Posted by Siamang on: 05.29.2007 /
Here’s why I’m depressed. The Creation Museum opened officially to the public yesterday. And, I’m sad to say, it’s the best museum in the nation.
It’s completely inaccurate and strange. It proports that T-Rex’s 12 inch teeth were for cracking coconuts.
But it’s the best museum in the nation… at telling its story.
I’ve long complained about the shoddy educational structure of modern science museums. They are stuck in the 19th century. I visited the famed Natural History Museum in London recently and was appalled at the wasted educational opportunities. These folks seem to think that taxidermied animals behind glass are the best way to teach about natural history.
These museums are not about teaching, they’re about exhibiting specimens. At the British Natural History Museum, I expected a phenomenal bang-up presentation about Charles Darwin. After all, his collected specimens are housed there. Nope. There was a statue of him in the dining area of a cafeteria.
I looked for their display on human origins. It consisted of several replicas of hominid skulls in a glass case. That was it! No diorama of australiopithicenes on the savannah. No models of cave life with Homo neanderthalensis. Nope. Plastic skulls you could buy from Bone Clones locked away in a glass case.
Here’s a photo of that museum. Does anything look exciting to you?
Yes, that photo looks old, from the 1920’s I’ll guess. But the current presentation is still the same, nearly 90 years later.
Our science museums do not teach. They do not engage the visitor with the central themes in the story of life on earth. They do not show evolution. They do not show the scale of geological time. They do not educate. They merely display specimens.
Contrast that with the Creation Museum. There, they tell a specific, chronological story, scene-by-scene. They surround the visitor with multi-sensory experiences. They have dioramas. They use animatronics, music, drama, lighting… all the tools of the 21st Century, to tell their story. Believe it or don’t believe it, there’s no way you’re going to walk out of the Creation Museum not knowing the central narrative.
What’s the central narrative of modern scientific biology? Evolution, competition, survival. History is a long story of advances and retreats, and long eons of slow change. It’s a story of a world dominated by bacteria, then a world dominated by algae. Millions of years where the planet is a green slushy paradise of pond scum…. and the story goes on and on. 65 million years where the dinosaurs rule the planet, only to be extinguished in a relatively short time. Museums should take us on that journey. We should enter a time-machine when we visit the museum, and we should be taken to the deep, deep past and we should feel like we’ve visited these places. We should visit the Tertiary period, right after the K/T event, and we should smell the ash and the decay and hear the insects buzzing over the remains of the dinosaurs, and we should watch as the small mammals begin to take their first steps toward dominating the planet.
Science museums should take us on this journey. But they don’t. Instead they take us through halls and halls of taxidermied animals in glass cases.
Ken Ham knows that he can tell his story far better than science museums are able to.
Which is why, today, our best museum in the nation is a 27 million dollar high-tech journey into the Book of Genesis, while the American Museum of Natural History couldn’t find ONE corporate sponsor to back a 3 million dollar exhibit on Darwin.
-Siamang
Comment by: Miko
1Better than some do perhaps, but certainly not better than they’re able to do. Museums seem to have been originally intended for experts in their areas rather than the public. Most museums have realized this and are working to restructure. Ham just has an advantage of being new and thus able to start the way that the actual museums are working towards.
Comment by: Siamang
2How long will it take museums to restructure? I understand that museums can and should be able to kick the CM’s butt. But will they? I doubt it.
The Griffith Observatory just underwent a $93 Million renovation, and I don’t think they’ve done nearly what they could have done had they focused on telling the story of the history of the universe. Instead, it’s a mish-mash of factoids explored in any number of random encounters depending on how you wander about the exhibits.
Without a central connecting thread, people do not absorb the factoids, nor can they assemble them into a coherant mental model of the universe.
Comment by: Siamang
3The difference is in how the different groups UNDERSTAND the material.
Ken Ham, and everyone under him, understands Genesis as a coherant narrative. Therefore they can protray it as such.
Scientists do not approach it as a coherant narrative. They specialize in different areas, and they know information about their area. They have some information and a big picture, but they are unaccustomed to the STORYTELLING process.
Religious preachers are very accustomed to telling stories. It’s what they do.
Comment by: Mike O
4Siamang, you actually do a good job of conveying your position. You ask questions people can’t answer. Like, If the earth is only 6,000 years old, why do we have pots with writing on them that are 25,000 years old? If all the animals were on Noah’s ark, why can some species only be found in remote areas with no indication that they “trekked” there from a common originating location (the ark). If God created the earth with a history, how do you know he didn’t just create you one second ago with a memory of everything you think you’ve done (trickster God).
I personally believe that leaving someone with a conundrum or conflict in their thinking is a very effective way of communicating a differing view. It may not convince them, but at least it will help them ask the right questions.
You’re really good at that.
Comment by: Siamang
5Thanks, Mike.
I just wish that there were better science museums we could go to. I wish science museums did a better job teaching. I wish Zoos finally would get on board and teach biology and not just conservation.
I see our science museums as enormous missed opportunities. I see how children interact in them… they run from push-button to push-button to see what lights up and/or moves in each display.
Kids don’t take the time to read the plaques. They just run to the next button.
It’s positively discouraging.
Comment by: Siamang
6Thanks again for the kind words, Mike.
On the topic above, I offer this site:
http://www.skepticreport.com/creationism/creationresearchprojects.htm
Comment by: Karen
7Man, you’ve got me depressed now, too! :-(
I think, very honestly, what science museums - and science in general - needs are storytellers. Randy Olson makes this point exactly in Flock of Dodos.
They need people who can see that broader narrative and find a way to structure the museum experience so that visitors follow the story - and find it compelling. Kind of like the old “Primeval World” of DisneyRR fame - in fact, Ham’s absurdity is a direct perversion of that vision, isn’t it?
So sad. Why we don’t have those storytellers in science is a good question. Dawkins is certainly doing it (”The Ancestors’ Tale”), and a few others. But those people aren’t designing museums, unfortunately.
Comment by: Siamang
8The people designing museums are so stuck in the “push a button and something lights up” mentality that they cannot make the leap.
Comment by: Ir (Helen)
9Siamang, our local natural history museum (The Field Museum of Chicago) just redid their exhibition on evolution for the second time since we’ve been living here (about 20 years). Here’s the website for that exhibit:
Evolving Planet
If you ever make it to Chicago I’d be interested in your thoughts on it.
I know what you mean about the London Natural History Museum. It’s a curious mix of redone exhibits and glass cases that haven’t been touched for decades. Our natural history museum also has glass case sections which haven’t been touched for decades but I have to admit I like those parts for historical reasons - it’s like a step back in time to walk through them.
Comment by: Siamang
10Yes, it seems that the Geology section of the London Museum had been done recently. They took you experientially into the center of the earth, then to the 1980’s volcano eruption in the Phillipines, and through the Kobe earthquake.
They also had a nice exibit on dinosaurs, with some cool animatronics.
But not so much the other stuff.
The Field Museum is on my short list of places to visit before I die. (I gotta see SUE!).
I had heard that the australopithicine specimen Lucy was going to be on tour and visiting the Field in a couple years. If Los Angeles isn’t on Lucy’s tour, you can bet I’m coming to Chicago to see it!
Comment by: cautious
11(I apologize beforehand, I am not being at all abbreviated in my recent comments. Please pardon the blizzard of words!)
“Ok, we want to create a dynamic fossil hall that is informative and educational but not overwhelmingly boring”
“What do we got?”
“Some rocks and multisyllabic names.”
(shrug) I’ve walked around my fair share of art museums (not as many as natural history museums, but I like fossils professionally so I do have a bias…) and I think that both of them are classically designed as museums: cool, neat, one-of-a-kind objects are shown off, usually with a small placard or sign noting the significance of the specimen.
There’s no one to compete against art museums: some people like art, and while art snobs will always bemoan the new generation, some young people, even if raised in, say, a small rural village in Illinois, will like art.
But, natural history museums, as providers of science, do have competition: sci/tech museums. Chicago has the Museum of Science and Industry near the Field Museum. San Diego has the Reuben Fleet Center right next door to the SD Natural History Museum. LA has the California Science Center near the LA County Museum. Natural history museums, to be blunt, have to evolve or go extinct.
Natural history museums, starting in…what, the 80s? 90s?, found the solution: put gawdy technology everywhere, right next to the placards or signs. This plan is *!&%ing idiotic and I don’t think it works.
Do natural history museums need a central narrative? Part of me wants to reply sarcastically, well, do art museums need a central narrative? Art museums are random walks through time, artistic methods and technology, geography, social ideas… Arranging fossils displays by their taxonomic grouping makes as much sense as arranging art by artistic period.
But then I step back from my personal experience of liking rocks and multisyllabic names and realize that, while art makes sense to people because anyone, even if not very talented, can use paint or clay. Sculptures and paintings are easy to understand.
The fact that the Earth didn’t have enough oxygen for you or me to breathe on it until 300 or so million years is not. Nor the fact that, even when it finally did have enough oxygen, that the biggest thing crawling around on the land were arthropods. Nor the fact that our ancestors were small enough to step on until 98.5% of Earth’s history had gone by. To understand any of those facts, you have to have read a few books, or had good parents who taught you science, or had a good educational system that taught you science. Or, best of all, all of the above.
So, part of me wants better narration at natural history museums, but a bigger part of me wants science education to also improve in schools and homes in America. Museums can improve the way they teach their message, but if people don’t know what to do with the message, then all that change ain’t gonna do much.
Comment by: cautious
12oh, off topic slightly, but Siamang, F Sue, go to the Field Museum before the Darwin exhibit leaves there.
Hypercarnivorous giant theropods are cool, I guess, but a museum display about one of the 19th century’s most insightful minds? Complete with the pistol and Bible that Chuck brought on the Beagle? That’s worth traveling two time zones to see. The exhibit does a great job of showing the mental travels of a man who, when confronted with ideas that didn’t make sense to him, crawled back into his shell and hid.
…oh wait, sorry, that would be the story for the Ken Ham exhibit. The Darwin exhibit, on the other hand, traces you through the life and thoughts of this guy who, when faced with lots of data, sifted through it and came to a conclusion that he had to wait decades to come out and say.
I think that Field Museum guests who have recently seen the Creation Museum should be able to see the Darwin exhibit for free. Maybe learning that the “source” of “evilution” was a humble, patient person who never financially benefitted from his science would help them realize that evolutionary scientists don’t just make this all up.
Comment by: Ir (Helen)
13Sue is cool but I have to say, in some ways the Brachiosaurus they used to have where Sue now is was cooler because he (or she) was so tall he looked over the 2nd floor balcony. That was awesome. (He or she now lives in Terminal 1 at O Hare airport).
But T Rexes sure have crowd appeal, don’t they? And it’s neat how they have a replica head on Sue in the main hallway, so you can get really close to her actual head upstairs in the balcony. She might not have the height of a Brachiosaurus but her head is impressively huge.
E-mail me if you do come here to see those famous females, Lucy and Sue :-)
Comment by: Peter McGrath
14If I can defend the honour of the London NHM, its educational exhibits have improved enormously in recent years despite tight funding. The statue of Darwin overseeing the exotic tea stand in the cafe is an abomination, the atheist equivalent of a sin crying out to heaven for vengeance. And the American Museum of Natural History exhibition on Darwin will be at the London NHM in 2009. Museums are hamstrung by their heredity: historically they were repositories of specimens and have had their public/scientific education role grafted on. This is so important it should attract separate, dedicated funding. I’m speaking from the point of view of someone running a project whose principal aim is to engage the wider public in the Darwin story and to help enrol students in science as a career. We’re building a replica HMS Beagle for 2009 to be centrepiece of the 2009 celebrations, then we’re off round the world in Darwin’s wake with crews of young scientists aboard. Science is now so large and complex an area that museums will just be part of the science education/public engagement drive, along with schools, the media and specialist projects like ours.
Comment by: Ir (Helen)
15Thanks for your comment, Peter.
The Darwin exhibit will be here this summer - I’m looking forward to seeing it next time we go to the Field Museum.
Comment by: Karen
16If you miss the Darwin exhibition in Chicago, you can always come and see it at the Natural HIstory Museum in London in 2008/9 (where I happen to work). Yep, that’s the same Natural History Museum with the dusty Victorian glass cases and no permanent exhibition on evolution. Anyways, the Darwin Exhibition will be hosted here during our planned 2-year extravaganza of Darwinia set for the 2008-9 period of Darwin200 celebrations (www.darwin200.org). I hope that this perhaps signals the first step towards better exhibitions here. If all goes according to plan, the NHM London will be completely overhauled within the next 10 years.
Comment by: Ir (Helen)
17Karen thanks for the comment and information. I didn’t know about Darwin200.
Comment by: Keith
18Siamang,
Forgive any misunderstanding of your area of expertise (I’m looking forward to seeing Meet the Robinsons), but what would be the possibility of creating a virtual museum? You could create the narrative and link “exhibits” from a number of different museums around the globe. Plus, rather than having to travel miles to see it, folks could tour the exhibits right on their own computer. Perhaps some sort of virtual museum exists already … but if not, you could probably create something good. You put science in a narrative as well as anyone I have met … there’s my one crazy idea for today :-)
Comment by: Siamang
19Wow! I’m really excited to have attracted the notice of folks from the Beagle Project and the MNH in London.
I agree and I can’t help my ignorance, but I never before realized that the seperate goals of museums, as repositories of specimens for scientific reasons, WITH education grafted on, is probably the root cause of the problem.
After all, how in the heck do you fill out a budget item for something as frivolous as an animatronic dinosaur when your only specimen of a thylacine has dry-rot.
I’m joking out of my own ignorance of the actual day to day needs of specimen preservation. But thanks, I do have a clearer picture of the issues at hand.
I’m really excited about the Beagle project. What a wonderful journey… any time anyone goes to the galapagos, I’m green with envy. I cannot imagine doing it on the Beagle. Perhaps in 200 years students like you will be blasting off to the moon in a replica Apollo capsule!
I am sorry that I don’t have kinder things to say about the MNH. I was SO looking forward to it, and (apart from the dinosaur exhibit and of course, the teriffic architecture!) found myself sadly disappointed. As you know, the Darwin Center itself is currently closed to visitors, as was the large hall of mammals.
I was impressed with the specimens on display there. I was happy to get to see a Caelocanth AND a thylacine… two of my favorite vertebrates! I didn’t get to see the giant squid, though.
Man, you guys sure have a lot of ancient marine sauropsids! I love the hall of plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs.
Comment by: Siamang
20Cautious wrote:
Yes, but at the very least, works of art themselves have a narrative. They are often about people and places. They very often tell stories. Even the Mona Lisa, merely a small portrait, causes people to imagine a narrative. They imagine that she is pregnant and smiling a secret smile of contentment.
I think art does that to people… people are able to look at a painting and grasp what’s being said… even if it’s abstract, it often elicits a feeling in people… and nothing’s right or wrong about that feeling.
Now in the Creation Museum, and in a science museum, there is a right and wrong, and there is a narrative that is not obvious upon interaction. I can look at a trilobite fossil at either museum, and just looking at it, I cannot tell what it is, or where or when it lived. In fact, there is almost no information I can gather when looking at a trilobite that helps me understand anything about why I’m standing there staring at a trilobite!
Karen (California Karen) above mentioned the Primeval World at Disneyland. I’d take it a step further. At Epcot, in Universe of Energy, we are brought back in time to journey through a dinosaur landscape. Bill Nye narrates.
I’m also reminded of a teaching moment at Animal Kindgom in the line for Dinosaur! I’ve described it on the message boards before:
Comment by: Karen
21Oh, me too!
Oh my. Would that not be the coolest trip ever!? Wow.
As someone who is not a very visual learner, I don’t much enjoy just walking through art museums looking at random paintings and statues. But some of my most memorable hours have been spent at art museums taking docent-led tours, where I can ask questions, learn about the artists and get a narrative and context for what I’m seeing.
That “storyline” makes all the difference for me at an art museum and I think it would be equally true for a science museum experience - particularly for kids.
Comment by: furiku :: Kreationistmuseet :: June :: 2007
22 06/12/07 4:14 AM | Comment Link |[...] Siamang är deprimerad, då det flashiga kreationistmuseet tydliggör precis hur tråkiga många [...]
Comment by: Adrian Thysse
23Come to the Royal Tyrell Museum in Alberta, Canada, to see how science and government can do a museum properly.
Comment by: Amy
24When I was a kid in Santa Barbara, California, my favorite part and what I mostly remember of the Natural History Museum there was pushing a button on the rattlesnake display that made the snake’s coiled tail “rattle.” I reminded my father about that recently and he said when he was a young boy that was his favorite thing too! If you ever discover a museum like the ideal one you described above please send a ticket! Or at least an address:-)