I Didn't Bring My Son to a Museum to Look at Screens

And amusement parks, even.

Well, maybe just Universal Studios. And I guess their brand emphasis is on movies, but still: does EVERY ride need to be heavily reliant on screens?!

IMO, the geyser exhibit in the Exploratorium is one of best demonstrations I've seen in a museum. Far more impressive than a tesla coil, and contains a really good explanation of how it works (unlike the vast majority of tesla coil exhibits).

Sure, a tesla coil is flashy and a pretty awesome (in the biblical sense) demonstration of man's harnessing of electricity, but they don't really tell you much about how electricity works. A simple snap-together circuit with a battery, some wires, and some incandescent light bulbs does a much better job of that.

I get the economics of it for science museums, but at least science museums in major cities tend to have adults-only nights now.

I visited part of the Smithsonian recently (the natural history museum) and the level of patronizing displays is truly incredible. It seems pretty clear that if you're more than 10 years old, you're not supposed to be in there. But that feels like a development of recent decades.

On the other hand, zoos seem to have become more adult-oriented and less children-oriented over time.

Art museums could be made friendlier for kids, but they would need significant design and maintenance effort. In particular: many kids need a lot of running around, want to play with things with their hands, and get quickly bored just standing and looking at artworks. It would be nice if there were better art museums for kids though.

(For what it's worth, there are plenty of non-interactive and thus boring-for-kids science, technology, history, etc. museums if you look around.)

There are exceptions - here in the UK we have the RI: https://www.rigb.org/

The Christmas lectures are probably the most famous thing they do, and these have definitely moved in a more 'child' focussed direction. If you were attending the Christmas lectures in the 1850s however, the audience would have been middle class victorioans, and you'd have had Michael Faraday telling you about electricity, forces, chemistry etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Institution_Christmas_Le...

I would recommend attending one of their lectures if you happen to find yourself in London, just to be in the building, and to sit in the lecture theatre!

I agree with you but I also think it’s hard for kids to appreciate art without life experience. At least in a full way.

Visiting my parents this summer with my kids, I was excited to find that the zoo served beer. That definitely wasn't an option for my dad when I was growing up.

Largely agreed, with one exception. If you're ever in Boston/Cambridge MA, check out the MIT museum. I've always told people that its a science museum but for adults. The Harvard museums are worth visiting as well, but the MIT museum really impressed me with their content.

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 shame.

Exploratorium and Academy of Sciences in SF have adult nights I believe. I remember attending a Yelp Elite event back in the day at the Exploratorium at night and it was pretty fun.

I think that science museums being places for kids is a good thing. The are the ones who benefit the most. If you want science for grownups, you have conferences. Also, that it is for kids doesn't make it impossible to enjoy as an adult, especially if it is about things you are unfamiliar with.

Now, if you go to a science museum and think "only a kid can enjoy that". Then the problem is not that it is a place for kids, it is that it is just bad. It is a thing Disney understood very well, its classics may look like they are for kids, but they are actually enjoyable by everyone, and it is a big reason for their success.

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. That's unlike a science museum where they actually try to teach you science. It is only interesting if you are already well into that kind of art, and most kids aren't (yet?).

History museums are kind of a middle ground as they can do the double duty of teaching history (mostly for kids) and showing off artefacts to people who are already into that (mostly for grownups).

I don't remember the big Kensington museums being like that when I was a kid. There was a kids' section or two, but the rest was clearly for adults (and has stuck in my memory just as much, if not more than, the kids' sections).

Seeing the real Apollo 10 (I don't remember which module) sticks very clearly in my memory.

I also rode on a "heritage" train recently, and what struck me the most was that the interior decor of the passenger cars looked as though it had been designed for and by grown-ups.

Nothing about a science museum filled with kids precludes you from playing with the exhibits yourself.

I mean as a kid, zoos are "wow cool, animals :)", while as an adult, you realize that they're basically prisons profiting off animal exploitation for entertainment

There's an interactive Leondardo da Vinci museum in Firenze that does a good job of appealing to both. It's full of kids, because it's interactive, but you could fill it with adults just as easily.

I'm not sure which way you're going with this, but the Philadelphia Museum of Art, down the street from the Franklin Institute, isn't specifically geared towards adults and has lots of programming specifically for kids. Seeing Rubens' Prometheus Bound there as a child as part of such a program left me in awe. I remember the feeling to this day. Every time I go, I see families with young children or even just groups of teens there.

The Philadelphia Zoo also has events planned specifically for adults. My girlfriend and I went to one a few months ago. I'm not sure what specifically about the Philadelphia zoo, the Bronx zoo, the Shedd aquarium, etc. is for specifically geared towards kids, though.

Certainly now, yes.

But back in the 70's, OP's museum -- Franklin Institute (fi.edu) -- used to have serious lectures, classes, and even some research. Upstairs there used to be lecture rooms, a library, and classrooms.

The most fun I've ever had in a museum was at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas. The exhibits are interactive, educational, fun... mostly for kids...

I was 33 years old... I'd love to go back and do it all again.

You should check out the Deutsches Museum if you're in Munich sometime.

You're right. Kids should be able to enjoy art, too!

Same, not everything should be for kids. It’s become pretty evident that the adult population doesn’t know science.

Quite agree with the sentiment, and the presentation of science to the public in general. However, that probably also reflects a rather accurate assessment of scientific literacy in the general population on the part of planners.

Anyway, among US museums of natural history & science, a prominent exception is the AMNH in NYC: yes there are things for kids, but also things for "grownups". After dozens of visits I still learn something new every time.

Pittsburgh's Science Center has over-21 events all the time. They're very popular.

I didn't understand art as a kid. You need experience, culture, history, and often at least a cursory understanding of religion to understand art. Art is an expression by the artist. It is necessary to understand the milieu of the artist first.

Science is universal. It crosses time and language barriers. The underlying physical principles are immutable. Kids can be expected to understand science museum exhibits after a few minutes of explanation. You can't explain the historical and social context behind a painting in just a few minutes to a kid.

Our science museum has dumbed everything down to where truly only a child could enjoy it and they don’t even seem to like it much. When I was a child the exhibits were so different and really interesting to both ages. Now it’s the most homogenized crap imaginable. Something only Blippi (the lobotomized) could love. I donate blood there and I’m never even tempted to go look at an exhibit. A lot of this happened in just the past few years, maybe they are just matching their reading and science impaired audience, I don’t know.

If you ever get a chance, the Hunterian Museum at Glasgow has a permanent display of some of Lord Kevlin's instruments. You can look at the actual tools used to characterize the volt, the amp, and the electro-static forces.

https://www.gla.ac.uk/collections/#/details?irn=16534&catTyp...

One science museum that is not like that is the Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin, at least when I was there (shudder) about a decade ago.

It was a museum that was designed for parents to explain to children. The written material for any given piece in an exhibit went into sufficient detail and successive sections of writing would build on each other without necessarily requiring that the previous section had been read.

Back then the museum had an exhibition on the longitude problem and time keeping, precision, drift, etc. that walked you through the development of increasingly accurate chronometers, the practical reasons why, etc. It was an absolute masterwork exhibit, and it expected the adults to be actively engaged with helping digest the material with the kids.

I've seen a few different science museums and the like have a special day of the week where they stay open later and are 21+. Booze is involved. I've never been, but it seems like it could be a fun time.

Just for clarification, are you upset that art museums tend to be less kid-focused, or that science museums and zoos tend to be overly kid focused? Both seem to be things to be potentially concerned about IMO.

Yup. Tim Hunkin went for a last look around his Secret Life of the Home exhibition¹ at the London Science Museum and quite a few things were out of order; this may be because the exhibit was imminently closing, but my impression is that that's just the deal with mechanical exhibits - they break more often than the digital ones. Very likely it's one reason the screens are at the forefront.

¹ https://youtu.be/cqpvl-YGFD4

It's not just museum exhibits and kids, it's everything. I have some maintenance roles in my background and the rate at which things like paper towel dispensers get worn down and completely destroyed when interacted with by hundreds or thousands of people a day is eye opening.

Yes, but this is the core of what they're offering. As the son of a science museum director, I've seen exactly what it takes to keep hands on science exhibits going. I agree with the article here, although I think it's appropriate to have some screens if required for an exhibit (e.g. a thermal imaging system)

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 Triangular metal piece that couldn't be hung off of because children are wild animals. This museum prior to the rebuild into the California Science Center (which I love but is just different) and the Exploratorium were amazing experiences for this as a kid. I miss the big kinetic scuplture of rolling wood balls through the electricity exhibit, the plotter that would draw out your bicycle design, the next door room full of electronic interactives of the kind that he's complaining about but early 90s style. The weird chrome McDonalds left over from the 84 Olympics. The giant ceiling mounted helmet VR exhibit (crt, no doubt) I wish I could find better photos, there's so few.

"I didn't bring my niece to a museum to look at a screen..."

I took my niece around the Natural History Museum in London recently, taking in the new 'Darwin' extension first. It was a liminal space of sorts with lots of broken screens. The tech had not been updated in a decade or more so you had Adobe Flash Player running, complete with the crash pop-up messages to let you know what version of Flash they were updated to.

The idea generally was to have a large touch table with a projector in the ceiling showing an image that could be interacted with. My 8 year old crash test dummy still enjoyed the screens, which was no surprise given that she is addicted to her tablet.

The touch table (however it worked) was not quite registered to the image projected on it. Some exhibits (screens) had a 'tell a friend' feature where you could enter an email address. However, all of the 'keys' were off, so you press 'Q' and you get 'W', or 'N' and you get 'M'. I persisted and entered my sister's email address.

Did she get the email?

What do you think!!!

Some of the screens had the toughest armour I have ever seen. ATMs are soft targets by comparison. I had never seen whole keyboards made of stainless steel before and found the level of vandal-proofing to be absurd.

Admittedly the throughput of the museum is absurd, in the UK every person gets to go there at least five times, once with mum and dad, another time with one set of grandparents, then with the school, then, as they have their own kids, they have to go again, then it is rinse/repeat when they are a grandparent.

The reason for going is dinosaurs. But they got rid of 'dippy' from the entrance hall.

Before you get to the entrance hall there is the begging chicane. This is a ridiculous entrance route back and fore between a dozen different begging bowls to support them financially. If you choose not to pay up, then you can then spend the next six hours not speaking or interacting with any humans apart from the ones you arrived with, except for maybe at the giftshop.

There were no annexes with staff doing talks, nobody apart from the beggars to greet you, but plenty of screens.

The brief for the new wing was to have scientists doing classification of specimens in such a way that they were on show, a 'working museum'. But nobody wanted to work in goldfish bowl conditions under the gaze of hordes of kids.

I don't want to dismiss the place in its entirety, the gardens outside were lovely even though they have a motorway-sized road next to you with considerable noise pollution. That's right, the place we send all our kids to for the big memorable day is made toxic with the filth of car dependency. The air is utterly disgusting there just because of car dependency. The whole area is full of museums and the whole lot needs to just be pedestrianised, but no, it is clogged up with those cheesy 'status symbol' cars people buy in London.

So there is this wall of cars outside and this wall of screens inside. Then the daylight robbery in the gift shop.

We didn't do the full tour, got to save some for the parents and school trip. But we did go to the earthquake room. It is modelled on a Japanese shop and shakes every few minutes. Shakes is being kind. A garden swing or any wheeled vehicle does a better simulation, clearly the hydraulics have lost some of their zest.

The 'climate change' room was also a little off. Maybe this is a leftover from when they had the likes of BP sponsor the place.

I was not going to let anything spoil my perfect day out with my niece, so I wasn't miserable about the place when I was there. However, on reflection, the dilapidation was a glimpse of the future, a future where museums have screens to interact with but no staff to interact with.

Great observation.

And it might even bigger than that: the wonder of the digital world may be retrospectively giving us unfair expectations of meatspace uptime.