Posted by Siamang on: 06.05.2007 /
The great American natural history museum could be headed for the vulnerable species list, alongside the polar bear and the redwood tree.
A national survey last year showed nature museums’ annual bottom lines sinking chronically into the red by $300,000 on average, while art museums outperformed them by nearly half a million dollars. Some of the leading institutions have winnowed their staffs since the decade began, among them the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.
Science leaders worry that financial pressures and demands to boost attendance could prompt natural history museums to self-lobotomize, cutting away brain matter — the pure scientific research that’s largely hidden from the public — to save the exhibits and educational programs that are the institutions’ visible cash generators.
I wrote last week how Ken Ham’s Creation Museum uses drama, spectacle, animatronics, sound effects, lighting and a coherant narrative to get its message across.
Hey, they’ve even got some sex-appeal!
I compared it with the dusty glass cases full of taxidermied animals on display at London’s Museum of Natural History. I found particularly shameful was that the MNH had no exhibits that broadly explained evolution or Darwin’s work. Most disappointing was the human origins display, which consisted of plastic replica skulls locked in glass cases.
The LA Times article above addresses some of the problems facing our Natural History museums in this country… large specimen collections and the behind the scenes science going on in these institutions, and weighing that against public exhibitions.
Well, Ken Ham’s got that problem solved… just cut out the science and cut out the very large collections.
Anyway, from the outside, it was easy for me to attack the very lacking educational presentation of the MNH, without knowing the problems the institution is facing. These are truely dispiriting problems… which is why now I’m even more depressed!
-Siamang
Comment by: Karen
1Someone in my ex-fundy support group had a great suggestion in response to the creation museum news.
Why not support local natural history museums in that area?
Comment by: Jeremy Davis
2Why does the MNH not ’show’ Evolution? Quite easy to answer really; there IS no proof of evolution! It has never been observed, so how could they ’show’ it?
Sure, they could ’show’ pictures of artists’ concepts of what a dinosaur with feathers would look lie, or what Darwin’s fish may have looked like, but there is no fossil evidence of either of those things.
Ken Ham’s museum on the other hand shows how SCIENCE supports the truth in the Bible.
Comment by: Jacob Mcdowell
3You can’t prove with fossils evolution…it is constantly happening. And I don’t know a lot but I would find it hard to prove creationism with all the science we have showing that the world is billions of years old.