In the past, museums used to be some of the most important centers for research in the world. These same museums would then utilize their new research in their exhibits,
At the turn of the nineteenth century, American museums were at the cutting edge of scientific research. Museums relied on scientists who studied in the field, their anthropologists traveled to places like Asia to study remote tribes, zoologists collected insect specimens from South America, and it was not surprising to send a geologist to explore Greenland to bring back train-car loads of rocks. The curators of these collections would then present their discoveries/findings as the content of new displays and exhibitions.
Steven Conn, in his 2000 book, Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1876-1926 (University of Chicago Press) outlined how American museums went from being the nation's centers for cutting edge research, to the nation's centers for introducing mass audiences to more general ideas. Today, researchers in Universities across America produce most of the innovative research and ideas while museum curators, though still producing some new research, spend a significant amount of their time working on exhibitions to present basic ideas and concepts.
Historian Eric Foner, author of Who Owns History? (Hill and Wang 2002) thinks that museum curators since the early to mid-twentieth century have not given museum visitors enough credit to understand complex concepts and ideas. In a recent interview in Museum News, Foner described how he thinks museums could present his field of history, more effectively, "They [the curators] know their audience is not an academic one; it's not the same as a scholarly convention or scholarly classroom. But I think they often don't give enough credit to the audience for being able to tackle complicated ideas, so there is frequently a tendency toward oversimplification."
In my first blog post, I spoke a little bit about the dangers of the oversimplification of complex ideas. But what about the more general audiences who have no background in the particular subject matter? Is there also a danger of turning off visitors to a museum? Foner says that "blockbuster" exhibits, which are designed to bring in large audiences, often with limited or no familiarity of the subject matter, into the museum, may or may not lead audiences into other parts of the museum where they may be exposed to more complex ideas. While it is extremely difficult to gauge how much an audience is learning from an exhibit, it is instead easy to count the number of people who purchase tickets.
Museums, however, are still capable of, "presenting people with new ideas and encouraging them to think about the past" as Foner argues. Also, the advantage that museums hold over many universities is that they can teach audiences with objects which connect them with an idea. Whether it is Lincoln's top hot, a genuine Mauritius Dodo, a collection of butterflies, or a Tyrannosaurus Rex - visitors clearly connect with what Foner calls a "visual impact".
While museums may no longer focus on presenting cutting edge ideas to their visitors, Foner argues that they shouldn't shy away from controversial and challenging ideas. Museum visitors deserve to learn about the complex ideas behind the exhibits, if done carefully, and with balance, museums can manage to capture broad audiences, while teaching them about the innovative ideas and research being done in the fields the museum was built to explore. Perhaps museums can learn a little from their own histories.
