[Taxacom] Museums and the musem ethos

[Steve Manning]

It strikes me that the dual research/outreach 
model is also ideal and to some extent followed 
in research Universities, whether or not that is 
part of an official mission statement.  The 
advantage of University settings is that students 
ideally rub elbows with researchers during their 
stay as students and that is perhaps a less 
contrived way to reach the public in the long run 
than needing the researchers to take time to 
consciously reach out to the general public (?).

No disagreement with the general gist of the message, however.

Steve

At 01:22 PM 4/5/2007, Luis A. Ruedas wrote:

>The following item may be of interest to the readership at large:
>
>  From Nature, 5 April, 446(7136):583
>
>Museums need two cultures
>
>The resignation of the head of the Smithsonian Institution highlights a
>misguided tendency for museums
>to focus on communication at the expense of research. It also offers the
>chance of a fresh start.
>Corporate managers like mission statements; scientists generally
>don’t. Academic freedom often sits uneasily alongside the
>goal-driven culture of the private sector. Researchers would
>prefer not to be told what to do. It’s interesting, therefore, that
>scientists
>at the Smithsonian Institution are so proud of their mission
>statement — especially as they have only just welcomed the resignation
>of Larry Small, a leader who angered many by trying to impose
>a corporate ethos on the organization (see page 594).
>But the vision they share is not that espoused by the departing
>Small. They are proud instead to recite the mission statement of the
>British scientist James Smithson, who funded the creation of their
>institution in 1846 for the “increase and diffusion of knowledge”.
>Small seemed either to not understand, or to not care too much, about
>the fact that the museum should remain committed to both public
>outreach and to new research. Worryingly, the leaders of some other
>prominent museums also have this fault.
>The scientists’ desire to fulfil both strands of Smithson’s vision is
>notable. Many researchers in purely academic institutions often shy
>away from outreach work. Some lack the skills. Others fear, often
>rightly, that funders will not reward them for time spent communicating
>what they do. Museums such as the Smithsonian are among
>the only places where scientists are required to do both. They are
>historical oddities, as it is now extremely rare for such dual-purpose
>organizations to be created. Yet the combination of missions leads
>to a special form of science communication.
>When outside professionals are drafted in to build exhibits, as is
>the trend in many natural-history and science museums, there are
>benefits. But there are also risks unless professional researchers continue
>to play a leading role. Be they palaeobiologists or historians of
>science, their involvement should lead to the creation of exhibits that
>intimately reflect the science behind the display in a way that other
>forms of science communication, such as science writing, cannot.
>Some of these displays are now badly dated, but the galleries of dusty
>fossils that gave scientific curators a bad name were dumped years
>ago by the more innovative institutions.
>The Natural History Museum in London, for example, is creating a
>centre that will allow visitors to see parts of the museum’s extraordinary
>research collections and to interact with the scientists who work
>on them. At the Smithsonian, researchers want to channel real-time
>data from animal monitoring experiments at the institution’s field
>stations into exhibits about the species involved.
>Such projects happen naturally in organizations that do both science
>and science communication, yet the research side of many of
>these institutions is suffering. Small paid too little heed to it during
>his seven years at the Smithsonian. The collections division at the
>Science Museum in London, which houses curators who also do
>historical research, has been gutted over the past 20 years. In others,
>such as the Academy of Natural Sciences
>in Philadelphia, which is profiled
>on page 605, parts of the collection
>have been sold to make up for funding
>shortfalls.
>This gloomy trend now needs to be
>reversed, and there are signs of hope.
>For example, the new head of the Philadelphia
>academy, ornithologist William
>Brown, has a track record of valuing
>and understanding science. As the Smithsonian’s regents begin their
>search for a successor to Small, they should look at Brown’s plans,
>or those of London’s Natural History Museum, because museums
>that combine science and outreach are vibrant and unique places.
>Exhibits get the media attention and attract donors. But take away the
>in-house scholars who help build them, and museums take another
>step towards becoming little more than theme parks.
>
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Dr. Steve Manning
Arkansas State University--Beebe
Mathematics and Science
Professor of Biology
P.O. Box 1000
Beebe, AR  72012
Phone: 501-882-8203
Fax: 501-882-4437