Tag: science in museums (Page 6 of 7)

by columnist Catherine Sigmond

Although I work in a science museum, I’m fortunate to have the opportunity to work and debate with colleagues from a range of disciplines at Tufts, particularly those in the art world.

Lately it’s got me thinking- why is there such a distinct separation between the arts and the sciences?

As a product of a multi-disciplinary education (I double-majored in History and Biological Anthropology and minored in French linguistics in college), this is a question that is constantly on my mind. And the more time I spend working in science museums and interacting with art museum professionals at Tufts, the more regarding, presenting, and teaching art and science as separate disciplines makes less and less sense to me.

Think about the common phrases “right-brained” and “left-brained.” Those deemed to be more “right-brained” are generally regarded as creative and innovative, while those seen as “left-brained” are viewed as being more analytical and logical. In other words, the creative right-brained folk are supposedly more artistic, while the left-brained, by contrast, are more scientific.

This division between people’s capabilities in art and science permeates several aspects of our lives- how we view our potential career options, what household tasks we think we will be able to complete successfully, the hobbies we pursue, the way we gage our ability to succeed in certain subjects at school, and a whole host of others.

It’s clear that most people assume that the ways in which artists and scientists view the world are inherently different from one another. And museums haven’t entirely escaped this trend. More often than not, art museums and science museums tend not to be in dialogue; seemingly assuming that the types of content they aim to teach visitors are too distinct from one another to be reconciled.

But if we disregard content and instead examine the ways of thinking that each type of institution seeks to impart upon their visitors, many of the overlaps between the two disciplines become abundantly clear.

When I go to work, staff and volunteers are trained to teach visitors that:

“Science is an activity: It is a way of asking questions and learning about the world that involves collecting objective evidence through observation and investigation, finding patterns in the evidence, and using these patterns to make predictions and develop testable explanations about the world we are a part of.”

And many art museum educators use Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) to facilitate structured, open-ended discussions where visitors are asked to “look carefully at works of art, talk about what they find, back up their ideas with evidence, listen to and consider the view of others, and discuss many possible interpretations.”

Despite some small differences, these ways of thinking overlap immensely. Both ask visitors to spend time investigating and making observations about what they see, challenge them to discuss these observations with their peers, make predictions about the cause of their observations, support their ideas with evidence, attempt to explain or interpret their ideas, and keep an open mind to a multitude of possibilities. Therefore although the arts and sciences appear to be markedly different, in reality they both rely on some of the same core values.

So why is there so often a disconnect between the artistic and scientific processes in the public eye? Why are kids often made to feel that they must choose one or the other, and what can museums do to change this?

I believe that museums, art and science alike, should begin by recognizing that the skills they are trying to teach are really one and the same. Despite the commonly held notion that scientists are not creative and that artists are not analytical, nothing could be further from the truth. If you work at an art or science museum, why not provide programming, develop exhibitions, or create interpretations that help visitors of all ages explore the relationship between the two fields and begin to understand how they overlap? Both art and science museums can and should play a role in combatting the notion that students will ultimately have to choose between one discipline or the other, and in doing so inspire truly creative design thinking.

Because what happens at the intersection of art and science? The answer is simple: wonder.

As Jason Silva puts it, it is at this intersection, “this intellectual collision of seemingly disparate bedfellows, that something magical and unexpected happens: new patterns emerge; new connections are forged between previously unconnected ideas and inspiration reigns.”

Of course, there are many institutions that are already doing amazing things to help the world realize that art and science are not really so different, and that neither field should be intimated by the other. One of my favorites is the Exploratorium, which employs “Staff Artists” and “Staff Scientists” and helps visitors explore everything from the science and art of severe storm visualization to the art and science of listening and sound. And art exhibitions that incorporate living things such as the upcoming CUT/PASTE/GROW exhibition in Brooklyn (and their recent crowd-sourced bioart mosaic at SXSW Create) are inspiring new approaches to aesthetic design and ecology.

But this trend must not stay limited to a small number of institutions and venues. Art and science museums should rethink their relationship with one another, perhaps embarking on new partnerships to help visitors explore the relationship between their respective fields and encourage innovation and creativity through a diverse variety of outlets.

As Mae Jemison (the first African-American woman in space, a medical school graduate, and a near-professional dancer) claims in what is possibly my all-time favorite TED talk,

“the difference between science and the arts is not that they are different sides of the same coin, even different parts of the same continuum, but rather, they are manifestations of the same thing. The arts and sciences are avatars of human creativity.”

How can museums blend art and science to help foster this creativity? I wonder.

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!

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.

by columnist Cira Louise Brown

When I tell people that I’m going to school for Museum Studies, I often encounter confusion about what the profession actually entails (“you’re going to be a curator? … what is a curator?”). Once I explain that I want to develop the exhibits for science museums, I’m usually met with something along the lines of, “oh wow – people actually do that?” I remember my similar epiphany about six years ago, realizing that exhibits are indeed created by real people.

So who are they? One of the first things I did after the big “a-ha!” moment (apparently a common occurrence among my peers in the Museum Studies program), was to try and learn more about the backgrounds of exhibit developers. How did they arrive at that coveted position? Through researching and networking (and an admitted abundance of LinkedIn stalking), I’ve found that there isn’t a clear path at all, though a graduate degree in Museum Studies or Education is frequently cited. Some people were previously teachers (at all levels of schooling), while others have backgrounds in architecture and industrial design. Some are academics, completing immense amounts of scholarly work before moving on to the museum sector, while others were artists and sculptors, sometimes even having their own work shown in a museum. An overlap from the library field can be found, with archival work often being presented for public display, both in the physical and digital realms. Those familiar with best practices in collection management, from classification frameworks to restorative techniques, are almost always needed as well. Fabrication specialists, ranging from carpenters with decades worth of hands-on experience to experts in material science are vital in the creation of the exhibit, with the tactical aspects of an exhibit often being among the most decisive experiential attributes. People with a history of working with nonprofits and local organizations tend to transition toward the museum field, which can be expected since almost all museums strive to support their community. Evaluators, with knowledge in psychology, sociology, statistics,and educational philosophy, are vital to the creation of a successful and meaningful exhibit, all the way from conception to refinement. Ever increasingly, backgrounds in computer science and interaction design are skills that prove essential, with digital components becoming ubiquitous and information visualization becoming a booming industry in and of itself. And we can’t forget those with managerial and budgeting skills who are tasked with orchestrating and steering this whirlwind of creative energy!

With all of these trades meshing together under the umbrella of exhibit development, I have to wonder if there is another field that rivals in the variation of its constituents. Of course, this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. These collective backgrounds are representative of the sheer magnitude of differing skills that are essential in building a successful exhibit. All strive to create a singular exhibition that is simultaneously tangible and abstract – an exhibition is an experience!

As I look through this landscape of museum exhibit development, I am continually finding tensions at play within the creative process. The design of an exhibition must be visually appealing and engaging, but also must still comply with universal readability standards and not incite visual fatigue. There is a fine line between being captivating and obnoxious, and the developer must find that balance. The information presented must not be so dense to turn off visitors, but must be interesting enough to hold the attention of those with prior knowledge. Then there is the persistent issue of making an experience distinctive and authentic, something that lends itself well to the museum venue, and cannot be easily replicated in a book or on a website. With interactivity easily achievable on websites and apps, standards for what makes an engaging museum exhibit are raised significantly. Even the degree of interactivity is a point of contention – I was surprised to learn that a component can even be considered too intriguing, potentially stagnating the foot traffic in an exhibition that generates revenue by the number of tickets sold.

Having just completing an exhibit development internship at the Museum of Science and currently creating interactive demonstrations at the MIT Museum, I’m fortunate to be able to observe and participate in this creative process firsthand. I always refer to exhibit development as a craft, based not only on the various skills needed, but also that I believe it’s best learned through active participation, a summation of endless tips, tricks, techniques and lessons learned. I’m eager to explore these themes through a series of blog posts, each focusing on a different facet in the development process. Stay tuned!

by columnist Catherine Sigmond

Maybe I have a weekend of blizzard-induced daydreams of traveling far and wide (anything to get out of the house, really) to thank, but recently I have been craving a more global perspective when contemplating the museum world.

According to Museum Planner, seven out of the ten most visited science centers in 2010/2011 are located outside of the United States (data for 2012 is still being compiled).

Last week, one of these top visitor-grossing museums opened an exhibit featuring a £640,000 ($1 million) bionic man complete with artificial organs, synthetic blood, and fully functioning robotic limbs.

“Rex,” as he is being called, was created by a team of roboticists for a new documentary entitled “How to Build a Bionic Man.”

And though his stature may be small compared to that of his dinosaur predecessor, his precision grip could certainly prove formidable to our familiar three-clawed friend.

The bionic man, currently on display at the London Science Museum, is part of an exhibition exploring changing perceptions of human identity with a focus on recent developments in robotics and bionics.

Along with the documentary, which aired last week on the UK’s Channel 4, the exhibit sheds light on recent developments in bionic technology and introduces visitors to the ways in which science is allowing people to enhance their bodies, overcome disabilities, and transform their identity through mind-boggling developments in medical technology.

Take a look at this short video featured in The Guardian to see Rex in action.

Sadly, the bionic man is only display until March 13th, 2013. So what else does the second-most visited science museum in the world have in store for those of us who can’t get to London before then? Well, according to their masterplan (which I think we can all agree should henceforth replace ‘mission statement’ in the American museum lexicon), the museum is planning a series of changes that should only serve to increase their already staggeringly high visitorship (2.7 million in 2010/2011 alone).

The renovated museum will feature a new Media Space opening in September 2013, as well as a new permanent gallery “celebrating the inventions and technologies in communications that have transformed our public and private lives” launching in 2014. Also in the works are new exhibitions on maths, the role of spectacle and display in 18th and 19th century science, space, and medicine in the 21st century.

So despite the fact that, like his dinosaur namesake, bionic Rex won’t be sticking around for long, you’ll be sure to see some exciting things if you pay the museum a visit next time you’re across the pond.

For more features on some of the fantastic initiatives taking place at the other six most-visited international science centers and museums check back every Wednesday.