Too Much Theory Ruins Museums

In the early 19th century, most natural history and science museums were lit-tie more than cabinets of curiosities whose purpose was to delight and amaze people with the extravagant and the bizarre. In both the United States and Europe, little effort was made to organize the collections in any sort of coherent fashion; stuffed dugongs often sat next to meteorites and mastodon bones. These private cabinets full of oddities and the exotic were mostly a form of amusement for the wealthier classes. Natural history museums have come a long way from being cabinets of curiosities, but there is a trend that threatens to push museums to the opposite extreme. That trend is the growing influence of educational theory on natural history museum exhibits. This rapidly expanding field, with its love of jargon and scientific testing, threatens to strangle the spontaneity, freshness and wonder of natural history museum exhibits. In recent years the number of artifacts and specimens on display has been decreasing in favor of placards, video loops, extensive graphics and other teaching aids. The first role of a museum is to delight and entertain—not teach. Museums are about the only place where children and adults alike can get a real sense of the wonder and curiosity that is a fundamental and vitally important aspect of science. The history of science is full of great men and women who were enchanted by a wonderful museum exhibit. Stephen Jay Gould, for example, tells us he became an evolutionary biologist because as a child he was enthralled by the great Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. I doubt if a 15-inch exhibit label detailing dinosaur evolution or a talking-head video loop would have impressed him in the slightest. Museums can best awaken curiosity when they consist of things, not words. Nothing can stimulate a child's (or even an adult's) curiosity about dinosaurs better than seeing a mounted skeleton. The museum should not be concerned with teaching the visitor everything there is to know about dinosaur behavior and classification. Regrettably, some museum educators think that relying on spectacular objects, and lots of them, to awe the visitor is cheap-looking and reminiscent of the bad old days of the curiosity cabinet. Rather, they want to teach the visitor as much as possible through extensive labels, video loops, graphics and so forth. Going hand in hand with this approach is the desire to measure exactly how much a visitor has learned from such an exhibit. To many educational theorists the success of an exhibit can only be measured by the amount of scientific information it can cram into a visitor's head in the shortest possible period of time. Journals that specialize in "museology" (an abdominable term), such as Curator, Museum Studies Journal and the International Journal of Museum Management and Curatorship, often run articles purporting to measure the impact of an exhibit ,on the visitor. These articles typically employ multiple regressions, tests, tables, graphs and such phrases as "attitudinal change," "cones of experience," "behavioral objectives," and so forth to support their arguments. For example, in one article the authors—all distinguished educators—conducted an exhaustive study of whether recessing an exhibit focuses a visitor's attention. They tested to see whether schoolchildren would learn more from a recessed exhibit than from a non-recessed one. After viewing the exhibits, the children were given exhaustive multiple-choice tests to see how much they had learned. The authors reported that "this small study was only the first in a series that will systematically investigate how attention can be influenced in exhibits and what effects attention-getting devices have on subsequent coding, memory, and retrieval. Such findings can lead to information that natural history museums, science teachers, and curriculum designers can use in designing instructional systems." They recommend that entire exhibit halls be designed by setting up cases, testing visitors, rearranging the exhibits depending on the results, testing again, and so on. This article embodies what is misguided about museum education and exhibition. First, the authors assume that the only measure of a museum exhibit is how much hard information a visitor retains from it. The authors even borrow terms from the computer world, as if people's responses can be programmed. It doesn't occur to them that maybe the visitor's "coding, memory, and retrieval" of information isn't the most important, or appropriate, goal for a museum exhibit. I go to the Hall of Gems at the American Museum to see the Star of India sapphire, not to read about the microscopic structure of gems. Furthermore, the authors advocate making exhibit design subordinate to educational theory and testing. The problem is that one cannot take an isolated quality—such as recessing—out of the context and design ofthe entire exhibit. Recessing is like any other design tool—sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. It all depends on the skill of the designer. A well-designed exhibition is an organic whole. Some educators are wise enough to understand that their evaluations are subjective; too many present their results as hard science. Thus, the emphasis in planning exhibits shifts from inducing wonder, curiosity and awe to inculcating textbook learning. Exhibits designed and implemented under this philosophy show it; they often are dead. They rely on text, maps, videos, color schemes and slick graphics rather than on objects. (I should make it clear that I am referring to natural history and natural science museums, not technology museums such as the Exploratorium in San Francisco and the Boston Museum of Science, both of which have excellent exhibits.) An example of an exhibit that embodies some of these faults is the Hall of Invertebrates at the American Museum of Natural History. There are very few objects from the museum's collection in the hail, just a lot of graphics, diagrams, charts, enlarged photographs, and the like. But what do visitors stop to look at? The giant squid hanging in the center of the hail and the fabulous diorama with the huge insect models at the end. If this approach were taken to its logical conclusion, the result would be exhibits devoid of interest, ones in which objects play a secondary role. We will end up with three-dimensional textbooks, and fewer people will spend their Sunday afternoons wandering about our natural history museums. There are many superb museum educators and designers. Unlike the educational theorists, they recognize that great teaching and great exhibits cannot be reduced to charts and graphs. More important is the intuition, enthusiasm, skill and personality of the teacher or exhibit designer. Much of what they do is done on "feel." It is hard for the academic world to accept that some things cannot be reduced to mathematical equations, and that a great exhibit designer, like a great teacher, is not necessarily someone with a Ph.D. One can see why people who are in charge of museums would like to believe that there is a set of scientific rules for creating a great exhibit, and ways to measure quantitatively the quality of an exhibit once it is installed. It can't be done. The history of science shows that people, not theories or structures, make great museums and great exhibits. Science and natural history museums should never forget their humble past as cabinets of curiosities, because curiosity is, after all, what museums are all about. Preston, a freelance writer and the author of Dinosaurs in the Attic (St. Martin's Press, 1986), worked at the American Museum of Natural History for 8 years. His address is 204 Gonzales Rd., Santa Fe, NM 87501.

Too Much Theory Ruins Museums

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