good second on the "it did a good job entertaining my kid" spectrum.
Actually learning anything is a secondary demand from the consumer when it comes to museums unfortunately. Entertaining the kids is number one, bonus points if it also managed to entertain the parents.
Sometimes you can't even get to the displays, without first at least walking through the room.
Whenever I walk by the vaguely muffled sounds of someone watching a movie in another room, I get nostalgic for childhood visits to museums.
This is one of the most memorable exhibits in TFI and thankfully still exists today.
1. Money. Most museums have no money. They either run on donations, on subsidies, or at the whim of wealthy patrons. They are very costly to run, especially the big ones. They are often in prime real estate areas, many require tight climate control, many also require specialised lighting to protect art etc.
2. Curators often see "taking care" of the exhibits as more important than actually exhibiting them. Not to mention they're often art/history majors with very little clue about anything digital.
3. Because museums are often subsidised, many of them are required to go through public tender procedures to get anything done. Because this is a huge pain for everyone involved, the results are often shit, as it attracts a certain kind of company to do the work. One of the tenders my startup looked at involved not only supplying the hardware and software for an interactive exhibit, but also the lighting and reinforced glass casings for various items. This was not our cup of tea, and the tender would subtract points for using subcontractors...
Personally I'm not interested in museums that are just glass cases with stuff without any explanation. Maybe a little paper legend is sufficient, but I actually prefer a screen which offers more info in the form of adio or video in multiple languages.
Depending on the exhibit, 3D printed replicas can be great as well.
This is less important for educational spaces like the one the OP describes -- strictly speaking, science museums often aren't museums in the classical sense. Preservation is less important there, although not unimportant.
I am not sure why you mentioned this, because it has nothing to do with the subject article. This was a very specific article about interactive, hands-on museums replacing their exhibits with touch screens.
That being said, I have also been to countless museums of many kind and I have never once seen a museum that did not explain what the exhibits were. Have you actually seen this anywhere, or was this hyperbole?
This is tripping my bullshit-o-meter. If it just failed "for reasons" how do you know it failed because there were too many boosters? Kinda sounds like the game explained that to them.
But it's not about what makes sense. It's about prestige, and about the ability to tell everyone "look at us, how forward we are!". This seems very clear to me, for instance, by the fact that the year 7 comp sci classes they teach in our local high school have what on their curriculum? Yep, that's right, you guessed it: AI. Because that's apparently the absolute basic CS that every student should start with these days.
Education is only one example, of course. But it's really creeping into everything. That museums have screen everywhere is no surprise. After all, flashing screen surely release more endorphins than non-interactive physical exhibits, so if you want to attract young folks, the pressure is on.
We also had a course in "computers" in high school. We had to know by heart the contents of "File" and "Edit" menus for Paint in Win3.1. Windows95 was just came out that year, so naturally the curiculum had not adapted yet. Anyway, guess how useful that was. The only one student who knew how to program got an F in the course :)
It was, of course, a way to teach nontechs how to use computers, as misguided as the material was. So, in that light, starting with AI makes sense. Would be nice to also include a bit more technical course, but apparently knowing where and when a poet was born is more important.
While I personally suspect that social media and by extension phones are detrimental: what you're writing here is opinion, not fact.
Just like adding tech was an experiment which seems to have been accepted all over, removing the tech again is - at least to my knowledge - in experiment phase, too.
And because a real experiment would take roughly 12-20 years (students performance from start to finish, until they're gainfully employed)... Neither of these approached have really been validated. It's all speculation, because there are so many other reasons that could explain the issues we currently have in our schools
And frankly - even though I honestly believe that social media is bad for them - I sincerely think its nowhere close to being the main reason for dropping performance, inability to take responsibilities or whatever else people are saying about the current children.
Do you not consider the period prior to the tech? It was a significant amount of time.
I'd love to be able to sell location-based XR experiences to museums: like you go to the paleontology museum and put on a headset and now the museum is a mixed reality Jurassic Park. For that matter I'd love to set up a multiplayer VR park in a big clean span space. There are a lot of difficulties like the cheap headsets don't really have the right tracking capabilities for a seamless location-based experience [1] plus getting together and paying a team which can deliver that sort of thing. A museum with really robust funding could probably afford an XR experience and subsidize development that transfers to other museums but I can't see the economics working for turning an old American Eagle at the mall into a VR experience park: malls have unrealistic ideas about their spaces can earn and most of them have posts in them that player would crash into.
[1] It already knows where it is the instant you put the headset on and it doesn't have to retrain like the MQ3 would.
It was incredibly depressing. We decided to send our kids elsewhere.
[1] Nothing against digital art, but I strongly feel young kids should be working with actual physical materials.
Some context as a local though, the Franklin Institute’s special exhibit space rotates every couple of months and I imagine they’re put on by outside vendors who move the exhibit from venue to venue. The special exhibits for better or for worse more akin to Disney World or the pop culture museum in Seattle. I’ve been to a bunch of them and they’re usually quite good, but they don’t represent that tactile learning experience at all.
Many of us Philadelphians really lament that the place isn’t as well maintained as it should be. It was the field trip destination for so many kids and I’m sorry OP wasn’t able to recreate that same level of magic for their kids.
The truth is that the traveling exhibits (Body Worlds, Harry Potter, etc.) make a lot more money for them and do not require the ongoing maintenance burden. They have a reduced ability to design the exhibits as precisely as they used to and the physical stuff takes a tremendous amount of work and expertise to do well.
That said, the museum is run by people who care deeply about science education and the proliferation of touch screens is something they are sensitive to. The type of content has a lot to do with it (a physics exhibit has no excuse not to be 99% physical interactives), as does the fact that they tailor exhibits to many different styles of learning so that there's something for everyone.
I completely understand the incentives re: Body Worlds, Harry Potter (I've even seen an Angry Birds exhibit). But there's a fine line between a non-profit doing what it must to survive, and drifting so far from its mission that it no longer deserves to survive. TFI is still far from that point, but the trajectory is worrisome to me, so I called it out.
But there's no digital displays. There are screens - that are off.
The owner can barely make rent, even in that desolated section of real estate, so there's not going to be any snappy big screens or interactive software. But it's literally a museum of computers where no computers are computing.
As an example, one exhibition I found pure joy in that doesn’t involve screens is the Museum of Illusions. It's hands-on, mind-bending, and utterly delightful.
This had pretty much ended by 1980, unfortunately, and now they are enormously expensive.
I'd like to add that I feel frustrated when try out a screen at a museum and it not working (malfunctioning). I have been to NASA's Kennedy's Space Center (KSC) many times (like 5-6). Although they have got most of the exhibits working in good order, some of them are broken or not functioning well anymore. I still appreciate KSC (am an annual member), but I wish there is some philanthropist or the government fund to renovate these museums periodically...
divbzero•2h ago
moduspol•2h ago
Well, maybe just Universal Studios. And I guess their brand emphasis is on movies, but still: does EVERY ride need to be heavily reliant on screens?!