Exhibitions and the Public Understanding of Science Paradox
Sharon
MacDonald
The general
public today is probably more informed about science, technology and medicine
than at any previous point in history. School leaving ages and numbers
continuing into further and higher education are higher than at any earlier
time; science and technology are subjects on the curricula of most schools; and
there are ever more sources of easily accessible science information, ranging
from popular science programmes on television, to health columns in newspapers
and magazines, popular science books and even kits to carry out your own
crystalgrowing or chemical experiments at home. There are too, more museums
and exhibitions of science, technology and medicine than ever before; and as
the attendance figures of science centres and industrial heritage sites and
recent science exhibitions, such as the theme parks at EXPO 2000 and the Sieben
Hügeln and Theatrum Naturae et Artis in Germany, have shown, there is
apparently an enormous public hunger to know about science, technology and
medicine (STM).[1]
Paradoxically,
this growth in popular interest and the expansion of provision of popular
information about science, technology and medicine, has been accompanied by
increasingly vocal calls of concern about public illiteracy in, and popular
misinformation about, STM. (Historian of science John Pickstone calls this `the
paradox of twentiethcentury STM' (2000: 190).) These calls have come
especially from scientific lobbies (such as the Royal Society in Britain) and
from governments, and also in some cases from environmental and alternative
medicine groups. All argue that science, technology and medicine are crucial to
our lives and wellbeing, and that we need to be properly informed about them
in order to make the right decisions in relation to our own lives, both
individually (for example, whether or not take vitamin pills or work long hours
in front of a computer screen) and collectively (for example, whether to accept
stem cell research or energy from nuclear sources). All also argue that these
decisions are increasingly complex, partly because STM have in some respects
become increasingly complex themselves, but also because of the proliferation
of different sources of information. As many sociologists (for example, Giddens
1990) have pointed out, a major problem for our information societies is the
question of trust: how, in the face of alternative and competing sources of
information, do we know which to believe, which to accept and which to reject?[2]
Expressions
of concern over public scientific `illiteracy' are also accompanied by fears
over the public succumbing to `irrational' and `nonscientific' ways of knowing
(see, for example, Lindqvist 2000). The growth of socalled `alternative' and
`new age' practices is seen by the scientific lobby as a symptom of a lack of
proper scientific understanding and even of an underdeveloped society, which
has not yet properly achieved intellectual `adulthood'. This, together with
worries about `skills gaps', especially in the arena of technology, has
contributed to the emergence in many countries of policies and initiatives
directed towards improving the public understanding of science. Museums and
exhibitions, which operate as voluntary or informal sources of education, which
people can visit at their own leisure at any point in their lives, have often
been identified as key institutions to promote the public understanding of
science.
In this
essay, I look at some of the exhibitionary strategies that have been adopted to
deal with the perceived problem of the public understanding of science. In
doing so, I look also at some other aspects of the changing landscape of STM
and society such as the decreasingly `national' nature of contemporary
scientific research and the challenges they pose exhibitions and museums in
displaying contemporary STM. The growth of emphasis on `public understanding',
which has been particularly marked since the 1980s, is itself a function of
this changing landscape. However, if museums are to properly achieve their
public understanding of science potential, they also need increased
understanding of how the public understands and perceives science, society, and
museums and exhibitions of STM themselves. To this end, I also provide some
commentary from visitor research that I have carried out.
Science
centres and scientific principles
One of the
responses to the problem of public decisionmaking has been a call for better
levels of education in `basic' science and scientific principles. The first wave of public understanding of
science initiatives was in many respects characterised by an attempt to provide
such education. Science centres were the main `museological' example of this.[3]
Probably the first of these was Frank Oppenheimer's Exploratorium, which opened
in San Francisco in 1969 (though smaller concentrations of science centre type
exhibits already existed in science museums such as the Deutsches Museum and
the Science Museum, especially the latter's Children's Gallery, opened in
1931). The Exploratorium certainly acted as a model for many which followed
though
interestingly many ignored one aspect which Oppenheimer himself viewed as
central, namely the role of art in the presentation of science (the Exploratorium
was classified by Oppenheimer himself as a museum of `science, art and human
perception' Hein 1990: 148; see also Barry 1998, 2001). This is something to
which I shall return later. The key features of the wave of science centres
which opened from the 1970s on were their attempts to demonstrate basic
scientific principles by allowing visitors to themselves conduct `kindof'
experiments in order to `discover' these principles for themselves:
`orchestrated discovery', we might call it. `Handson' became an alternative
name for such centres and more generally for exhibits organised along these
lines.
For
Oppenheimer, and surely for many of those who pioneered other such interactive
science centres, allowing visitors to interact and discover in this way was
about more than just transmitting information about the particular scientific
principles being demonstrated. As Oppenheimer said:
The whole
point of the Exploratorium is to make it possible for people to believe they
can understand the world around them. I think a lot of people have given up
trying to comprehend things, and when they give up with the physical world,
they give up with the social and political world as well. If we give up trying
to understand things, I think we'll all be sunk. (Quoted in Hein 1990: xv)
So, the idea
was that by helping people to understand some scientific explanations of
natural phenomena, a window would be opened to help them understand much more
about the world.
This was a
worthy ambition and it may have worked for some visitors. However, it is probably fair to say that
many of those involved in science centres and science museums have become more
sceptical since the early days (see, for example, Lindqvist 2000). It has been
questioned, first, whether most visitors do indeed learn much about the
scientific principles being demonstrated; secondly, whether this does help them
to infer much beyond the particular examples which they experience (i.e.
whether using science centre exhibits provides any more general basis or
framework of understanding); and thirdly whether the handson experience does
lead to a more general quest to understand the physical world or the social
and political world in the way that was hoped. These are, of course,
difficult things to evaluate and some of the evidence is conflicting. My own
view is that while science centres could not have really expected to provide a
grounding in basic science for their visitors, they nevertheless probably are
rather effective in more nebulous ways rarely evaluated, in particular, in
helping to stimulate a more general interest in science. My suspicion is that,
ironically, science centres are probably especially good at conveying a sense
of the `magic' of science (see also Conn 1998: 262 on science museums
generally). I have certainly witnessed
as much talk of magic, and expressions of wonder, as of scientific explanation
in them. Yet rather than this serving to undermine science as the usual
science/antiscience or rationality/irrationality dualisms would have it my
untested hypothesis is that this increases levels of interest. (I shall return to this observation below.)
Nevertheless,
in terms of the problem of evaluating the multiple and competing sources of
alternative information and deciding which to trust, science centres and handson
exhibitions of this type are unlikely to give much help. This is because most
of the difficult decisions that we have to make about STM matters are not
directly related to the first principles and scientific laws that are the main
stuff of such exhibitions. It is probably also worth noting here that despite
Oppenheimer's hope that the Exploratorium would indirectly help people to
understand the social and physical world, he was himself absolutely emphatic that
the Exploratorium would contain no exhibits that made reference to social or
political matters or that were in any way controversial. The environment, for
example, was a subject which he vetoed on these grounds (Hein 1990). The reason
for his strong stance on this matter was not, of course, a lack of awareness of
the controversial nature of science and technology. He had himself worked for a
time, alongside his brother Robert, on a project to design the atomic bomb. The
atomic bomb is clearly one of the products of modern science and technology
which has generated more controversy, more social and political sideeffects,
and more public mistrust than any other that our age has known. Frank
Oppenheimer's attempt to present `pure' science, disassociated from resulting
technologies or their effects, and to present science as a humanistic
achievement like art, was undoubtedly also an attempt to rescue science from
its tarnished public image (see also Macdonald 1998a).
Most handson
science centre type exhibitions have followed Oppenheimer's lead in presenting
science as decontextualised the exhibits being demonstrations of eternal
truths though some have also provided information about its technological
applications. Science centres, and science centre type exhibits, by their very
form, tend to present science as a set of natural laws and principles about
which there is a single truth which we can all discover. This is an approach
which some scientific commentators have seen as unhelpful, not only in relation
to the messy controversial areas about which we might have to make decisions in
our everyday lives, but also in relation to actual scientific practice, which
historians and sociologists of science have shown to be rarely as neat as the
science centre approach depicts it as being (though anybody who has struggled
with some handson exhibits in science centres will know that the lesson that
experiments often do not work is one which such exhibits sometimes demonstrate
very effectively). Exhibits, tightly orchestrated to yield single correct
answers and removed from everyday experience, may be effective in some ways,
but this basic principles approach is unlikely to provide the public with much
direct, or even much indirect, help in making decisions about sciencerelated
matters themselves.
Public
stories about science and everyday life
A basic
principles approach is not the only one available to museums of science,
technology and medicine and, indeed, it is neither the most traditional nor
the most common one employed. Another approach is to address the role of STM in
everyday life directly. This is something which museums and exhibitions have
long done, though the contexts and ways in which they have done so have changed
significantly, and I want to briefly outline this because it highlights some of
the exhibitionary dilemmas faced by museums and exhibitions today.
The
exhibition of the relevance of scientific, technological and medical
achievements to everyday life has been performed, for example, through the
display of subjects such as transport or electricity production and their roles
in transforming daily life. In the early years at the Deutsches Museum there
was even an XRay machine which was used for the diagnosis of fractures (Mayr
1990: 9) in the days before the dangers of Xrays became known. This must
have made for a rather spectacular even `magical' exhibit; and it is worth
remembering that STM exhibits, including those highlighting the relevance to
everyday life, might well also play on the apparently `naturedefying' and
`amazing'. This, surely, was a key reason for the ubiquity of van der Graaf
generators in science museums, and for the presence of extraordinary
architectural structures such as the Eiffel Tower (1889, Paris) or the
Atomium (1958, Brussels) in great exhibitions.
What the Xray
example also shows, as do those of the atomic bomb, transport and electricity
already mentioned, is a significant change in the exhibitionary challenge.
Achievements in STM are today less readily accepted as unequivocal `goods': we
are more aware than were those in the first half of the twentieth century of
their hazards and sideeffects. As historians of both science museums and great
exhibitions have shown, one of the important social roles of these institutions
was conveying a sense of progress of performing the idea that STM could bring
about positive transformation (e.g. Bennett 1995, Conn 1998). Museums and
exhibitions were predominantly, and often overtly, celebratory. Today, however,
museums and exhibitions can neither so easily tell unequivocally positive
public stories about the achievements of science, technology and medicine; and
nor can they rely upon their audiences to accept them as readily as nineteenth
and early twentieth century exhibitors seemed to do. This means that they are
challenged to tell more complicated stories. At the same time, however, there
are other features of the changing contexts in which museums, and STM
themselves, operate, which add to the challenge.
Challenges
of changing science
One feature
of the changing context is the changing nature of science, technology and
medicine themselves. Evolutionary stories of progress were, after all, fairly
straightforward to grasp, and easily translated into three dimensional
exhibitionary form and demonstrated through objects. Steve Conn, in his
excellent book Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1876
1926 (1998),
has argued that in the late nineteenth century, the dominant forms of science
or indeed of knowledge more generally were premised on what he calls `an
objectbased epistemology'. In other words, physical objects were regarded as
sources of knowledge, which, if properly classified and arranged, could be read
in order to reveal underlying scientific principles. The visual and the
`objective' were dominant forms of scientific proof. This was also a reason why
museums were very important sites of research in the late nineteenth century
(ibid.; see also Dias 1998; Forgan 1996; Pickstone 2000).
By the
1920s, however, the `objectbased epistemology ceased to be persuasive in a
world now governed by electromagnetism, relativity, and quantum mechanics'
(Conn 1998: 245). The visual that manifested by objects was no longer
regarded as a reliable form of proof. On the contrary, [b]y the time of the
Second World War the sense that the world was not what it seemed to be had
become.. pervasive' (ibid.: 246). This meant that the museum function of
providing `visual truth' was seriously undermined - and in a sense the very
premise on which museums and exhibitions of STM were based that exhibited
objects were evidences of STM and that looking at objects was a robust route to
knowing STM became precarious. This was manifest in the fact that museums
ceased to be so important as sites of scientific research and in their
reorientation to what Conn calls `less knowing visitors', namely children
rather than adults. It was also manifest in concerns over whether museums and
exhibitions could possibly show these new forms of science.
Another
sciencerelated change which makes the task of representing science today more
difficult is the decreasingly national dimension of STM. A central motive for
setting up the great exhibitions and science museums of the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, was national exhibitionism: showing off national
achievement (Greenhalgh 1989). The great exhibitions were acknowledged
competitive arenas, medals being awarded to winning nations in an Olympiclike
ceremony. Today, national competition undoubtedly lives on and continues to
drive great exhibitions, such as EXPO 2000; and striving to have the most
stunning museums also continues, as part of a global competition in placemarketing.
However, coming up with `homegrown' STM achievements to represent in these has
become more difficult.
A quick
reflection on EXPO 2000 suggests that flagging national STM achievements was
not a predominant concern. For example, the remarkable paper achievement of the
Japanese pavilion was displayed more as a statement of Japan's `very special
attitude towards nature' (EXPO 2000 2000: 42) than as national STM prowess as
such; the Beetle in the German pavilion seemed to be more part of a semiironic
presentation of stereotypes than a confident assertion of national achievement;
and the UK display of pencils made from recycled plastic cups was, perhaps, a
mix of ecocredentials and selfirony in the face of a lack of imposing homegrown
products. Indeed, one characteristic of EXPO 2000 was surely that the nattions
which got it relatively right were the ones which managed to take a, perhaps
ironic and amusing, reflective look at themselves, or which drew on ecological
themes or simply conjured up an aesthetic or dramatic spectacle, rather than those
which tried and 1998 on EXPO 1992). The latter tended to look more like tourist
offices and trade exhibitions; whereas the more successful pavilions were those
like Germany, with its intriguing halffinished `workshop of fame', the Dutch
with their amazing ecohouse, the Norwegians with their extraordinary
replication of a stunning natural phenomenon (a waterfall) and interior
emptiness, or Switzerland, consisting of a large maze filled with peculiar
sounds.
For the most
part, the display of cuttingedge technologies was not in the national
pavilions at all. Instead, it was either in the `theme parks' non national
areas concerned with subjects such as `Mobility', `The Future of
Work', or
`Health Futures', all of which dealt with the potential of technology to
transform our lives; or it was in pavilions belonging to multinational
corporations. The latter is a phenomenon which was also noted by Penny Harvey
in her study of EXPO `92 (Harvey 1996, 1998). In EXPO 2000, some of the most
remarkable technological achievements were demonstrated by companies such as
Bertelsmann, whose `Planet M' told a history of media development leading into
an already partlyrealised future in which Bertelsmann technology was playing a
part, and Siemens, with their `Mediaversum of the Knowledge Society'. Although
both companies are German in origin and identity, they are also global to the
extent that they operate well beyond national boundaries, not only in terms of
their sales, but also their operations, finances and workers. This globalism,
and the role of media within it, was a message contained in their exhibits
themselves.
One reason
for the fact that the national pavilions have become less likely to show
cuttingedge STM developments is that, as historian John Pickstone has charted,
`Since the 1970s, governmental influence has decreased... and commercial
interests have become more concentrated and more global' (2000: 189). There is
today considerably more international traffic in research and researchers, in
which careers and even research teams may span several nations and research
findings be disseminated in international journals. Perhaps more challengingly
for the idea of `national' science, technology and medicine, however, is that
more and more research is funded by, and conducted under the auspices of,
private commercial companies which, as in the case of Bertelsmann and Siemens,
are themselves increasingly transnational (and increasingly able to shift
operations to wherever labour costs, tax demands and regulation prove most
favourable). Governments, according to
Pickstone's account, and there is widespread agreement on this, are no longer
nearly such significant players in the science, technology and medicine game.
Implications
for Exhibitions
Why should this
complicate the business of science exhibition and public understanding of
science? After all, there has long been a strong commercial element to great
exhibitions (Greenhalgh 1989) and corporations themselves frequently use the
exhibition format to sell themselves. Indeed, my own most striking image from
my first postWende visit, in 1993, to the former German Democratic Republic is
of corporate exhibitions of modern technologies especially information
technologies set out on the pedestrianised streets of Leipzig. Siemens had
even built a climbing wall as part of their exhibit a dramatically
unequivocal symbol of the idea of progress and clear message to the Ossies that
they should climb their way to a better future with corporate technology.
Yet, herein
lies the problem. Corporate commercial interests are likely to involve
presenting public stories which will encourage the purchase of their products.
And they typically have the financial wherewithal and motive to do so in
style. Since the 1970s the costs of mounting exhibitions have rocketed, partly
because of the use of evermore sophisticated exhibitionary technologies,
including audiovisuals and interactives. State funding in many countries has
not been able to keep pace; and science museums and national pavilions at Expos
have come to rely on ever greater amounts of commercial sponsorship in order to
be able to create stateoftheart exhibitions. This does not mean that science
museums have simply become trade exhibitions: on the contrary, they often seem
to negotiate what can easily be a rather difficult area very well. But we
should note the particular problem for museums of STM here. Companies
sponsoring the arts or sporting events are relatively unlikely to have a close
productinterest in the subject displayed: in STM exhibitions they almost
certainly will do so. This creates difficulties. For example, in an exhibition
about food, whose making in the Science Museum, London, I observed as an
anthropologist, there was a clear statement made that the Museum would retain
what was called `editorial control' that is, museum staff would make the
decisions about content. Nevertheless,
it was clear that the commercial interests of many of those involved caused
problems for the curators. For example, the museum staff found it almost
impossible to gain useful information from scientists employed by companies
because those scientists were reluctant to reveal anything that might help
rival companies or to say anything negative about any aspects of the food
industry, even products which were not their own, for fear of creating a
negative image of the industry in any way (see Macdonald 2002).
At the same
time, lay people have become more aware of commercial interests and this may
lead to them evaluating what they are being told in these terms, and exhibiting
scepticism over the validity of what they are being told if they perceive
commercial parties to be involved. Public understanding of science research has
shown that lay responses to scientific information are highly dependent on
evaluations of the trustworthiness and possible bias of those who are promoting
particular sources of information (e.g. various contributions to Irwin and
Wynne 1996). In other words, layevaluations of science are as, or more, likely
to be based on social judgements as on any kind of `first principles' or
`scientific content' bases.
This has
implications for public understanding of science initiatives. In particular, it
clearly means moving beyond what is sometimes called the `hypodermic model'
the idea that what is needed is just to inject the public with more science and
technology. To make good judgments, perhaps what are especially needed are more
forms of training in evaluating and reasoning, and better knowledge about where
to go to find out information not just on the content of science but on such
matters as the activities of scientists and commercial entanglements (see also
Shapin 1992).
My own
research on visitors to the Science Museum in London showed some pertinent
results in relation to understandings of science and commercial interests. I
looked at an exhibition about food which had been sponsored by a range of food
companies, particularly a major supermarket chain.[4]
Some of these companies, for example, a confectionary manufacturer and sugar
companies, could be seen to be organisations which would want to promote ideas
about food that might not be in the public interest. The research showed that
members of the public were very aware of the presence of the commercial
sponsors and indeed the great majority assumed that the supermarket chain would
have been substantially responsible for the content of the exhibition (which
was not, in fact, the case: museum staff had written the text and defined the
content). They also assumed that these sponsors would have their own commercial
interests in mind: selling their products.
However, visitors assumed themselves able to identify and resist this.
Furthermore, most thought that the exhibition content itself would not be
`unduly' (as several expressed it) misleading or biased. (Though a minority of
visitors did make such complaints and pointed out specific areas of
omission.). The reason for this was
their sense of trust in the main sponsor the supermarket company (which they
frequently judged with words such as `respectable' and `quality') and in the
museum itself. So, although they clearly recognised a commercial presence and
knew that there might be commercial interests involved, they judged themselves
capable of not being `caught' by these and they believed that there could not
be anything `too untoward' (words of one respondent) because the national
institution in which the exhibition was housed would not allow this.
One
implication of this for museums, especially national museums, is that, in a
world of complexity and uncertainty over whom to trust, such institutions are
viewed as relatively authoritative. Contributing to this is their architecture
generally solid and reliable; the fact that exhibitions are typically
`unsigned' the products of the institution or even `superhuman' authority;
their modes of display and address still predominantly through `things',
which are themselves `real' and `solid', and in terms of `facts'; and their
history they have inherited a cultural role of being authoritative and acting
as custodians for the future. They also have definitional power. My research in
the Science Museum also showed that while many visitors said that they were not
sure whether the subject of `food' was really `scientific', several declared
that it must nevertheless surely be so `because it's in the Science Museum'.
Clearly, in
a world in which science, commerce and public imagemaking are all more highly
developed and entangled, museums need to be mindful of their roles as
especially reliable and authoritative. They need to address the baseline of
public trust which is invested in them and decide how to respond to this.
Everyday
life, familiarity and trust
One strategy
of public understanding of science initiatives in relation to museums and
exhibitions has, then, been the `basic principles' science centre approach, and
another has been characterised by an emphasis on science in everyday life and
society. While neither of these was new in the late twentieth century, both
took on new dimensions and tended to be approached in a more fullscale way,
rather than being just parts of other broader approaches
(e.g.
exhibiting objects). The everyday life approach came to entail not simply
giving some examples of `the appliance of science' (a phrase which has, in
contemporary fashion, itself been commercially colonised), but a more extensive
turning of the earlier approach on its head, making the everyday and the social
the starting point and the lens through which science and technology are
introduced.
This was
part of the explicit exhibition philosophy of the food exhibition which I
looked at in the Science Museum. Science was to be introduced `through the back
door', visitors having first been presented with experiences (e.g. shopping),
settings (e.g. a McDonald's burger outlet) and objects (e.g. items of food)
with which they were expected to be familiar. The thinking here was that many
visitors would find science and technology `threatening' and `difficult', and
that this would hinder their potential to be interested in the subjects or to
learn about them. The `back door' would be more accessible.
As with some
of the other approaches, this one too was undoubtedly worthy and reasonable. My
own research, which also involved detailed attention as an ethnographer to the
making of the exhibition, highlighted some potential problems, however. Perhaps
most significantly, beginning with the familiar did not always `lead to
science' in the way that was hoped. In a context of proliferating content,
something which is probably characteristic of many exhibitions, the `scientific
depth' behind the surface stories tended to shrink. This was also a consequence of the fact that once the everyday
became the orienting frame, this tended to supply the threedimensional
artefacts (particularly reconstructions) and `the science' then became
predominantly text. While this was a good way of dealing with the nonmaterial
or microscopic nature of some of science involved, it also had the effect of
rendering it relatively invisible within the overall, physical framework of the
exhibition. There was also another consequence, related to visitors' senses of
trust discussed above. Presenting science and technology in terms of the
familiar, everyday and nonthreatening also fed into visitors' relative trust
in what was presented. Rather than stimulate them to ask questions about
whether they should trust the products that they ate and bought (as beginning
with some of the massproduction processes might have done), the familiarising
approach seemed to foster a sense of security.
The kinds of
exhibitions that this approach tended to produce often contained fairly high
proportions of reconstructions for example, reproductions of building
interiors and of text panels (providing the explanations). Such exhibitions
are typically softly (and sometimes overtly) didactic, with their own clear
educational ambitions but couched in terms of familiarity, fun and play. In some cases they incorporate handson
exhibits too. What they are less likely to include are historical artefacts
from the museum's collections, and where such objects are included, they are
fitted into the overall educative framework. While this can result in more
objects than typical of the science centres, it yields many fewer than
traditional museums. The resulting overall dwindling of numbers of objects in
museums has been the cause of consternation among some museum staff, as well as
of historians of science and some interested members of the public. One
consequence has been an increase in calls for, and growing evidence of, a
return of the object (e.g. Brüning this volume; Bennett 2000).
Objects,
control and wonder
The
exhibition of the collections of the Humboldt University of Berlin, between
December
2000 and March 2001, generated considerably more public interest than had been
anticipated, and this, together with the hope to create a home where this
splendid collection can be on permanent public view, was part of the motive for
holding the workshop which is documented here. The title of the exhibition,
Theatrum Naturae et Artis: Wunderkammern des Wissens, itself indicates a kind
of exhibitionary return to an earlier model in which there were no boundaries
between science/nature and art, and wonder and knowledge/science were performed
together.[5]
In being called a `Wunderkammer des
Wissens', a curiosity cabinet of knowledge, the exhibition evokes those
collections of objects which are usually said to prefigure the development of
museums. `Wondercabinets' of the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
contained what today seem rather heterogeneous and even `irrational'
aggregations of artefacts, though they were governed by their own rules (see
HooperGreenhill 1992). The objects that filled the cabinets were regarded as
constituting a kind of language which could be read by those who had skills in
the arts of memory (ibid.). Objects were, in a sense, regarded as able to speak
for themselves though not everybody was credited with the ability to be able
to hear what they were saying. Rather than only being objects of knowledge or
science, however, they were simultaneously objects of curiosity, capable of
exciting wonder a response which Steven Greenblatt describes as `the power of
the displayed object to stop the viewer in his or her tracks, to convey an
arresting sense of uniqueness, to evoke an exalted attention' (1991: 42) and
this was a part of their `voluble' capacity.
Theatrum
Naturae et Artis followed this Wunderkammer idea in that objects were
thoroughly prioritised in the exhibition: it was, primarily, an exhibition of
objects. General textual orientation was available, fairly inconspicuously
placed, in each room and computer terminals were available for further
information, but the most of the exhibition consisted of the display of the
objects with little immediately accompanying commentary or text. Objects were
doing the `speaking' in this exhibition.
As Jim
Bennett has observed, objects have tended to be viewed with some suspicion by
those concerned with promoting public understanding of science: `For a singleminded
mission to explain ``the science'', objects are problematic because of their
ambiguity and the richness of their associations for the viewer: their meaning
and significance are not fixed, and visitors' reactions to them are difficult
to control' (2000: 56). What has been especially characteristic of the public
understanding of science approach in museums, he argues, has been an attempt to
`carefully control' visitors' understandings.
Yet, this
relies on a rather restricted notion of `understanding' in which `[i]n a sense,
and to a limited extent, we expect visitors to become scientists. We measure
their success as visitors, and our success as exhibition builders, by how far
they have been able to enter into the belief system characteristic of the
science in question, to follow in the footsteps of those who actually make use
of this system professionally' (2000: 57). This is rather different from what
is expected in, say, an art or ethnography exhibition (ibid.).
If objects
are in a sense `dangerous' because they escape the visitor controlling urge,
what Theatrum Naturae et Artis seemed to show was that this was highly
attractive to visitors.[6] Not only was this an exhibition which made
objects its main feature, those objects themselves frequently defied easy
identification and classification. For example, exhibited materials used in the
teaching of biology were a mix of the `natural' and the constructed (e.g.
pickled creatures or wax models of organs); and in some cases original exhibit
labels themselves were presented as exhibits. Furthermore, these `scientific'
objects were all exhibited in a predominantly `artistic' style: white painted,
woodenfloored galleries, elegant, blackplinthed perspex cases.
Given the
arresting visual nature of so many of these artefacts, `wonder' as defined by
Steven Greenblatt above was undoubtedly being evoked.
So, was this
exhibition in any way successful as a `science exhibition'? Conventional evaluation focusing narrowly
upon facts that visitors had understood and learned, might conclude that it was
not. Visitors would probably be more likely to describe it in terms of wonder
and even magic, and might well talk about specific artefacts that had
fascinated them for all manner of reasons. Yet, in some more recent
perspectives on public understanding of science and critical museology, the
multiplicity and richness of response that an exhibition such as this might
well have evoked, is coming to be recognised as a positive feature rather than
a failure of clarity. Anthropologist Emily Martin, in her work with colleagues
on public understandings of science, has emphasised the rich array of meanings
that may coalesce around scientific `facts' or `images' (e.g. Claeson 1996,
Martin 1994). Her work shows that it is not just `strange' historical artefacts
that may evoke multiple and perhaps predominantly aesthetic responses, so too
may modern scientific images, such as the photographs of various kinds of cells
that she and her team asked lay people to discuss (1994). She argues that the
kinds of metaphors that people use in their talk is itself often revealing of
their understandings and that when they talk about scientific facts or images
they often do so in ways which `create knowledge about a whole range of topics'
(1996: 114). What is needed, her
research suggests, is less narrowly constrained ways of investigating and
talking about the relationships between science and the public.
Jim Bennett
makes a similar suggestion specifically in relation to museums of science.
`Insisting on ``understanding'', narrowly construed', he argues, involves
condescension on one side and apology on the other. Creative exhibition curatorship, however, enhances access through
alternative appreciations, and exhibitions of modern science can pursue these
curatorial virtues just as much as treatments of the more distant past. The
very ambiguity of objects, the unpredictability of visitors' engagements with
them, becomes in this account of the science museum's future a virtue and a
benefit, where formerly it provoked anxiety and banishment. (2000: 60)
The value of
objects in this regard is a point developed too by Simon Schaffer, who suggests
that precisely because of the different meanings and histories which objects
may evoke, they can provide an ideal means for telling focused but `entangled
stories' that are needed to escape the impoverishing effects of narrow
classification (2000: 73). It is perhaps worth noting here too that the
perspective suggested one of `following the object' in order to tell more
complex stories is one which also has been argued for in a number of
disciplines as a methodological technique to avoid the limitations of existing
dualisms (e.g. between the social and the technical) (e.g. Latour 1996;
Marcus
1998).
Mixing
science and art
In its
mixing of science and art, Theatrum Naturis et Artis, was part of a growing
trend.[7] Again, this is not altogether new: recall
not only that such boundaries did not exist in the curiosity cabinets but that
Oppenheimer's
Exploratorium
was intended to be concerned with art as well as science. But what has been
seen more recently in science museums is more extensive use of art to reflect
upon and provoke further responses to, the STM exhibited. In Theatrum Naturis
et Artis, not only were many of the `scientific' artefacts displayed in an
artistic style, the exhibition also included selected art works, such as
Stephan von Heunes' `Tischtänzer' (tabledancers) a kinetic sculpture of
dancing legs and lower torsos, set among the busts on pedestals in the main
entrance hall.
Other recent
examples of the exhibitionary mixing of science and art include Iconoclash,
partly designed by the sociologist of science and technology, Bruno Latour, at
the Zentrum Kunst Medien in Karlsruhe, Germany; and the art programmes in the
Deutches Museum and in the Wellcome medical wing in the Science Museum, London,
both of which have also employed artists in residence to create their own
pieces on the basis of the exhibits. We might also include the spectacularly
popular Körperwelten or Body Worlds the now travelling exhibition of
`plastinated' bodies created by Gunther von Hagen.[8]
Where the
mixing of science and art is conducted primarily to turn science into art, this
is potentially problematic in that such an aestheticising approach could have
the effect of screening out the social and political, as well as of some of the
values of science itself.[9] The kind of mixing of science and art
desired by Oppenheimer in which both were to be considered as pure creative
activities was a similar limiting approach. Yet, the current mixing of
science and art is frequently much more provocative, as in Iconoclash, where
the aim is to challenge our classifications themselves; or, as in some of the
Science
Museum artworks, where the effect can be unnerving, partly because the art pieces
are placed throughout the exhibition and it is not always immediately clear
whether a piece is `art' or `science'. In some cases, art works have also been
used to make political commentary on STM. In the Deutsches Museum, for example,
the planes in the aviation galleries have been accompanied by pieces such as
Christoph Bergmann's `Enola Gay', a sculpture showing an elegant woman's torso
with its base being the tail fins of a bomb, named after the plane that dropped
the atomic bomb on Hiroshima; or his male torso, entitled simply `Oppenheimer'
(Fehlhammer 2000). Also featured in the aviation gallery were a set of carpets
by Sabrina Hoffmann, which showed pictures of `carpet bombed' German cities,
such as Dresden (ibid.: 22). All of these works are clearly not just adding an
aesthetic flourish, or making a general point about creativity, but are seeking
to probe and provoke complex social, political, moral and aesthetic reflection
and response simultaneously.
Concluding
note
In this
essay I have considered some of the ways in which exhibitions of STM have been
variously used in the public understanding of science and at some of the
particular challenges of the current information age, which creates a paradox
in which the public is deemed increasingly scientifically illiterate while at
the same time knowing more than ever before. Exhibitionary strategies range
from the predominantly didactic to the predominantly aesthetic. In the former,
exhibitions are considered within a cognitive framework as educative tools, and
the intention is to control and direct the meanings which visitors will gain
from the exhibits. Aestheticallyoriented exhibitions, by contrast, aim to work
predominantly on an emotional, affective level. Didactic exhibitions seek to
promote the understanding of specific content, such as scientific principles or
the implications of technological or medical developments. Aesthetically
oriented exhibitions, by contrast, are less likely to be concerned with
specific content or messages -- though as in the `Enola Gay' sculpture this may
be fairly unequivocal, and their `metamessages' may also be fairly clearcut,
as in spectacular exhibitions intended to highlight national achievement. There
is, however, a range of approaches here from the specific to the meta, and from
the relatively closely directed to the more openly associative. In the latter,
the exhibitions may be more generally seeking to highlight the fluidity of
boundaries between science and art or the beauty of technological objects.
It is
important to note that exhibitions towards the aesthetic end of the didacticaesthetic
spectrum can also contribute to public understanding of science. As I suggested
above, the kinds of provocations provided by less tightly orchestrated
exhibitions might often be more appropriate to the current age in which what is
most needed is for the public to be able to engage in critical reflection.
Perhaps it is partly because museums are so often seen by the public as
authoritative spaces -- sites of answers rather than questions -- that some of
the most intriguing and publicly attractive exhibitions in recent years have
been those which have clearly not been driven by a tightly directive pedagogy.
Such exhibitions simultaneously challenge existing museology while at the same
time seeming to promise a more unmediated, and thus apparently more authentic,
access to that which they exhibit. In a world in which lay people are often
told that they are scientifically illiterate and in which so much STM is presented
to them in the form of narratives of risk or selfimprovement, exhibitions
which provide more multiple and selfdirected dimensions of engagement are,
perhaps, especially compelling.
In his `new
history' of STM, John Pickstone discusses the rise, and changing nature, of
public understanding of science initiatives. A major impetus towards the public
understanding of science emphasis, he argues, are predominantly economicallyoriented
managerialist attempts to `get more science across' to the public (2000). What
is needed, he maintains, is to move beyond the `output culture' in which
`knowledge is a commodity', to appreciate the different kinds of `meanings'
that the (diverse) public may bring to their understanding of science (2000:
1967). Rather than look at public understanding of science in terms of
```levels'', as if it were the water in a bath fed by a ``trickling down'' from
scientists and by natural ``upswellings'' of public concern', he maintains that
it is: [b]etter to see public concern as contested ground, where organised
bodies do battle, and in which journalists of various kinds may grind axes as
they look for good ``angles''. Surely such debate is to be encouraged... (2000:
196)
A move
towards encouraging public debate rather than trying to tightly orchestrate and
control responses is characteristic of one of the developments in museums.[10] Of course, the apparent encouraging of
debate can sometimes be rather spurious. Some of the recent moves to
incorporate visitor responses into exhibitions themselves seem to be at such
risk, with their gathering up and playing back of perhaps mostly uninformed
opinions (see Gammon and Mazda 2000). It can also easily be the case that
controversy is supposedly presented, and visitors encouraged to believe that
they are witnessing debate or an evenhanded presentation of the arguments on
various sides, when the cards are all carefully stacked from the beginning,
perhaps by corporate interests (for an example, see Ross 1995).
Nevertheless,
there is undoubtedly much more awareness now of the limitations of some of the
earlier approaches to public understanding of science and there is increased
will to address the multiple facets and potentials of the museum. While there
is still much call for the need for the public to understand science better,
there is surely evidence in museums that `understanding' is no longer being
understood narrowly but that museums are coming to tap more of their particular
abilities to excite interest and multiple understandings and meanings. In part
this is a consequence of that STM paradox in which the public both knows more
about, and is more sceptical of, STM and the networks in which these are
embedded. It is also a consequence of an apparent desire of audiences to evade
tight control. And, not least, it is a consequence of some brave and
imaginative attempts by those who work in museums to create innovative and
original exhibitions which do not just simply follow narrow formulae for
getting STM `out'.
Acknowledgments
I would like
to thank participants at the Ausstellungen als Instrument der
Wissenvermittlung/Exhibitions as a Tool for Transmitting Knowledge workshop in
Berlin, April 2002, for discussion which helped me in writing this essay; and
especially to Alex Färber and Jochen Brüning for inviting me and for their
comments; and to Penny Harvey and Mike Beaney for further valuable discussion.
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This article
first appeared at the Berlin Conference “Exhibitions as a tool for transmitting
knowledge”, Humboldt University April 2002.
[1] In referring to science, technology and
medicine (STM) I am following John Pickstone's suggestion that considering
these together rather than separately is likely to bring new insights
(Pickstone 2000: 67). In the fields of public understanding and museological
representation there are certainly many overlapping concerns that make it
worthwhile to consider them together, while being mindful, of course, of areas
of difference.
[2] This is not entirely a new problem. For a
discussion of its history and transformations see Shapin 1994.
[3] Though
whether they should or should not be viewed as akin to museums has itself been
the source of considerable debate. See, for example, Durant 1992.
[4] Further discussion of this research can be found in Macdonald 1995 and 2002.
[5] For information about the
exhibition see Bredekamp, Brüning and Weber (eds) 2001.
[6] An interesting, if unfortunate,
example of public interest in relatively unordered aggregations of objects is
the number.
[7] See Arnold 2000 for discussion.
[8] Information
about these exhibitions is available as follows: Iconoclash - the art programme at the
Deutsches Museum Fehlhammer 2000; the art programme in the Science Museum Wellcome Wing;
Körperwelten, von Hagens and Whalley
2002.
[9] Körperwelten
is an interesting case here in its ambiguity between the scientific and
aesthetic, sometimes being shown in technical museums (it having been first
exhibited in the Museum for Technology and Labour in Mannheim, Germany) and
sometimes (as in London) in art galleries. Its main presentational style is
aesthetic though it is supported by educational materials (as in the catalogue),
perhaps partly in order to legitimate it as science in the face of the moral
outrage that would ensue if human body parts were to be exhibited purely as art
works. For discussion, see contributions to von Hagens and Whalley 2002.
[10] It might be argued that this has been
recognised for longer in some sorts of museums perhaps especially museums of
art and ethnography than others. See Karp and Lavine 1991, Macdonald and Fyfe
1996.