Guys, Normally I leave the articles for Keith to pickup and post (and he does a super job, btw) and but this one just about screams to me about where the museum "industry" is headed. Jim

Why old museums are going the way of the dinosaur
10/27/2002

By FRANK BURES / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News

You remember it: The old museum. It was quiet and dusty. Footsteps echoed off marble pillars and glass cases. Still-life mammals gathered dust, while blocky Neanderthal mannequins roasted meat over a fire in front of a sprawling grassland. The passage to prehistory was always badly painted.

To some this was peaceful. It was contemplative.

To others, it was boring.

But regardless of what you thought, you need think it no more. Because the old museum is doomed – nearly as doomed as the Neanderthal himself. Instead, it's evolving into something else, something superior.

The modern museum is coming alive.

(Jim's note: this is a sidebar so if you want the story, skip down.)

New museums that teach and entertain
Here is a list of some of the most recent, most highly evolved museums:

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (Washington): With 17 million visitors and counting, this is "America's national institution for the documentation, study and interpretation of Holocaust history, and serves as this country's memorial to the millions of people murdered during the Holocaust." This was the main pioneer in the use of narrative as a way to enhance the visitor experience and understanding. Contact: 202-488-0400; www.ushmm.org.

National Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (Wellington, New Zealand): A "bicultural" narrative museum that combines the country's national museum and art gallery. Deals in tough, honest and equal terms with the country's racial issues between the native Maori and Europeans. Interactive and narrative exhibits where you can spend at least a week. Virtual bungee jumping among the attractions. Free admission. Contact: www.tepapa.govt.nz.

Museum of African American History (Detroit, Mich.): The "International Afro-American Museum" was rechristened and reopened in 1997 after a massive renovation, with 120,000 square feet and state-of-the-art exhibits. It is the world's largest African-American historical museum, and is cited by many designers as an important influence in narrative concepts. Contact: 313-494-5800; www.maah-detroit.org.

Museum of Tolerance (Los Angeles, Calif.): A "high-tech, hands-on experiential museum that focuses on two themes through unique interactive exhibits: the dynamics of racism and prejudice in America and the history of the Holocaust – the ultimate example of man's inhumanity to man." Also often cited as an important narrative museum. Contact: 310-553-8403; www.wiesenthal.com/mot.

National Museum of Australia (Canberra, Australia): Opened in March 2001 as a part of the celebrations of Australia's centenary as a federated nation. Aims to bring "a fresh and exciting approach to Australian history, culture and the environment ... through the blending of exhibits, technology, media, live performances and hands-on activities within dynamic architectural and landscape spaces." Contact: 011-61-02-6208-5000; www.nma.gov.au.

Jewish Museum Berlin (Berlin, Germany): About 350,000 people went to see this landmark building by Daniel Libeskind even before the 13 exhibit islands were installed. Ken Gorbey, a New Zealander from Te Papa is the project director and has overseen creation of the narrative museum on 2,000 years of Jewish daily life. Contact: www.jmberlin.de.

Experience Music Project (Seattle, Wash.): Aside from the spectacular building by Frank Gehry, the EMP has "interactive and interpretive exhibits to tell the story of the creative, innovative and rebellious expression that defines American popular music ... state-of-the-art technology, exciting interactive presentations, and a dynamic, ride-like attraction." In other words, it's like Te Papa minus virtual sheep sheering, plus lots of rock. Contact: 1-877-367-5483; www.emplive.com.

Coming soon

National Museum of the American Indian (to open in March 2004, Washington, D.C.): This $220 million facility for "advancing knowledge and understanding of [Western Hemisphere] native cultures, including art, history and language" promises to be a gem. Many cues are probably taken from Te Papa's biculturalism, and a liberal use of interactive and narrative exhibits. Contact: www.nmai.si.edu.
Museum of the History of Polish Jews (Warsaw, Poland. Construction to begin in 2003.): Another Frank Gehry building will house this narrative museum on Jewish culture, religion and language that developed in Poland and spread throughout the world. Contact: 011-48-22-833-0021; www.jew ishmuseum.org.pl/geneza-gb .html.

STORY PICKUP HERE.

In the new museum, or one not far off, you will smell the mammoth dung as you walk into a holographic prehistory complex, with grasslands swaying around you and a light wind blowing in your hair. Then, far off you will hear a deep rumble, and a giant wounded mammoth will come crashing by you with a pack of animatronic hunters close behind. You'll run and watch as they surround the beast, kill it, and roast it before your eyes.

Because in the new museum you are almost there.

And that's not all. Emerging from this tunnel of prehistory, you will go on to play interactive Neanderthal computer games, take Neanderthal rides and choose between a thousand audio and video tracks that take you deeper and deeper into the Neanderthal experience, telling the story of Neanderthal life. Afterward, in the themed restaurant, you will dine on imitation mammoth jerky and roasted sloth.

Now, this exact museum doesn't exist quite yet, but it might as well, because it is precisely where museums are heading. They are becoming an experience in themselves and an ambiguous blend of education and entertainment that wrap their objects in stories and give them life.

The trend toward the interactive/narrative experience has been coming for some time and started in the science museums. More recently, social and cultural museums have taken up the mantle. The "narrative museum" had its first full incarnation in the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., which opened in 1993.

There, designers set out to make exhibits that recreated the experience through the eyes of those who had been there. They blurred the line between viewer and viewed with videos, stories and audio tracks. Exhibits spilled into walkways, and walkways meandered through exhibits. The museum told the story of the Holocaust from beginning to end and made it personal with intimate details. Visitors were simultaneously unsettled, entertained and enlightened by a museum that, in a sense, became the exhibit.

This was a huge shift from what people once thought a museum should be or should do and who it should be for. Once, the museum was seen as a kind of holding tank where bits of culture were stored to be studied by scholars and preserved for the future. It was an archive of artifacts collected by the elite and displayed for the same. The objects hung in a kind of vacuum, and the visitor's experience was incidental.

Now, all emphasis has been turned to that experience, which is good for us visitors, but not so palatable to some academics whose domain was that old museum. For some museums, the shift has not been smooth.

In New Zealand, the narrative museum reached new heights at Te Papa Tongarewa, the National Museum and Art Gallery. Since it opened in 1998, there has been endless controversy. Te Papa is a giant waterfront complex with a landscape of interwoven exhibits, rides, interactive games and videos. The glass wall between viewer and viewed at Te Papa was essentially removed.

Critics called Te Papa a "dog's breakfast" and decried the "Disneyfication" of their national museum. They mourned the loss of the old, stately displays of masks and spears. One director of a rival museum called it a "glitzy expo which assaults the senses." British writer Theodore Dalrymple called it "a giant amusement arcade" and said, "Te Papa ... stands as a terrible warning to the world."

But the public loved it. Critics had scoffed at the museum's hopeful figure of 720,000 visitors in its first year. Five months after opening, Te Papa had seen over a million people, and 2 million by the end of the year. At end of its second year, 3.5 million people had been to Te Papa, almost equal to the number of New Zealanders. The number is now over 6.3 million.

"It's an old tension over ownership of information," says Elaine Gurian, who was deputy director of the Holocaust Museum, and a consultant on Te Papa and other projects.

The old world museums were "temples of culture," meant to store society's highest scientific and artistic achievements. Commercial and cultural pressures have changed all that, but the tension between high and low culture, between education and entertainment, between art and amusement, is still very much there. What some see as sullying of their sanctuary with the lowest common denominator, others see as democratization of the museum and just a lot of fun.

Allegations of "Disneyfying" the museum aren't completely off the mark. The Holocaust Museum actually studied the Disney model of visitor services, and others have followed suit. In fact, most large museums have come to resemble theme parks: sprawling historical and social multiplexes in which you can lose yourself for days. They are temples to a different kind of culture.

The success of the Holocaust Museum, Te Papa and others have set high standards for the storytelling experience, and nearly all cultural museums are following in their wake. Ripples are being felt throughout the museum world, and you will find elements of narrative in nearly every museum you walk into. Some are being transformed piece by piece. Others are being built from the ground up and are the most complete incarnations of the ideal.

Frank Bures is a free-lance writer in Thailand.



Wrinnbo@aol.com

We saw a good example of this trend at ARM when we visited The Women's Museum in Dallas' Fair Park complex. Opened in the 1990s and created in affiliation with the Smithsonian, this museum represents a good exmaple of the current state of the art in exhibit design. Installations were organized around "themes" more than narrative storylines, and followed a very non-linear form of presentation--big walls of images, artifacts and text panels among which the eye was encouraged to jump almost at random, creating one's own connections and juxtapositions. Very MTV.

Truthfully, even though I'm a young guy and a professional multimedia producer, and so I'm open to this stuff, I found their exhibit design unsettling. I missed the narrative, storytelling architecture. At the end of the day the exhibits seemd glossy but shallow--like dining on Twinkies.

I was far mor impressed with the nearby African American museum, which used a more traditional exhibit design to tell the story of Dallas' Freedmantown community through the lens of excavating its old cemetary, nearly obliterated in a 1960s road construction project. This exhibit used video, artifacts, images, and text panels, but had a much stronger thematic and narrative focus. I was much more comfortable, and left much better educated and enlightened.

Now, whether I am a good barometer of what "works" and what doesn't for the general public is an open question--I suspect I'm definately not.

eledbetter@rypn.org

> Why old museums are going the way of the
> dinosaur
> 10/27/2002

Jim, I thank you for posting this article. I believe it would have been useful fodder for a whole seminar at the ARM, had it appeared a week earlier.

Several responses come to mind with this piece, however, and I am raising the questions for debate or discussion:

1) The majority of such new museums (another that comes to mind is the "Newseum", featured prominently in an article in today's Washington Post, linked below) can, rightly or wrongly, be perceived as promoting a particular social or political agenda ("The slaughter of Jews/native peoples was horrible and must never happen again", "The news media is a vital part of American freedom", etc.). Rail museums certainly have agendas as well ("Trains built America/this town was a railroad town", etc.); however, if/when this agenda is potentially socially/politically loaded, it can possibly jeopardize governmental involvement and restrict you to working strictly within the private sector. (I say "possibly" because enough "revisionist history" seems to be getting funded by our tax dollars to make me cringe.) I have yet to see an instance (other than Steamtown in Vermont) where, for example, some municipality refuses to consider road improvements or signage to a growing museum that is considered too independent or not considered "politically correct" (mind you, I see government signage for agenda-driven museums all the time, provided the agenda is considered PC). But it could happen.

2) The "Disneyfication" of museums may or may not produce tangible long-term benefits. Numbers are always high at a new institution or attraction with enough traffic flow, bells, and glitter. Those in the restaurant trade ( a remarkably similar trade) can tell you it's not just getting customers through the door, but getting them to come back again and again. Show me folks who repeatedly go back to the Rainforest Cafe or the Hard Rock Cafe.
Can anyone cite examples of "unsuccessful" modernization of museums, where the new attractions only temporarily slowed the decline of a place? (I'm certainly not in a mood to kick Altoona around, but...........)

Newseum article
lner4472@bcpl.net

Well,it's finally happened. Humanity has become so spoiled and jaded that we are willing to sell out and turn our museums into amusement parks. People used to have integrity, they went to the museum for the learning experience of being around items more timeless than their own human bodies. They respected things from times past.Yes, museums were a place to keep your hands off things and appreciate that they were precious and old. Children were taught to look and not touch, AND THERE WAS NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT!Now we expect instant gratification and to be entertained. It's not the fault of museums that they have to lower themselves to using glitzy special effects and video game technology. It's the faulty of a public too spoiled and unappreciative to be able to relate to anything but television and video games.May I never spend my hard earned money to walk into some place billing itself as a museum and find amusement park technology. I came for the artifacts, if I want Disneyland, I'll go to Disneyland. If we have to stoop to Hollywood special effects to promote ourselves, maybe we should close and let the public suffer for the culture they couldn't be bothered supporting.Just my two cents worth guys but there's never been a video game or instant gratification toy in my home, and there never will be.
-Angie


Ladypardus@cs.com

s word from the dinasaurs,please. Museums are to my way of thinking an institution that does two things: entertainment and education.

If any group goes too far in either direction it results in either a whipped cream content information wize or a boring only for a few scholars aproach, Neither is good.

to bring this to railroad terms; tell the story!
There are so many of them in the transportation area. How, why, when, and where are still good guidelines to follow. And yes, tell the story of Women, Black and Labor history. But the museum that is all presentation and no substance will be forgotten sooner or later.

Thanks for posting the article. I have shown it around to my co-workers.


ted_miles@nps.gov

> We saw a good example of this trend at ARM
> when we visited The Women's Museum in
> Dallas' Fair Park complex. Opened in the
> 1990s and created in affiliation with the
> Smithsonian, this museum represents a good
> exmaple of the current state of the art in
> exhibit design.

Erik,

The Women's Museum is even newer. It opened in only the last couple of years. 2-1/2 years ago the building was being rehabilitated.

Brian Norden

bnorden49@earthlink.net

Good catch, Brian. Opening day was Sept. 29th, 2000.

Other details from their Web site:

"Wendy Evans Joseph, who served at Pei Cobb Freed & Partners as a senior designer for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, in Washington, D.C., was chiefly responsible for the aesthetic vision of the museum building.

Whirlwind & Company of New York was selected as the exhibit design firm for the museum project."


eledbetter@rypn.org

> 2) The "Disneyfication" of museums
> may or may not produce tangible long-term
> benefits. Numbers are always high at a new
> institution or attraction with enough
> traffic flow, bells, and glitter. Those in
> the restaurant trade ( a remarkably similar
> trade) can tell you it's not just getting
> customers through the door, but getting them
> to come back again and again. Show me folks
> who repeatedly go back to the Rainforest
> Cafe or the Hard Rock Cafe.
> Can anyone cite examples of
> "unsuccessful" modernization of
> museums, where the new attractions only
> temporarily slowed the decline of a place?
> (I'm certainly not in a mood to kick Altoona
> around, but...........)

They aren't really museums or really restaurants but if you look at the modern amusement park you will see example of what you have to do to keep 'em coming back. When I go to Cedar Point, I can ride the vintage rides, listen to the restored band organs, and ride the steam train. The big draw is of course the latest multi-million dollar flying whiz-bang and its 90mph ride down a cliff. And they change this every year to keep interest high. The main point is that an entire family can spend (literally spend $$$) an entire day there and find something to interest everybody. The very narrow venue of a ride on a choo-choo train or the limited genre of "railroading" has a limited audience further limited by the diffulty of "something new and different" every season. I have no answers to the question how do RR museums do this, but I sure would be interested in some.


lamontdc@adelphia.net

> Truthfully, even though I'm a young guy and
> a professional multimedia producer, and so
> I'm open to this stuff, I found their
> exhibit design unsettling. I missed the
> narrative, storytelling architecture. At the
> end of the day the exhibits seemd glossy but
> shallow--like dining on Twinkies.

How I'm an older guy. When I travel I like to look at museums and see what they are about and how they tell (or don't tell) the story.

Some of these new museums are more like an education center that teaches from a historical perspective. Historical artifacts are being used to tell this current story. The artifacts are not there for their own benefit.

My reaction to the Woman's Museum was that it was there to celebrate what women have done and what they can do - that there are no limitations. It is there to educate the school groups and adults that come through the museum.

The two traveling exhibits at the African-American museum in Dallas are also celebrations of what the blacks have done in furniture and clothing design.

There is nothing wrong with celebrating something at a museum. In doing so we want to make people aware of something.

One of the things that railway museums need to celebrate is the interaction of railways to the growth (in the past, now, and in the future) of our countries. In doing so we are explaining one of the reasons it is import to save our artifacts.

Brian Norden

bnorden49@earthlink.net

> Some of these new museums are more like an
> education center that teaches from a
> historical perspective. Historical artifacts
> are being used to tell this current story.
> The artifacts are not there for their own
> benefit.

I think Brian's review is spot-on. The Women's Museum in Dallas tells an essentially inspirational story, using history as a field from which to draw teaching examples. I guess I found it a surprisingly old-fashioned view of history--it's a Whiggish narrative of progress and triumph, much the same as what the "great man" view of history, except with the twist that in this case it is "great women".

I guess as someone deeply interested in history I would have been more engaged by stories of daily life, or dilemmas or difficult decisions. So perhaps my tepid reaction was to the content or the intellectual design of the place, more than the media used to convey the message.

eledbetter@rypn.org

> ... The main point is that
> an entire family can spend (literally spend
> $$$) an entire day there and find something
> to interest everybody. The very narrow venue
> of a ride on a choo-choo train or the
> limited genre of "railroading" has
> a limited audience further limited by the
> diffulty of "something new and
> different" every season. I have no
> answers to the question how do RR museums do
> this, but I sure would be interested in
> some.

Isn't this the role that is supposed be fulfilled by rotating exhibits and special events; such as "Thomas" and joint presentations with other historical groups (antique car, military collectors, etc.)

While not "Disneyish"; these special events have the ability to draw visitors into the presentation by involving them and giving them something they can relate to; a "sugar stick" if you wish.

I also read into this that rotating exhibits should likewise be more intactive and "high tech". I acknowledge that such exhibits can be expensive, but perhaps a group of museums could jointly develop these exhibits, which would then travel from one museum to the other.

Angie, I hear what you are saying; but let's face it, that is the kind of society we live in; and we can either meet it halfway or die. I don't think we are doing the preservation movement or ourselves a favor to "roll over and die" rather than make a connection to today's culture. I believe the core concept of a museum as we know it can continue, but unless we come up with ever-changing, exciting and interactive activities to bring them back, we will get lots of visitors that say "that's nice", and never come back. Then, we have what I refer to as a "mausoleum" not a museum; full of stuff that's rotting away, yet nobody cares.

-James Hefner
Hebrews 10:20a


Surviving World Steam Locomotives
james1@pernet.net

> s word from the dinasaurs,please. Museums
> are to my way of thinking an institution
> that does two things: entertainment and
> education.

> If any group goes too far in either
> direction it results in either a whipped
> cream content information wize or a boring
> only for a few scholars aproach, Neither is
> good.
Another good example of an outstanding (my opinion) museum is in Altoona, PA. Several floors of interesting, well done, very professional-looking displays. A real treat. It shows what can be done with money. Alas... most museums, except those sponsored by cities, states, etc. (like Steamtown) don't have the funds.
> to bring this to railroad terms; tell the
> story!
> There are so many of them in the
> transportation area. How, why, when, and
> where are still good guidelines to follow.
> And yes, tell the story of Women, Black and
> Labor history. But the museum that is all
> presentation and no substance will be
> forgotten sooner or later.

> Thanks for posting the article. I have shown
> it around to my co-workers.


hankmorris@earthlink.net

The Dallas article comes from the turbulence now happening in the world of main line museums. We are all in competition with entertainment venues if we acknowledge it or not, the Cedar Points as well as Disney. But rail museums not only have this problem but a bigger one in that many have never gotten themselves up to the most basic level of the old style museum. That is marking their (our) exhibits so a visitor will be able to know what they are looking at and why it is considered worth preserving. This can be stated in shorthand as "What is it?" and "So What?" Until your (our) visitors can get this level of service from rail museums I don't know why we should be concerned that we are or are not following the trends with major museums. The reasons for declining attendance are more basic.

Museum of Transportation
rdgoldfede@aol.com

Are descriptives that we need to bear in mind when designing our displays. Relevant in that we form some emotional and intellectual connection with the viewer - engrossing in that we attract and retain the viewers attention through the duration of the display experience.

Hi tech approaches are one way - hands on living an experience is another. Our demonstration train rides are the most obvious example. How many of us allow visitors to try driving a spike? Key a message on the Morse Telegraph? Throw a track switch?

Do we let visitors know that that long coal train is actually delivering electricity to their TV set? That the railroads agents sold their great grandparents boat and train tickets to ove to the USA and occupy vacant railroad land which allowed them to escape crowded Europe and prosper?

It occirred to me the other day when I was involvled in a long and probably tedious explaination of hydrostatic lubricators to a "civilian" that I probably wasn't doing the industry any favors. We need to widen our technology based inerpretation to a more social and personal one.

Dave

irondave@bellsouth.net