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I didn't bring my son to a museum to look at screens

sethpurcell.com

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Re: I didn't bring my son to a museum to look at screens

#121

Post by pklausler »

jimmydddd wrote: post #88
schlauerfox wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My father worked on a Natural Gas exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry in Los Angeles as an emergency substitute when a contractor flaked. There was an oven that had a handle, when you opened it the narration said "don't open the oven during cooking" to save energy. Kids hung off this and immediately broke it, they replaced it with steel and it was broken the next day, then ended up having to put a Triangula…

Went to the Frost Museum of Science in Miami. They had this big (6ft x 6ft) video display and four 6-inch diameter track balls where you guided a vessel through the virtual ocean or something. These two academic minded parents asked their sons (maybe 8 and 10 years old) to try the exhibit. They ran over excitely and just started pounding on the track balls with their fists as hard as they could. They of course did no…

Maybe the parents shouldn't let their offspring go feral on the exhibits?

Re: I didn't bring my son to a museum to look at screens

#122

Post by SHAKEDECADE »

symlinkk wrote: post #16
badlibrarian wrote: post #13

It's rampant in art museums as well. It costs approximately $2,000 to frame a 36" piece of art to museum standards. A similarly sized LCD screen, on the other hand... Art wasn't supposed to be a "by the square foot" kind of thing yet here we are.

It costs $2000? Why?

[flagged]

Re: I didn't bring my son to a museum to look at screens

#123

Post by kylestetz »

I was an exhibit designer there in the early 2010s (the last exhibit I worked on was "Your Brain"); we had an incredible in-house design team that did all of the design and interactive prototyping, but unfortunately everyone was let go in ~2016 in favor of outsourcing much of the design work.

The truth is that the traveling exhibits (Body Worlds, Harry Potter, etc.) make a lot more money for them and do not require the ongoing maintenance burden. They have a reduced ability to design the exhibits as precisely as they used to and the physical stuff takes a tremendous amount of work and expertise to do well.

That said, the museum is run by people who care deeply about science education and the proliferation of touch screens is something they are sensitive to. The type of content has a lot to do with it (a physics exhibit has no excuse not to be 99% physical interactives), as does the fact that they tailor exhibits to many different styles of learning so that there's something for everyone.

Re: I didn't bring my son to a museum to look at screens

#124

Post by AndrewLiptak »

mandevil wrote: post #119
crazygringo wrote: post #5

> But these physical exhibits require maintenance, and I was dismayed to see that several are in bad repair; some of them weren’t even working anymore, some seemed worn out, or didn’t seem well-designed to begin with. To be fair, that's what I remember children's museums being like in the 1980s as well. A significant number of exhibits would be temporarily out of order on any given day. I don't think screens are resp…

I was a tour guide at the National Air and Space Museum for a dozen years. I still remember seeing the exhibit plans the curators had, which called for a then 90-year old airplane (a Curtiss JN-4) to be mounted such that people could look down over it from the balcony. All of us docents who saw that immediately said "what about the kids who will drop pennies onto that precious canvas and wood thing to break it?" Six…

Because sometimes museum guests aren't just pushing things too hard, they are actively taking steps to destroy things, just to see if they can get away with it.

Can confirm.

Re: I didn't bring my son to a museum to look at screens

#125

Post by pklausler »

gowld wrote: post #105
dcminter wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It drives me absolutely bananas that the "interpretation" (fancy museum word for "signs") at science museums is so parsimonious. Some fascinating device vital to the history of an important branch of science will have a brief paragraph about the person who invented it, nothing about what it's for, and then just a date and the device name. Often there's little or nothing further even in the museum shop. It's a crying…

I have a hobby of photographing scientifically incorrect explanations on placards at science museums. Usually found in smaller towns.

Been to the Ark Encounter in Kentucky yet?

Re: I didn't bring my son to a museum to look at screens

#126

Post by AndrewLiptak »

pklausler wrote: post #121
jimmydddd wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Went to the Frost Museum of Science in Miami. They had this big (6ft x 6ft) video display and four 6-inch diameter track balls where you guided a vessel through the virtual ocean or something. These two academic minded parents asked their sons (maybe 8 and 10 years old) to try the exhibit. They ran over excitely and just started pounding on the track balls with their fists as hard as they could. They of course did no…

Maybe the parents shouldn't let their offspring go feral on the exhibits?

They shouldn't but they do.

Re: I didn't bring my son to a museum to look at screens

#127

Post by lotsofpulp »

Aunche wrote: post #111
AndrewLiptak wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It costs a lot of money to create a frame! You need skilled people to make one, get the proper archival glass to protect whatever you're displaying. There's a lot of work and field best practices that goes into this.

It doesn't really have to cost that much. You're mostly paying real estate and a professional waiting for business. Framing material, UV glass, and acid free paper are quite cheap. Anti-glare Tru Vue museum glass costs maybe a couple hundred dollars for a medium sized work, but a lot of museums don't even use it because art framers mark it up like crazy.

>You're mostly paying real estate and a professional waiting for business.

Are these optional? If not, I don't see how this makes sense:

>It doesn't really have to cost that much.

Re: I didn't bring my son to a museum to look at screens

#128

Post by dcminter »

gowld wrote: post #105
dcminter wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It drives me absolutely bananas that the "interpretation" (fancy museum word for "signs") at science museums is so parsimonious. Some fascinating device vital to the history of an important branch of science will have a brief paragraph about the person who invented it, nothing about what it's for, and then just a date and the device name. Often there's little or nothing further even in the museum shop. It's a crying…

I have a hobby of photographing scientifically incorrect explanations on placards at science museums. Usually found in smaller towns.

I want to see these!

Re: I didn't bring my son to a museum to look at screens

#129

Post by zymhan »

Apocryphon wrote: post #118
graemep wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want science for grownups, you have conferences. Adults outside a field do not go to conferences. > As for art museums, the problem is that they are usually just exhibitions, and to be honest, that's boring, especially if you are a kid. Some kids are interested in art. It can be well presented. You can have guided tours aimed at kids.

If there are tech conventions, why not science conventions?

There are. But there are mostly attended by people working in the field.

Re: I didn't bring my son to a museum to look at screens

#130

Post by IAmBroom »

Absolute irony: Pittsburgh has a privately-owned museum of computers (actually in New Kensington, a suburb). A HUGE amount of big old boxes. PDPs, Cray, some early home computers and printers. Some have been actively used by the owner/maintainer, so we know they work.

But there's no digital displays. There are screens - that are off.

The owner can barely make rent, even in that desolated section of real estate, so there's not going to be any snappy big screens or interactive software. But it's literally a museum of computers where no computers are computing.

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