This paper argues that science centers are expensive to create as capital projects, expensive to maintain with professional staff, and, given the high costs of exhibit development, expensive to change. Lacking a fixed collection of unique artifacts with which to attract visitors, the science center is at risk when it cannot change quickly enough to meet the demands of its users. In the past, temporary exhibitions have been used as a means of creating more frequent change. Now, however, given the exponential increase of the availability of new electronic media, coupled with their massive interconnection via the Internet, informal learning can be had at home and in other sites, rendering the science center unwieldy, expensive, irrelevant, and obsolete. Threats to the science center cannot be lightly shrugged off, and a real transformation of the institution is required. The paper concludes that the science center, as an institution and as a building project, is doomed to extinction as a consequence of two factors—ecology and economy. It argues for the need to develop a new kind of institution of informal learning in its place.
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References
1.
J. Bradburne, “Truth-Telling and the Doing of Science” (thesis, Amsterdam, 1993).
2.
Bradburne , “Truth-Telling.”
3.
A critique of the prevailing “deficit model” of the public's understanding of science can be found in D. A. Wake and J. Bradburne, Fields of Knowledge (Paris: AMCSTI/Infos printemps, 1993).
4.
Many science center professionals might argue that hands-on exhibits are, by definition, “bottom-up” and user-driven. This contention is explicitly challenged in D. A. Wake and J. Bradburne, “Paradox Lost: Rediscovering Scientific Creativity,”Alliage, no. 6 (1990): 17-24.
5.
Described in D. A. Wake and J. Bradburne, “Priming the Pump: Building a Science Network in Alberta,” in La science en scène, ed. M. Demazure (Paris: Palais de la Découverte, 1993), 347-356.
6.
Described in D. A. Wake and J. Bradburne, “Au-delà de l'oeil nu,”Alliage, no. 15 (1993): 91-98.
7.
Described in J. Bradburne, “Mine Games,”La Revue des Arts et Métiers10 (Spring 1995): 30-37.
8.
see J. G. Beetlestoneet al., “The Science Center Movement,”Public Understanding of Science7, no. 1 (January 1998): 5-26, on p. 8.
9.
ASTC , Yearbook of Science Center Statistics (Washington: ASTC, 1997).
10.
An evaluation of the pilot phase of a hands-on science center in the United Kingdom, conducted by a leading university research center in April 1988, was critical of the project on several grounds, but particularly for fragmenting and decontextualizing scientific subject matter. It provided some advice: “It might well be the case the developers will wish to be more selective of content in the future, as the public's response and the effectiveness of various types of experience are better understood.... For example, under the umbrella of science and technology are included experiences involving obvious scientific principles, less obvious technological applications, examples of measuring techniques, visual illusions, spatial problems etc. All these experiences might well be fascinating and capable of arousing curiosity. Their effectiveness in supporting the exhibition objectives is not always self-evident. One of the difficulties of presenting a range of experiences to the public in a context such as [the science center] is that there is no obvious linking concept to help people make sense of their experiences. Without such a strong background context, there is a danger of the experience becoming fragmentary, and consequently trivialised.”
11.
For a thorough and detailed discussion of the relationship of science studies to the science center, and of the science center's relationship to science, see B. Regeer, “Two Paradoxes and a Triangle: The Public Understanding of Science Exhibited”. (master's thesis, University of Amsterdam, Department of Science Dynamics, 1996).
12.
The effectiveness of hands-on exhibits in terms of learning, and the response that they are intended to trigger, rather than communicate, is made clear in the evaluation cited in note 10: “As might well have been predicted, the sample visitor responses also indicate that in one or two exhibits, including some of the more popular ones—“Bernoulli Table,” for example—there was little understanding of the scientific principle which explains the phenomenon presented. This is not to suggest that there should or could have been understanding.... For example, in some cases, visitors were provided with useful intuitive experiences which they could not be expected to describe or understand, but which might provide under-pinning experiences supporting later understanding.” The increasing importance of constructivism in the science center debate in recent years, championed by planners such as George Hein, has called many of these approaches into question. Moreover, debate in the related fields of the public understanding of science, science dynamics, and the sociology of science have focused on the inadequacy of the traditional institutional approaches. Despite these critiques, many institutions remain committed to the traditional hands-on approach pioneered in the late 1960s, based on an implicit reception theory and an unreflectively realist position. See the articles in Visitor Behavior12, nos. 3 and 4 (Fall/Winter 1997).
13.
A report on the closure of the Columbus Center's Hall of Exploration due to inadequate visitor numbers (it attracted only 70,000 instead of the projected 280,000) can be found in the ASTC Newsletter26, no. 1 (Jan/Feb 1998): 1.
14.
This phenomenon is shown graphically in Beetlestone, “The Science Center Movement,” p. 6.
15.
ASTC reports that in 1990-1996, 86 new science centers opened, more than in the entire previous decade; see Yearbook of Science Center Statistics (cited in note. 9).
16.
Netherlands Institut voor Nijverheid en Teckniek (NINT, immediate predecessor to newMetropolis), annual report, 1984.
17.
NINT, mission statement, 1979.
18.
Statement made in a lecture at conference on the Public Understanding of Science, The Science Museum, London, April 11, 1990.
19.
The mission of the science center to “beguile” the visitor into engaging with science (in the words of former Techniquest director John Beetlestone) can be seen in the Techniquest mission statement, where the goal of the exhibitions is “to engage, to amuse, and to engender a sense of fun in the exploration and understanding of the world around us.” Techniquest, mission statement, 1988.
20.
see also J.-M. Lévy-Leblond, “About Misunderstandings about Misunderstandings,”Public Understanding of Science1 (1992): 17-22.
21.
See the Dutch Government's white paper Scanning the Future: A Long-term Scenario Study of the World Economy 1900—2015 (Den Haag: SDU, 1992).
22.
This argument is made at length in J. Douma, Prototyping for the 21st Century (Amsterdam: newMetropolis, 1994).
23.
“The reason for writing [the Discourse] has been primarily to develop a vision to guide our development. For we truly believe that we cannot simply build a Science Center without having reflected as thoroughly as possible on what role this new center should and could play in our present and future society. Science centers and museums alike have always been children of their time and this infant of ours should be able to participate in societal life for as long as possible.”Douma, Prototyping for the 21st Century.
24.
The draft framework document was presented in Fall 1997, and is to be published in Fall 1998.
25.
and K. Hudson, Museums of Influence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
26.
In the evaluation cited in note 10 above, data show that the average mean time spent with the exhibits was 50 seconds, with mean interaction times at individual exhibits ranging from 14 seconds to 182 seconds.
27.
This is of course not true for all science center exhibits, and much of the work of the past three decades has been to create exhibits which allow real interaction, leave room for the visitor to ask and answer their own questions, and truly engage with the material. Sadly, many, if not most, science center exhibits are still just devices that allow the visitor to set into motion principles or phenomena that someone finds interesting; the so-called “hands-on interaction” merely turns the user into an extension of the exhibit, a soft hand to bring forth the phenomenon the designer or educator intended. This tendency for exhibits to become vehicles for the designer's, rather than the visitor's, questioning was noted by science center pioneer Frank Oppenheimer, founder of the San Francisco Exploratorium, who (in a perhaps apocryphal comment) said “I don't want anyone to leave a science center thinking: `Gee, isn't someone else clever.' ”
28.
Many studies bear out the importance of the emotional, or “hearts-on” character of the museum visit, which stems in large part from its social nature, undertaken with family and friends. This is, however, a broad generalization, and discounts the confounding effect of temporary exhibitions, special programs, multiple school visits (which are formal, rather than informal), and visits associated with “visiting friends and family (“VFF”), all of which serve to mask the three peaks in visits. It could be argued that the fact that the museum visit is most often an emotionally-charged, social occasion in the company of family and friends accounts in large measure for the observed frequency, and that even repeat visits based on this affective charge merely reinforce the pattern of visits.
29.
As an example, in 1997, over 85 percent of the visitors to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam were foreign tourists.
30.
and ASTC, Yearbook of Science Center Statistics (Washington: ASTC, 1998).
31.
See R. Russell, “Attendance Projections: Real and Imagined,”The Informal Science Review, no. 25 (July/August 1997): 1.
32.
The Columbus Center Hall of Exploration in Baltimore also closed due to inadequate visitor numbers (The Informal Science Review, no. 27 (November/December 1997): 1).
33.
Evidence of this phenomenon can be found in a privately commissioned feasibility study conducted for Erlebnis Wien by Ravest Associates in conjunction with Drew Ann Wake and the author.
34.
See Drew Ann Wake's contribution to the debate in “Are Science Centers Doomed?”The Informal Science Review, no. 20 (1996): 2-3, which sets out many of the arguments made in this paper.
35.
This message has not yet gotten through to many in the field, and the science center is still thought to be the vehicle for launching and demonstrating new technologies. Nora Lee, editor of the edutainment trendspotting magazine E-Zone, writes“Science centers have always been on the cutting edge, particularly in presenting new technology to the public.” This statement betrays a certain confusion between the role of World's Fairs, temporary events that have traditionally been the launchpad for new technology, and science centers, which by the fact of their permanence, cannot keep up with the pace of replacing new technologies with even newer ones.
36.
ASTC Newsletter26, no. 1 (Jan/Feb 1998): 2.
37.
Museums built in the 1980s, such as the Frankfurt Museum für Kunsthandwerk (housed in a striking Richard Meier building), are already seeing their visitor numbers fall substantially, and the lottery-funded Bristol 2000 project has already forced what some observers believe is effectively the closure of Britain's oldest hands-on science center, the Bristol Exploratory, causing speculation about the negative impact on smaller, community centers by large new-build projects.
38.
See also J. Bradburne, Informal Science in Jordan (UNESCO Technical Report, Paris, 1993).
39.
Based on the author's experience on numerous science center projects.
40.
Our target—successfully met—for the exhibition “The Body in the Library,” which opened in Calgary, Alberta, in 1993, was CDN$50/ft2 (equivalent to US$385/m2).
41.
M. Hood , “Leisure Preferences are the Key to Science Center Audience Research” (paper presented to World Science Center Congress, Vantaa, Finland, 1996).
42.
M. Bazin , “Ciencia viva à Rio,”Alliage, no. 3 (Spring 1990): 35-39.
43.
The Anacostia Museum was developed by American psychologist Dr. Caryl Marsh for the Smithsonian Institution in the 1967, and was the first such museum in a predominantly black neighborhood.
44.
See G. Stockeret al., Ars Electronica Center: Museum of the Future (Linz: Ars Electronica Centrum, 1996).
45.
M. Shortland , “No business like show business,”Nature328 (1987): 213-214.
46.
Since it opened in June 1997, newMetropolis has been conducting active research into the effectiveness of its exhibition strategies. This research is due to be published beginning in late 1998.
47.
Notably in P. Bourdieu and A. Darbel, L'amour de l'art (Paris: Editions de minuit, 1969).
48.
For a contrast, consider the New Jersey State Aquarium in Camden, New Jersey, USA. Built to anchor the redevelopment of a barren waterfront in an impoverished town, the institution draws only 60 percent of its breakeven needs because of the lack of other activities near it—it has no way of integrating itself into community life (Bruce Lewenstein, personal communication, April 1998).
49.
and M. Csikszentmihalyi, Talented Teens (New York: Harpers, 1990).
50.
Preliminary data indicate that newMetropolis visitors spend substantially greater amounts of time engaging in the exhibits than at any other institution for which we have data. The average visit to newMetropolis is more than four hours—a substantial investment in time for only 5000 m2 of interactive exhibitions. Moreover, data also suggest that despite the emphasis on games and game playing, users do make the connection between the game activity and related social and technological issues.
51.
In a recent project sponsored by a government ministry, Dutch citizens were asked to “vote” on their choice of planning strategy for the future of the country in 2030. After substantial publicity, over 1600 written ballots were sent in from throughout the country. To coincide with this event, newMetropolis designed an interactive video debate on four of its “Actua” computers. In this debate, users could watch short video clips promoting different positions, and having heard at least four opposing positions, could vote. In the two months of the national poll, over 2700 “votes” were cast at newMetropolis—more than half of the entire poll! The complete data from this experiment will be published in late 1998.
52.
The 18 “Actua” computers at newMetropolis provide both open access to selected Internet information providers and an extensive collection of sites linked specifically to each of newMetropolis's 150+ exhibits. During an average week (about 6,000-7,000 visitors), approximately 55,000 pages of information are consulted.
