museum of science and industry

museum of science and industry

The Evolution of Museums of Science and Industry: From Curiosity Cabinets to Modern Interactive Exhibits

1. Introduction

Museographical history and science popularization are capable of indicating how science models are modified, and the positioning of a specific country, taking into account the studies, research, and technological impact of the age. The curiosities of the powerful, the curiosities of the travelers, and the curiosities of the naturalists over time, sometimes illustrate a permeability to novelty, research, and representation of knowledge. They are frequently interventions according to the Philosophy of Nature, a westernized perspective, from the mixture – informed by the biblical account. Unlike contemporary science museums, and with an attention directed exclusively at the physical universe, Curiosities Cabinet, starting from the 16th century, were universal boxes capable of containing all knowledge, an emblem of an organized and integrating ensemble of scientific investigation, evaluation, and dissemination of knowledge. The “storehouse of curiosity” was a concept of Germanic-Germanic evolution, or a cabinet of opportunities (museis studii). The cultural mission was of the homo faber and symbolized joy in access to artifacts capable of transmitting a message: the glory of God, gathering information (for profit), recognition of an educational and humanitarian mission, collection, specialization, scientific record, and support. The museum becomes a meeting of the spiritual – a place of knowledge reserved, yet a place for the educated public – open and pedagogical, coherent with the principles of the Enlightenment.

A museum is a place or institution where objects of historical, artistic, or scientific interest are exhibited, studied, and preserved. Museums can be understood as containers of meaningful and significant objects. Science museums are institutions that collect, manage, preserve, research, and exhibit objects through which the processes of science and technology – the configurations between science, technology, society, ecology, and other key elements – can be understood by the public. There are different kinds of science museums, with distinct roles and motivations, and containing unique characteristics due to their historical context, target audience, type of exhibited collection, spatial and architectural structure, presentation techniques, organizational strategies, and integration with media. This paper describes the evolution of museums dedicated to science and industry around the world, showing changes in exhibits and communication, interaction, and behavior strategies in time and during disruptive events in world history.

2. Historical Development of Museums of Science and Industry

Science & Invention Museums of the 19th and 20th Centuries: The nineteenth and twentieth centuries availed of educational museums, whose vocation was to demonstrate the importance of scientific and technical progress in the industrial development or people’s education. The Science and Invention museums, the first of which opened in European or American cities from the last decade of the nineteenth century, were the location of illustrious inventions that marked the important technological and social innovations of the eighteenth hundreds: the electromagnetic machine, the telephone, electric lighting, trains, diveable submarines, automobiles, and flying aircraft. Starting from 1915, Science museums were rapidly developed on the grounds of important universal exhibitions, and their museums welcomed a large public. All Universal Expositions of the 20th century now have a dedicated Science Museum called “Exploratorium, City of Science or Science and Technology” that, being availed of the cooperation of the most important world research centers, of the more innovative European design schools and exposing multimedia products, were required museums both for their quantity of visitors as well as for their quality of innovative exhibitions. In the last decade of the century, in Rome, Citta del Vast exhibit Science and Technology, a tourist theme park.

Cabinets of Curiosities: The First Museums of Science: For men and women living in the Western world during the so-called Age of Discoveries, and later during the Enlightenment, the natural sciences were a field of knowledge that could be called radical. From the infinite variety of new living species and the vastness of the universe revealed by ship and telescope to the demonstration that alchemy was not properly science, but a trick, as Copernicus and Galileo had demonstrated for the geocentric system, the world of living could be described as a manifestation of God’s infinite wisdom and as such was the exclusive object of the inquiries of theologians. Science, conceived as a logical and experimental method suitable to understand the laws that rule the known world, does not need to follow the traditional Christian values, nor does it lead to sacred truth. In the Western Catholic world of the seventeenth century, the Church worried that knowledge of nature, which was a manifestation of God’s infinite wisdom, could develop independently from theology, but the rise of the scientific method was so rapid, thanks especially to the Copernican revolution and to Galileo’s discoveries, that the Church understood it was not possible to stop the demonstration of the phenomena that the human mind could explain.

3. Educational Impact and Outreach Programs

Outreach programs are intended to bring these two groups into the museum’s fold. This is the reason that adult and family programs have been established to complement programs designed for children, particularly school groups and the science- and mathematically-talented students who come after school. Scientists and technology specialists, who may rely solely on scientific literature for their professional information, will find that other outlets are available to them for the attitudes and the feedback of society on their special fields of investigation.

The motivation for development outreach and community activities comes from the museum’s belief that its role extends outside the confines of its physical location. The museum seeks to make the considerations of science and technology real and relevant to Americans from every age, education, income, and ethnic group. In particular, outreach programs are designed to bridge the gap between “culture” and “science” as these dual concepts are perceived in today’s society. They can be called “the forgotten publics” because we still have millions of people for whom culture is purely a matter of the arts, and millions more for whom science is completely outside their range of personal interest and experience.

4. Technological Innovations in Museum Exhibits

Because a significant portion of the decline in attendance at large museums of natural history occurred during the 1950s, one or two decades earlier than the similar decline in exhibits at science centers, some of the innovations in exhibit techniques were introduced in natural history museums. The use of photographs and motion pictures as exhibit tools began when photographic and stratigraphic and other geological techniques were developed around 1900. During the depression of the 1930s, when natural history museums were trapped by empty halls, decreased audiences, and funds which would not stretch, many exhibits were fashioned on very small budgets. Just as during the renaissance of natural history museums after 1860 it was thought that many were educational in intent, the many small dioramas of forest animals and birds in trees and the small decoration on the walls to remind the viewer of the flora common to the species of fauna were thought of as instructive during and immediately after this depression period in natural history.

Many of the shifts in the character and management of science centers, natural history museums, and museums of science and industry are reflected in innovations in exhibit techniques. The most common museum exhibits have changed from scale models, dioramas, labeled specimens, and photographs in glass cases to a variety of graphic, audio, visual, and interactive displays. Just as some of the first science museum exhibits had illuminated manuscripts and organically labeled specimens, some of today’s museums have put copies of edited computer programs and labeled integrated circuits under glass.

5. Future Trends and Challenges in the Field

Moreover, there seems to be a clear relationship between the social role of museums and their educational efforts aimed at different publics. Interactivity plays a crucial role, especially in the case where publics are children of school age, but also in other sectors of the public. It is well known that contact with the sources, with the documents that preserve the knowledge of the past, provides a type of understanding and memorization that does not give other types of study. Such contact, today, is not possible to achieve in teaching rooms or, more simply, it cannot be interesting and it only lasts a very short time. The interactivity of the museums generates an acoustic signal in the collective memory of society as a whole, allowing the youngest to know the beliefs, customs, and culture of a population before, ancestral. The mission of a museum is to illustrate to the server companies, within the sphere of the relationships established during time, between man and the environment, the different cultural models, symbolic systems, languages, and religions, as well as the conditions and phases of ethnological knowledge. In particular, the reserves of ethnographic museums and storerooms are a very precious instrument for the investigation of future routes and didactic applications for a vast public, from schools to universities, from tourists to citizens, up to the most particular targets.

Museums of science and industry are engaging in an evolutionary process that is leading them toward innovative institutional models suggesting a strong public appeal and a social goal that entities of these features are well suited to serve. At the same time, the evolution of these museums is helping to shape the society for which they are developing. An ideal museum programming future, very ambitious, consists of them being not only witnesses of the society, but also driving forces of it. The strong public appeal of the new generation of science museums stems from their informal nature that, in turn, rests largely on their interactivity. This claim raises a number of theoretical and applied issues. How important is this relationship? What evidence is there to support this claim? What do we mean exactly by “interactivity” with reference to a museum context, or, conversely, what is the concept that museums should conform to if they want to provide a successful interactivity?