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Science Museums (Kensington). The museums are the fruit of the Great Exhibition of 1851. It made a profit and Prince Albert hoped to establish there a great cultural centre. In 1864 the underground railway station was authorized, and the Department of Science and Arts ran what grew into the Science Museum. In 1881 the Natural History Museum also opened its doors.
The first public science museum was the Ashmolean Museum, founded at Oxford University in 1683 and created to educate and entertain the British public. In the United States the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia (1824) and the American Institute of New York (1828) were among the first organizations to hold exhibitions of scientific developments. For many years, only natural history science Museums existed, such as the Smithsonian Institution (1846), the American Museum of Natural History (1869), and Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History (1893), which served as depositories for rich collections of specimens ranging from plants and animals to geological materials and human artifacts. By 1969 two different types of science museums existed—the traditional natural science museum, with its collections for viewing, and the science museum that incorporated science and technology with participatory activities. Most science and technology institutions are not engaged in research but rather in the hands-on interpretation of science. The traditional natural science museum is deeply involved in research and the care of collections, and are storehouses for the world's natural treasures.
Many science museums had their beginnings in world fairs. The first major international exhibition of a world fair of science was the 1851 Crystal Palace Exhibition, sponsored by the Royal Society of Arts in London. A similar exhibition was held in New York City in 1853. The well-known Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago occupies the sole surviving building from the 1893 World's Columbian Exhibition. Moreover, the idea for the Field Museum of Natural History also developed along with the plans for the World's Columbian Exhibition. The participatory science movement in the United States began in the 1970s, and by the 1990s there were twenty-three major science and technology centers and some 260 smaller institutions. The first major science and technology museum that did not house any collections was the Exploratorium in San Francisco, which opened its doors in the early 1970s. Most science centers that have opened since that time have copied the Exploratorium's style of hands-on exhibits.
These museums are constantly seeking ways to involve visitors. Many have gone through major additions, such as the Saint Louis Science Center (1959), which, in addition to pre-Columbian North American Indian artifacts, has modern interactive exhibits. Discovery Place (1981) in Charlotte, North Carolina, has a living rain forest and in 1991 added an Omnimax theater and a large planetarium. Traditional planetariums, such as the Adler Planetarium (1930) in Chicago, have also added interactive science exhibits. The California Museum of Science and Industry (1880) in Los Angeles houses exhibits on aerospace and computer-aided design and manufacturing. The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (1944) in Portland has exhibits on earthquakes, computers, and electricity.
Bibliography
Conn, Steven. Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1876– 1926. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
Danilov, Victor J. America's Science Museums. New York: Greenwood Press, 1990.
Hein, Hilde S. The Exploratorium: The Museum as Laboratory. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990.
Macdonald, Sharon, ed. The Politics of Display: Museums, Science, Culture. London; New York: Routledge, 1998.
Orosz, Joel J. Curators and Culture: The Museum Movement in America, 1740–1870. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1990.
Development of the Science Museum Concept
Many early museums of science, e.g., the Ashmolean Museum (1683) at Oxford, the first public museum in the Western world, originated from gifts of private collections. At first most exhibits consisted of classified and labeled geological or biological specimens. Later exhibition techniques have emphasized the grouping of specimens to illustrate origins, associations, and interrelationships. Exhibition devices include habitat groups, restorations, murals, dioramas, models, and key installations in feature exhibits. The illustration of abstract ideas in biology, e.g., evolution and heredity, was extended to physics and chemistry, long neglected in science museums. A pioneer in showing the principles of mechanics, light, heat, and sound was the Buffalo Museum of Natural Science.
The modern science museum has a threefold function—exhibition of collections, sponsoring of research, and education. Many museums provide cataloged reserve collections for students and undertake research and the publication of results; some participate in expeditions for research or for enlarging collections. Provisions for adult education include guided tours, lectures, and classes; museums cooperate with schools by providing loan exhibitions, special exhibits and tours for children, and story hours. A growing trend has been the use of computer terminals and “hands-on” models to enhance the learning experience. Many museums now also attempt to educate the public in the principles of ecology and wildlife and resource conservation.
North American Museums
Outstanding in developing educational functions are the American Museum of Natural History, New York City, and the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago. Although most science museums cover the general field, there are many, including a number of university and college teaching museums, that specialize, notably in anthropology; one of these is the National Museum of the American Indian, Washinton, D.C., and New York City. The establishment of the Adler Planetarium, Chicago (1930), the Fels Planetarium (1933) of the Franklin Institute, and the Hayden Planetarium (1935) of the American Museum of Natural History have stimulated science museums to deal with astronomy. The Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, and the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia were pioneers in the field of applied sciences. The growth of local trailside museums, most of them in national parks, was stimulated by the success of Yosemite Museum (1921). The 1980s and 90s saw a number of new science and technology museums constructed in U.S. cities, and aquariums, which increasingly emphasized ecology in their exhibits, experienced a resurgence in popularity. Canada has notable museum collections, especially in Toronto, Ottawa, and Quebec.
The Smithsonian Institution, the national museum of the United States and the largest museum in the world, includes several constituent museums that specialize in particular areas of science and technology. There are many municipal and state museums of science. Universities and colleges that have notable museums include Harvard, with the Museum of Comparative Zoology (est. 1859 by Louis Agassiz, the earliest such collection in the United States) and the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology; the Univ. of Chicago, with the Oriental Institute; and the Univ. of Pennsylvania, specializing in ethnology and archaeology, especially of the Americas and of Asia. In addition to those already mentioned, the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia (est. 1812) and the Boston Society of Natural History (now the Museum of Science) are outstanding among American museums.
There are also many small special museums centering on limited fields of science or technology. Some are privately supported, others have been established by government agencies. Among them is the Robert C. Williams American Museum of Paper Making, Atlanta, Ga., which includes the Dard Hunter Collection (see Hunter, Dard); it embraces all aspects of papermaking and of the use of paper. The American Museum of Atomic Energy (now the American Museum of Science and Energy) opened in 1949 in Oak Ridge, Tenn. Many private companies have established their own museums. Such private museums often have unique collections, e.g., the glass museum in Corning, N.Y.
European Museums
Pioneers in the field of applied science include the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers (the first industrial museum, est. 1799) and the Palais de la Découverte, both in Paris; the Science Museum, London; and the Deutsches Museum, Munich, Germany. Many private museums with unique collections have been established. The first of these, dating from 1916, was a button museum in Prague. Other notable specialized museums are the museums of oceanography in Monaco and in Berlin and the Jurassic Museum of Asturias in Colunga, Spain. Most of the principal countries have national science museums or strong science collections in general museums. In London are the great natural history collection of the British Museum, housed in South Kensington, and the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, with its Hunterian Collection. Other noted science museums in Europe include Norway's Bergen Museum; the Swedish Museum of Natural History, Stockholm; the National Museum, Copenhagen; the Rijks Museum, Leiden, Netherlands, noted for its departments of geology, mineralogy, and zoology; the University Museum, Amsterdam; the Natural History Museum, Vienna; the Natural History Museum (Jardin des Plantes), Paris; and the Kunstkammer of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg. Germany has many excellent science museums in its cities and universities, and many Italian universities are noted for their science collections.
A science museum or a science centre is a museum devoted primarily to science. Older science museums tended to concentrate on static displays of objects related to natural history, paleontology, geology, industry and industrial machinery, etc. Modern trends in museology have broadened the range of subject matter and introduced many interactive exhibits. Many if not most modern science museums - which increasingly refer to themselves as 'science centres' or 'discovery centres' - also put much weight on technology.
"...The public museum as understood today is a collection of specimens and other objects of interest to the scholar, the man of science as well as the more casual visitor, arranged and displayed in accordance with the scientific method. In its original sense, the term 'museum' meant a spot dedicated to the muses - 'a place where man's mind could attain a mood of aloofness above everyday affairs.'" — Museum of Jurassic Technology, Introduction & Background, p.2
As early as the Renaissance, many aristocrats collected curiosities for display to their friends. Universities and particularly medical schools also maintained study collections of specimens for their students. Such collections were the predecessors of modern natural history museums. The Utrecht University Museum, among others, still displays an extensive collection of 18th-century animal and human "rarities" in its original setting.
The first science museum was the Museo de Ciencias Naturales, in Madrid, Spain. Opened in 1752, it almost disappeared during the Franco regime, but it recovered afterwards and today works closely with the CSIC.[1]
Another line in the genealogy of science museums came during the Industrial Revolution, with great national exhibits intended to showcase the triumphs of both science and industry. For example, the Great Exhibition in The Crystal Palace (1851) eventually gave rise to London's Science Museum.
In America, various Natural History Societies established collections in the early
1800's, which evolved into museums. Notable was the early New England Museum of Natural History, (now the Museum of Science) which opened in
The modern interactive science museum appears to have been pioneered by Munich’s Deutsches Museum in the early 20th century. This museum had moving exhibits where visitors were encouraged to push buttons and work levers. The concept was taken to the U.S. by Julius Rosenwald, chairman of Sears, Roebuck and Company, who visited the Deutsches Museum museum with his young son in 1911. He was so-captivated by the experience that he decided to build a similar museum in home town of Chicago. Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry opened in phases between 1933 and 1940.
In the mid-twentieth century, Frank Oppenheimer included interactive science exhibits at San Francisco's Exploratorium. The Exploratorium made public the details of their own exhibits in published "Cookbooks" that served as an inspiration to other museums.
Opened in 1967, the Ontario Science Centre continued the trend of featuring interactive exhibits, instead of just static displays. Most science centres have emulated this since.
Four years after the Exploratorium opened, the first OMNIMAX theater opened as the Reuben H. Fleet Space Theater and Science Center in San Diego's Balboa Park. The tilted-dome Space Theater doubled as a planetarium. The Science Center was an Exploratorium-style museum included as a small part of the complex. This combination interactive science museum, planetarium and OMNIMAX theater set the standard that many major science museums follow today.
As the flavour of interactivity crossed the Atlantic, the massive Cite des Sciences et de l'Industrie opened in Paris in 1986, and smaller but no less influential national centres soon followed in Spain, Finland and Denmark. In the UK, the first interactive centres also opened in 1986 on a modest scale, but the real blossoming of science centres was fuelled by Lottery funding for projects to celebrate the millennium.
The mission statements of science centres and modern museums vary. But all are united in being places that make science accessible and encourage the excitement of discovery. They are an integral and dynamic part of the learning environment, promoting exploration from the first 'Eureka!' moment to today's cutting edge research.
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