Science in Museums: Scientists – They’re Just Like Us!

by columnist Kacie Rice,

In the past few months I’ve become a bit obsessed with the American Museum of Natural History’s fantastic internet campaign celebrating the recent reopening of the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial. Launched last fall, the museum’s new website includes an interactive timeline, a series of videos about Roosevelt’s life, and, best of all, a Tumblr featuring pictures submitted by people around the world posing with a small cartoon cutout of Roosevelt. The pictures are diverse, interesting, and often funny – the project not only allows for global participation, but also humanizes Roosevelt, an avid naturalist and explorer who would doubtless be thrilled to find himself travelling the world by proxy.

Caption: Theodore Roosevelt meets a new friend in AMNH’s “Theodore Outdoor Contest.” Credit bseitznyc at TR Tumblr.

Roosevelt, our 26th President, was also one of the preeminent science advocates of his day, and his dedication to AMNH helped it to become the renowned educational institution it is today. The museum’s cartoon image paints a picture of Roosevelt dressed for adventure, looking a bit like a precursor to Ron Swanson, the beloved man’s man of TV’s Parks and Recreation. This is a sharp contrast to the aloof, unrelatable scientists we normally see in popular media: The Big Bang Theory’s awkward Sheldon, Star Trek’s unemotional Dr. Spock, and the quintessential mad scientist, Dr. Frankenstein.

This human element to the Roosevelt project got me thinking about the ways in which we talk about science in museums: while we discuss abstract scientific concepts, compare taxidermied specimens, or study dinosaur tooth morphology, we rarely talk about the people who have devoted their lives to giving us our scientific knowledge – the scientists! As a result, science is sometimes dehumanized and assumed to be a body of distinct and unchanging knowledge that comes directly from dense textbooks…and the scientists themselves can easily be reduced to a stereotype of a socially awkward geek in a labcoat.

But as any scientist will tell you, this couldn’t be further from the truth! Science is not handed down from on high; it’s done every day by real people with real lives, families, and hobbies. They drink beer with their friends after work, walk their dogs, and watch Netflix on the weekends. They get on the subway and go to work every day and try to figure out the fabric of the world: what are we made of, where did we come from, what happens if I put the blue stuff in the green stuff? They get many things about our universe right, but they also spend a lot of time correcting mistakes and revising theories. Many of them (myself included) do enjoy debating the finer points of the U.S.S. Enterprise’s Heisenberg Compensator, but just as many enjoy hiking, baking, watching sports, reading existentialist literature, and any number of other decidedly unscientific activities. Scientists – they’re just like us!

So how do museums fit into all this? I would propose three main reasons for the informal public science education that museum educators do:

1. Increasing awareness of scientific issues in the general public
2. Increasing interest in scientific careers in children and teens
3. Increasing public support for science initiatives and scientific policy issues

It is these last two points that would most benefit from a discussion of scientists rather than just science in museums. The more we humanize the people who do science, the more we can relate to scientific topics, connect with the people who make science their living, and maybe even see ourselves doing science. Personally, my love of science began with my childhood love of dinosaurs, but I don’t remember knowing much about how scientists learn about dinosaurs or where fossils come from. Imagine if alongside its exhibit on Sue the T. Rex, The Field Museum had an exhibit about Sue Hendrickson, the paleontologist who found her. The thousands of children who come visit Sue could then understand how we find dinosaurs and imagine their future selves digging up dinosaurs for a career!

In essence, this is the power of AMNH’s Roosevelt campaign. Through the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial exhibit, the interactive website, and especially the “Theodore Outdoor” photo contest, the museum has brought an important science advocate to life in a way that makes his work relevant to a new generation. I’d love to see other science museums take the lead in connecting visitors with Charles Darwin, Rosalind Franklin, or Isaac Newton, proving that science is a living, breathing entity done by humans, not a dusty old textbook of facts. It’s a sweet spot to hit between science and history, but interdisciplinary exhibits and programs can often be among the most powerful ones, building bridges to bring visitors closer to both topics. Let’s get out there and make our scientists household names!

Science in Museums: MakerSpaces and Museums

by columnist Cira Brown

Last month, Artisan’s Asylum, a community craft studio in Somerville (and one of the largest in the world), held a weekend conference entitled, How To Build A MakerSpace. The “Make Movement” is borne out of the Do It Yourself philosophy, which empowers individuals to learn fabrication skills, both technical and digital. Artisan’s Asylum holds classes on skills ranging from TIG welding to sewing, programming to bicycle maintenance, and provides many of the tools needed for these tasks. The Asylum also rents out space, mostly in 50-100 square foot allocations, and low walls are used as dividers. This arrangement creates a very open environment, resulting in a dynamic community where you can walk around and see a host of various projects, all in different stages of completion. There is even an ongoing project to create a 4000-pound, 18 foot wide, ridable hexapod robot named Stompy.

So, more generally, what is a MakerSpace? Taken from the Artisan’s Asylum website, they are:

“…community centers with tools. Makerspaces combine manufacturing equipment, community, and education for the purposes of enabling community members to design, prototype and create manufactured works that wouldn’t be possible to create with the resources available to individuals working alone. These spaces can take the form of loosely-organized individuals sharing space and tools, for-profit companies, non-profit corporations, organizations affiliated with or hosted within schools, universities or libraries, and more. All are united in the purpose of providing access to equipment, community, and education, and all are unique in exactly how they are arranged to fit the purposes of the community they serve.

Makerspaces represent the democratization of design, engineering, fabrication and education. They are a fairly new phenomenon, but are beginning to produce projects with significant national impacts; notable projects and companies to emerge from makerspaces include the Pebble Watch (a programmable watch whose team is the recipient of the largest Kickstarter campaign in history), MakerBot (creators of a low-cost 3D printer that’s revolutionizing the entire rapid prototyping industry), and Square (a painless payment gateway enabling small businesses to collect money easily worldwide), just to name a few.”

At the How To Build A MakerSpace event, keynote speaker Dale Dougherty (editor and publisher of Make Magazine and co-founder of Maker Faire) mentioned the importance of forging a relationship with museums several times. Museums already have an established presence in the community and many museum missions overlap with the goals of makerspaces. The museum realm has also been eying the Maker Movement, as evidenced by these recent articles and conference discussions:

Talking Points: Museums, Libraries, and Makerspaces
by The Institute of Museums and Library Services, September 2012

Unstaffed Maker Spaces? Don’t Event Think About It!
Museum Commons blog, January 2013

Maker Space: Cool New Attraction at New York Hall of Science
Mommy Poppins blog, April 2012

Not only do MakerSpaces provide a great extension for educational programming, but the potential for exhibit fabrication and prototyping is radically altered as well. I know of several people at Artisan’s Asylum who were contracted by museums to build exhibit components, and the Museum of Science even rents a space as well. I am even using the 3D Printer at the Asylum to create my own custom spinning tops for an educational demonstration on gyroscopic navigation at the MIT Museum. I’ve designed these tops with differing moments of inertia to provide visitors with an interactive experience on the concepts of angular momentum and precession. Maker Spaces enable and empower museum educators and exhibit developers to relatively quickly and cheaply augment their educational offerings. In my next column I’ll be describing this endeavor more in depth.

I believe that this is only the beginning of the overlap between MakerSpaces and museum education/exhibition fabrication. Just this evening, in my Exhibition Planning class, I learned that one of my classmates was helping organize a Maker Faire at the Children’s Museum of New Hampshire. There are many exciting and innovative happenings in this field, and I will be providing further examples in columns to follow.

As an additional note, I should also mention that I am a member and renter of Artisan’s Asylum and I’m happy to give tours to those who are interested! Contact me at CiraLouise AT gmail DOT com. The class listing for each month can also be found on the Asylum website.