Science Museums Attracting Customers And Controversy

Insert Where Science Museum Professionals Meet Statistics bear out a growing recognition of science museums as a major source of science education in the United States. According to estimates from the Washington, D.C.-based Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC), the number of people passing through the turnstiles of science museums annually has risen from about 50 million in 1987 to close to 80 million in 1994. And ASTC officials speculate that the number could be as high as 125 million. INTERPRETING IMMUNOLOGY: Barry Aprison with Chicago museum's new AIDS exhibit. But some highly controversial exhibitions over the past few years also demonstrate the need for administrators of these institutions to be very careful about how they present information to the public. Concerns have been raised over such issues as accuracy and balance, as well as sensitivity to museums' constituent populations. In addition, some scientists, educators, and even museum officials have expressed reservations over whether the scientific message of these exhibits may be lost in high-tech bells and whistles increasingly being used in their presentation. "Science museums have a great potential to really help society become scientifically literate because they attract enormous numbers of students and their parents and teachers," maintains Bassam Shakhashiri, a professor of chemistry at the University of Wisconsin who was assistant director for science and engineering at the National Science Foundation from 1984 to 1990. "In the past eight to 10 years, museums have made a deliberate attempt to capture the attention of the audience." He adds that he believes devices such as robotics "are an appropriate vehicle to sustain a visitor's interest." At the same time, he notes that "these approaches need to be constantly looked at and evaluated to make sure that the participant is learning something worth learning." Shakhashiri points out that museum officials "are sensitive to these things, but I think it's still important to keep on reminding ourselves about it." ENGAGING EXHIBIT: The Chicago AIDS exposition used comic-book style graphics. For their part, museum staff and administrators acknowledge the controversy and challenges, but see them as an inevitable part of the job. "As museums move into showing the process of science," says Alan Friedman, director of the New York Hall of Science in Queens, "if it's going to be any fun, we're going to handle subjects [such as AIDS] that are controversial. We're going to deal with things where there's fuzziness in the data, because that's where the excitement is." Communicating a balanced picture of the process and history of science was the challenge of "Science in American Life," a science-history exhibition that opened at the Smithsonian Institution in April 1994. The presentation was criticized by the American Physical Society (APS) as well as the American Chemical Society (ACS), whose $5.3 million funded the exhibition. Both groups denounced the exhibition for playing up the negative aspects of science such as its portrayal of the development of the atomic bomb and an argument between scientists over a discovery at the expense of its accomplishments. ACS considered trying to withdraw its support, according to reports. But after a meeting of APS and ACS officials and Smithsonian Institution secretary Michael Heyman, the museum agreed to some changes. Traditionally, museums have not made a habit of presenting debate over scientific facts in exhibit-label text. However, the presentation at two new dinosaur halls at New York's American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), which opened last month, does. Exhibit labels in the halls show both sides of such hotly contested paleontological ideas as whether or not dinosaurs cared for their young, lived in social groups, or were intelligent or slow-witted. Other aspects of the exhibit reportedly are also expected to draw fire from some paleontologists (M.W. Browne, New York Times, May 23, 1995, page C1). "Science museums need to try to be as current as the science," contends James Peterson, president of the Science Museum of Minnesota in St. Paul. "Doing this is important so that people understand that science is a process, not just disparate facts." Peterson is also president of ASTC, which currently has 370 museum members including science and technology centers, natural history museums, aquariums, and zoos in the U.S. and Canada, up from 81 members just 10 years ago. He cites the new AMNH exhibition as a good example of showing how ideas in science change as knowledge accumulates. For example, the museum's famous Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton has been repositioned in a more accurate stance, based on evidence from fossils and biomechanical research. Presenting timely, pertinent science and scientific issues in a way that's sensitive to all constituencies is another concern. For example, exhibits on AIDS have been the subject of some contention from AIDS-affected communities. In 1993, during a two-month preview at Philadelphia's Franklin Institute Science Museum of a traveling exhibit called "What About AIDS?," members of the gay community complained about the images of AIDS-affected people used in the exhibit. "Many people were afraid that the [preview of the exhibit] de- gayed AIDS," recalls Alfred Patrick, managing editor of the Philadelphia Gay News, because there was little mention of the gay community in the exhibit's photographs and text. As a result, more photos of gay men and couples were included in the final version, which opened at the institute in October 1993. "I think they acted very responsibly; they took comment and added some gay content into the exhibit," Patrick says. "I think any mainstream institution that tackles this problem should be commended." How to present the science, research, and social issues surrounding AIDS was also a topic of controversy in designing the first permanent U.S. exhibition on the topic: "AIDS: The War Within," a 4,000-square-foot exhibit at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. Five hundred nine-inch-diameter spheres representing HIV particles; a computer-animated "Fantastic Voyage" through the immune system; and floor-to-ceiling displays that mix comic-book-style artwork with medical illustrations are some of the features of the exhibit. Some advisers on the board of exhibit reviewers, which included such groups as the AIDS Foundation of Chicago and the activist organization Test Positive Aware, were initially concerned about the semi-theatrical presentation of the exhibit, reports Barry Aprison, senior scientist at the museum and the exhibit's project director. Aprison is also secretary-treasurer for the National AIDS Exhibit Consortium, an eight-museum group that spearheaded the traveling AIDS exhibit. "But we won them all over." "My biggest reservation initially in terms of graphics was that I felt like some of the comic book illustrations would instill fear in people," says Dale Rhodes, director of the state of Illinois' AIDS Hotline, who reviewed label text for the exhibit. He notes that in the end the exhibit designers did tone down the graphics so that the presentation was "more sensitive to people with HIV." The exhibit sponsored by Abbott Park, Ill.-based Abbott Laboratories Inc., the company that supplied the first blood test for detecting HIV has been open since March and has "been very well received," according to Aprison, although there was an isolated one-person demonstration when the exhibit opened, protesting the inclusion of information about condoms. Before museums can serve their diverse audiences, they must first get people through the door. One way they are doing this is through the use of such new technologies as virtual reality or robotics. But scientists, educators, and other observers worry that the educational content may be lost in the entertainment. "You can use robotics in a trivial way or you can use it in a quality way," comments Dennis Schatz, associate director of the Pacific Science Center in Seattle. The Pacific Science Center's new traveling exhibit mixes educations stations with life size robots to teach visitors about cetaceans. The Pacific Center is no stranger to enlisting high-tech, "edutainment" expositions to draw audiences. In the late 1980s the center hosted a traveling exhibit of robotic dinosaurs. Currently, a traveling show developed by the center that features five life-size, robotic whales is making the rounds of Australian museums. Sheila Grinell, executive director of the Arizona Science Center in Phoenix, says she used to be "dead set against" exhibits like the robotic dinosaurs because in the past some included very little educational content. She worried that with some displays that relied on high-tech gadgets, the informational aspects would be lost on the audience. "But," she concedes, "I've softened some." She changed her mind, she recounts, after watching her son and his friend mix fun and learning at a robotic dinosaur exhibit. Schatz describes a poor way to include robotics in an exhibition as "getting five 'dinomation' dinosaurs, putting some plastic plants around them, and only having a little sign that says: 'This is a pleisiosaur.' If that's the level, I think most scientists would say: 'Yes, that's trivializing the science.'" The whale exhibit, for example, has accompanying information on such areas as whale feeding habits, behavior, and international harvesting policies. Schatz says the way to keep the educational message from getting lost in a potentially entertaining medium is "prototyping the exhibit" trying it out on test audiences before opening day. According to some observers, the model for the science exhibition of the future one that aims to accomplish mixing education with an appropriate measure of entertainment and relevance to a general audience is being developed today as the Kansas City Museum's "Science City." Like others, it plans to emphasize hands-on, interactive stations. But, says David Ucko, president of the museum, the exhibit will go several steps further and will provide as its name implies_an entire metropolis for visitors to explore. "The way we're approaching this is to create a city in which each component whether it's the airport control tower or the TV station becomes an immersion experience which puts the visitor into that time and place," explains Ucko. For example, visitors could conceivably forecast a storm at the weather station, explore the human body at the medical center, or produce science shows at the television station. The development of the city which currently still exists in the two-dimensional phase of the drawing board but will be built in a former train station now involves trying to figure out "how to embed the scientific content within the immersion so that it's not just a gee-whiz kind of experience," says Ucko. ASTC president Peterson comments that science museums can communicate the "real process" of science to the public by putting "working labs" equipped with the gadgets of science_microscopes, computers, and lasers_in exhibit halls. From the late 1950s onward, he points out, the science museum community has moved away from static "glass case and dust" exhibits to a more experiential approach, as epitomized by the interactive stations found in most science museums in the U.S. today. Museum officials point to the 26-year-old Exploratorium in San Francisco as an early example. Founded in 1969, the Exploratorium is widely recognized by science-museum professionals as one of the first truly hands-on museums, pioneering the use of apparatus that illustrate scientific principles. More adult themes, such as the social and moral issues surrounding science and biomedicine, are springing up in formats other than exhibits. One such venue is a relatively new idea called science theater. David Ellis, president and director of the Museum of Science in Boston, describes it as a way to expose museumgoers to the human dimension of science. For example, at the Boston museum a short skit played out near exhibits, in outreach programs, or in small theaters, broaches the bioethical questions surrounding fetal transplants. Two sisters, one a biomedical researcher and another a businesswoman, discuss the ramifications of one of them becoming impregnated in order to obtain fetal tissue to help their ill father. "For communicating complex issues to adults, science theater is by far the best single approach that we have to offer," Ellis declares. While different museums and their officials are taking various approaches to their missions, some see a broader role for these facilities. Asserts Bruce Alberts, president of the National Academy of Sciences: "I believe that [the U.S.'s] science museums, through closer coordination with their regional school districts, can play a major part in the revolution in science education we expect in the next 10 years." (The Scientist, Vol:9, #13, pg.1, June 26, 1995) (Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)

Science Museums Attracting Customers And Controversy

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