The Science of Museums

z zyxwvu Monterey Bay Aquarium When the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History decided to update its 30-year-old Hall of Geology, Gems, and Minerals a decade ago, the curators accepted that its centerpiece would remain its famous necklace-the one sporting the 45.5-carat Hope diamond (left). The most viewed museum object in the world, it draws more than 5 million visitors annually. The challenge to staff scientists lay in attracting visitors to the hall’s many other exhibits, recalls Lynn D. Dierking of the Institute for Learning Innovation QLI) in Annapolis, Md. The museum hired her firm to evaluate key facets of the renovation project. Fortunately, Dierking notes, the curators’ task turned out to be far less daunting than they had anticipated. Only 10 percent of the hall’s visitors come solely to view the Hope diamond, ILI’s surveys revealed. Moreover, 40 percent made Geology, Gems, and Minerals their first stop at the museum even though this exhibition is on the second floor, requiring a walk past the entry level’s renowned dinosaur exhibit. She concludes, “We’ve got destination shoppers”-visitors clearly drawn to crystals, meteorites, and volcanoes. 184 Collectively, US. science and technology centers bring in more than 130 million visitors each year. And increasingly, their most successful exhibits owe as much to evaluation of visitor reactions as they do to ample budgets and careful planning, says Jeff Hayward, a 21-year veteran evaluator who directs People, Places & Design Research in Northamp ton, Mass. Fifteen to 20 years ago, virtually no museums considered evaluations to be part of their exhibitdevelopment process, says ILI director John H. Falk. Indeed, exhibit appraisals “were more curiosities than management tools until about 10 years ago,” Hayward maintains. Even today, though the need for evaluation is well accepted in the sciencemuseum community, “there are still probably only a handful of institutions in the country that are religious about it, in the sense that they do it for all of their exhibitions and programs,” Falk maintains. One of the most conscientious institutions is the Adler Planetarium and Astronomical Museum in Chicago. Patty McNamara of Adler argues that creating a project without evaluation amounts to gambling with what are often huge budgets and also with the opportunity to communicate the intended message. he most common type of visitor-evaluation study takes place early during the production of an exhibit. Typically, the designers craft a rough mock-up and put it on the museum floor for a few days or weeks. Trained observers then analyze how people interact with it. This process can identify obstacles that might prevent a visitor from experiencing what the museum intends. Potential roadblocks can be as mundane as a knob that’s hard to reach, instructions that are too complicated, or an interactive display that takes too long to respond. Yet, even an exhibit that operates flawlessly can possess subtle features that undermine its message, notes Sue Allen, one of two full-time evaluators at the Ekploratorium in San Francisco. To find these problems, evaluators must talk to visitors and be alert for cues that the viewers are drawing inappropriate conclusions about what they see, hear, or feel. Allen encountered one such conceptual booby trap late in the design of an exhibit depicting dynamic equilibrium. A feedback system, it employed a variable strength electromagnet to suspend a metal sphere midair. A light shone toward a sensor positioned behind the ball. Whenever the ball blocked the beam, the light sensor zyxwvuts SCIENCE NEWS, VOL. 154 SEPTEMBER 19,1998 zyxwvu zyxwvuts zyxwvutsrq zyxwvu sent a signal to the electromagnet to cut its strength. As soon as it did, the ball would fall, permitting the light beam to fully illuminate the sensor. This triggered the device to boost the electromagnet’s strength, pulling the ball back up. Museum-goers could block the beam with their hand or grab the ball out of the system and drop it back in. “People learned how to use it the right way and were having fun with it,” Allen says. But in speaking with them, she quickly realized that, conceptually, they just “weren’t getting it.” The dangling ball-purchased on the basis of its size, weight, material, and low cost-happened to be painted like a world globe. “When we asked visitors what the display represented,” she says, “they told us it was obviously a model of the solar system,” with the light beam depicting the sun. Many particularly enjoyed the way the floating “Earth” tended to spin in space. Allen has since stripped the misleading design from the silvery ball. somewhat newer type of museum study attempts to determine whether a completed exhibit achieves its intended goals. Visitors leaving a show on women’s health, for instance, might be surveyed for evidence that they gleaned the importance of breast selfexams or learned SEPTEMBER 19,1998 the appropriate way 5to do them. 5 This type of sum-$ ming-up study was cow d u c t e d in a 30,000-; square-foot outdoor physics playground that opened last year at the New York Hall of Science in New York City. Fifth graders were let loose among interactive e x h i b i t s designed to demonstrate various scientific principles-from angular Evaluators discovered that the earthly paint job that momentum and fluid happened to be on a ball in one exhibit misled visitors into mechanics to levers thinking they were looking at a model of the solar system (left and energy transfer. photo). Now, museum employees strip the paint off of each None of the 27 differ- ball (right)-a task that adds up to a lot of work because ent Dlav stations bore visitors Docket dozens of the balls each year. sign’s & labels. ChilWithout explanatory labels, Friedman dren who used the playground’s wave machine, tornado column, or riverdivert- says, “the children felt it was okay to just ing stream table, for instance, had to figure go out and explore.” It now appears that out each exhibit’s purpose through experi- their activities resulted in a sense of permentation, often by collaborating with sonal discovery-making their observations more meaningful, he says. others. The museum designers also pondered “We didn’t put up any signs, initially, because we wanted to see what type whether schoolchildren should be prewould be most useful,” explains Alan J. pared by their teachers before field trips Friedman, the museum’s director. How- to the physics playground. The study ever, the exhibit’s evaluation, completed concluded that youngsters appreciated in July, indicates that this wait-and-see their teachers helping them find realapproach yielded unanticipated benefits. world examples of the playground phe- zyxwvutsr SCIENCE NEWS, VOL. 154 185 would come to see jellyfish, recalls Hayward. They suspected that most people view jellies as little more than “worthless blobs of slime.” So Hayward interviewed three groups of prospective visitors. “And indeed,” he says, “we confirmed that most people had no interest in an exThis globe, depicting Earth’s tectonic plates, stopped rotating hibit on jellies.” shortly after the Smithsonian opened a refurbished geology Instead of using the hall. Worried that no one was paying attention to the globe, data to justify shelvthe museum wondered whether there was any value in ing the proposed show, repairing it. While evaluators confirmed that museum-goers Haywardsaysthemuse were largely ignoring the static exhibit, their interviews um instead adopted showed that visitors generally understood plate tectonics. The the study’s primary evaluators suggested that engineers temporarily put the globe finding-that people back in motion. Right away, people began congregating have little respect for around it, discussing how tectonic plates move-and thereby these creatures-as justifying the expensive permanent .repairs. a focus of the exhibit. When subsequent nomena, such as whirlpools, spider-web testing indicated that a beautiful presentavibrations, and fulcrums-but only after tion could alter people’s attitudes toward the visit was over. “In hindsight, I proba- the gelatinous zooplankton, the designers bly should have predicted that describ- turned over onethird of the exhibit to darking concepts that they were going to ened rooms that showcased glowing side encounter wouldn’t prove meaningful. lit jellies. As living art, they floated etherealUntil children have experienced them, ly to the accompaniment of what Hayward it’s all too abstract,” Friedman says. describes as “other-worldlymusic.” In the end, “Planet of the Jellies” became the museum’s all-time topdrawing show. ome museums commission studies Moreover, once attendees stopped gawkbefore any design or construction ing at the graceful animals, “most went on of an exhibit begins. These survey to the science part of the exhibit,” Haywhat a museum’s visitors know about ward says. The museum “hooked people some particular topic, including related into the science with beauty.” beliefs, attitudes, or misconceptions. Similarly, for “Mating Games,” a 1994 Although uncommon, this type of eval- exhibit on reproduction, “we actually did uation is one “that people are increasing- focus groups, realizing that this was a ly appreciating,” Falk says. Moreover, he sensitive topic,” recalls Sue Blake, manadds, “in the long run, it may also be the ager of exhibit research and developmost cost-effective’’because it can ferret ment at the aquarium. “And based on out predilections or prejudices that may that information from our visitors. we work for or against a costly project. designed the exhibit such that the ‘doing Such an evaluation helped shape the it’ area was off to one side-so parents retailoring of the Smithsonian’s 20,000- could sidestep it if they didn’t want chilsquare-foot hall of gems and minerals, dren to see it.” most of which reopened last year. Some of the visitor-survey data pointed out earthne might suppose that museums science concepts that can confuse the public-such as how crystals grow-indiperform evaluations out of their cating where more explanations are needown need to judge the success of ed. The surveys also identified topics of exhibits. And certainly, some of the more intense curiosity, which can be bait for progressive institutions act under that hooking visitors into exploring related incentive, Falk says. “But most have been ideas. Numerous visitors, for instance, driven by funding agencies, especially found it incredible that malachite is a the National Science Foundation,” h e crystal, prompting the museum to make notes. the striped, green stones a primary illusThe agency’s Informal Science Division tration of such microcrystals. grants more than $15 million to museThe Monterey Bay (Calif.) Aquarium is ums annually. Beginning around 1990, among the institutions that have come to evaluation became an essential ingredirely on such front-end evaluation. Its ent of successful grant proposals. Says 1992 jellyfish exhibit exemplifies why. Dierking, “You now need to give [NSF] a Early in the show’s conceptual planning, fairly detailed plan for the evaluation, some members of the staff voiced serious and they prefer if you actually identify skepticism about whether the public who will be doing it.” Many other major museum sponsors have begun instituting similar requirements. Allen suspects there’s a reason why science centers have been in the vanguard of museums embracing evaluation. “Art and history museums tend t o focus on preserving and displaying precious objects,” s h e observes. Because t he science museums’ mission instead centers on “creating some critical core experience for the visitor,” she thinks that these institutions feel a greater need for feedback from visitors on the nature of their experience. Despite a 70-year history-admittedly thin-and a spate of recent successes, exhibit evaluation remains an evolving process. In many ways, the social scientists who perform it are still exploring not only what types of questions to ask, Falk notes, but also how to ask them and when. He points out that “we have traditionally viewed [ learning] as accumulating new information on top of old. Metaphorically, you can think of this as stacked building blocks, where we gauge learning by measuring increases in the height of that stack.” However, his research indicates that people tend to use museums differently-to confirm or solidify ideas that they already have. “So in some sense, muse um learning may not build new height so much as reshuffle blocks near the bottom to make a more secure foundation of knowledge.” Notwithstanding the limitation of current studies, Allen says that “museums are coming to realize that putting their money into evaluation is a good investment; without it you can waste all of your money.” Indeed, McNamara adds, once the staff of a museum have employed evaluation-and seen the difference it can make-most become believers “and realize it’s not worth putting together pro0 jects any other way.” zyxwvut zyxwvu zyx zyxw zyxwvutsr zyxw 0 186 ; $ 2 $ . > z zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQ ~ m .- $ zyxwvuts SCIENCE NEWS, VOL. 154 An absence of labels at the individual stations in this playground prompts children to conduct intuitive inquiries in which they discover physics under the guise of play. SEPTEMBER 19,1998