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Museums - dumbing down.
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Message 1.Β
Posted by Jak (U1158529) on Tuesday, 20th September 2011
Why have museums become fun-palaces?
"A Great Day Out For All The Family!" as one famous museum describes itself, where the kiddies can run about, happily pushing buttons and watching wheels go round. And learning - what? Still, they're having fun, and why should anyone complain?
So what is the purpose of a museum? Is it just a part of the entertainment industry now? The dictionary definition: "a repository for the collection, exhibition and study of objects of artistic, scientific, historic or educational interest" seems to be out-of-date. I see no study in my local museum. Just fun, fun, fun. -
Message 2
Posted by The 3rd Duke of Swad (U11371507) on Tuesday, 20th September 2011
I agree - The next time a child smiles when engaging with history give them a stern look and a dissaproving tut leaving them in no doubt that history is boring and for old people.
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Message 3
Posted by Jak (U1158529) on Tuesday, 20th September 2011
Would that were true - a child engaging with history and a smile on its face!
Or a child anywhere with a smile on its face. A lovely thought.
Sure, the more the better. But is that what museums are for? -
Message 4
Posted by Catigern (U14419012) on Tuesday, 20th September 2011
The Royal Armouries in Leeds and the National Army Museum in Chelsea seem to do a good job of combining 'fun' with serious study for all levels of ability. Where there are museums that have abandoned education, might it be because of a few rotten apples amongst the trustees/directors, who have reacted poorly to pressure to increase visitor numbers? Funding for museums is all tied in with stats these days, not factors, such as academic quality, that can't be easily measured and are, ultimately, dependent upon the opinion of 'experts'...
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Message 5
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Tuesday, 20th September 2011
Our local museum had an exhibition recently, in the artists' gallery which has special exhibition rather than in the museum itself, but still part of the museum. The kids from the local school had put it on, and I was amazed at how much more they learned in their art classes than I ever had. They had taken a theme of living in a isolated community, particularly focussing on mental illness, and put together art based on that. They hadn't only learnt about the subject of both the illness and the art, but had learnt to use artists' work to base their own on. So there were pictures in the style of Modigliani, of Philip Claremont (a NZ artist who committed suicide at a young age and had a bright startling style of painting), of South American styles of facial masks, stick figures, other body image things.
I thought the youngsters must have learnt a great deal, and it probably was fun for them too. I think modern museums are very aware that the general public, not just the educated public, need to know their history and heritage. People complain that NZ's national museum, Te Papa, is too entertainment based, but if you can't learn something there, you're not trying much. Some of it was a bit once-over-lightly for us, but that's because we already knew what was being shown. People - and children especially - have to learn basic things somewhere.
The small, but very good new museum in our town, has exhibits that we hope will appeal to children as well as adults, but we expect it to be an educational area about our history. It has shipwreck videos with the story of two major shipwrecks here (no loss of life), it has displays on shipping in the area, a war room with stories of soldiers and exhibits of warfare, a little hut from the past with a stuffed possum on the top, and displays of household items used in the past. There are some features specifically for children, though not a lot.
We were impressed with some of the items that were presumably meant to appeal mostly to children in overseas museums - materials to guess, dress-up clothes to show how people dressed, quizzes, games to show what consequences different options would bring, etc. A little light relief from reading the material and looking at serious historical items. There's room for both.
Cheers, Caro. -
Message 6
Posted by Catigern (U14419012) on Tuesday, 20th September 2011
a stuffed possumΒ
How cool is that?!
I wish I had a stuffed possum... -
Message 7
Posted by Thomas_II (U14690627) on Wednesday, 21st September 2011
Hi Jak,
During my holiday in London last year, IΒ΄ve visited several museums and some galleries there. I can just recall the National Army Museum that has a small space as playground for children.
It seems that museums have to invent some special facilities for attracting families to visit them.
In the IWM you can get some "trench experience" by walking through such an rebuilt trench and have the smell and the noises along with you while walking. I didnΒ΄t take that walk, the exhibitions were more of my interest.
Some people say, that children are also learning by playing. One has to remember his own childhood to think about the way he learned himself by playing. I think that this may work in some ways, without demaging the objects exhibited (as far as they arenΒ΄t behind glass boxes). -
Message 8
Posted by raundsgirl (U2992430) on Wednesday, 21st September 2011
It's much more relevant for everybody, surely, not just children, if artefacts etc are shown in displays in the context in which they would have been used, rather than in neatly labelled rows in a glass case. I was a museum freak as a child, but it doesn't give you much idea of the past to see things shown like that, and with a stern adult in charge, tut-tutting at the slightest sound. It seems obvious to me that to be able to ask questions and have hands-on experience (with replicas if necessary) is teaching them much more.
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Message 9
Posted by dmatt47 (U13073434) on Wednesday, 21st September 2011
This all goes back to making museums free and they have to find the money somewhere. I have to say that as a child I liked museums like the Science Museumt hat have buttons to press like the Science Museum but you did learn about science at the same time. Museums are really a Victorian-age concept and should help people to learn and understand but that is not always seen as 'cool'. Museums should not in my view be part of the entertainments industry but part of the history/culture of the country.
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Message 10
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Wednesday, 21st September 2011
Yes, I was going to suggest that pressing buttons and bits in a science museum is a great idea for kids. Mine always enjoyed the hands on experience of seeing how and why things worked but I can't say I like the idea of turning a historical museum or site into an amusement park. Museums are for people of all ages, not just children.
I've just visited the new Acropolis Museum and it was very impressive indeed. The museum is built on stilts over the old city of Athens and almost the entire ground floor covering is transparent. Walking on glass was a bit unsettling at first but the whole ongoing archaeological excavation is exposed and seen from above, also it is possible to observe the archaeologists at work. Everyone there, young and old, was enthralled and not a whiz-bang in sight. -
Message 11
Posted by Grasshopper (U3605803) on Wednesday, 21st September 2011
IMHO museums these days have serious competition from places like cinemas showing the latest blobkbusters, and amusement arcades. Some museums are 'specialist' places, focusing on just one theme, such as fans, Dickens or Sherlock Holmes (all in London). Others celebrate local history (the Courthouse Museum in Knaresborough for example).
Museums which give visitors 'things to do' are more interesting that ones where all the exhibits a kept behind glass.
It's a bot like those 'Horrible History' books. Kids learn about history through them, but in a way which is far more fun than just reading reams of dates.
KOTR -
Message 12
Posted by TedBB (U14987858) on Saturday, 24th September 2011
I think the museums have to strike the right balance. The dumbed-down, more entertaining stuff can get people through the door, and helps to pay the bills. At the same time, the more gritty, in-depth stuff is really an obligation, and to some extent the purpose of the museum.
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Message 13
Posted by stalti (U14278018) on Saturday, 24th September 2011
its 2011
kids have xbox ibox ebox wbox game consoles pcs facebook satellite tv ipods epods etc etc
why should they be interested in dry old museums
we are all interested despite the old type of museum - why would modern kids get interested in a glass case full of pottery fragments - the world has changed
all museums should be a copy of time team - this series brought the sad subject of archeology into the modern world
the shard of pottery was shown where it would be on a pot
the hillside of grass was shown with the villa cg implanted
the skeleton was shown at the burial through an artists impression
of course the upper floor should be kept for the sad gits lol
st -
Message 14
Posted by Grasshopper (U3605803) on Saturday, 24th September 2011
Many museums deal with local history. Many people, not just grownups, either, find local history fascinating. Many are amazed by finds of things like Civil War cannon balls, hoards of old coins, fossil creatures, etc. in their local area. Places which dosplay such items are not necc. boring, and you don't have to be a 'sad git' to be interested in such things.
KOTR -
Message 15
Posted by Hugh Mosby-Joaquin (U14258131) on Sunday, 25th September 2011
Declaring my bias; I have built and worked on quite a few museum 'experiences' over the years. There are at least two or three first-world war trenches in English museums that are mostly my own work. But I would like to make the distinction between the 'walk-through' experience and the 'games-machine' type of exhibit.
The former attempts to invoke an atmosphere, what it was like to be in the thick of it, in the calm between the storms, the fighting, the living, the sleeping, the dying. In my opinion, such walk-throughs are all then better for having as little gizmology and modern electronica as possible. I might add, they are quite sobering to construct.
The latter, with button-pressing potential, attracts kids in a way they understand, but to my mind does little for their understanding of the subject in question. A button pressed lights a light and makes something happen; great! Now what? Press another! Oh, booooring!!!! Let's go to the next machine, it might make machine-gun noises!
My only niggle with the walk-through experience is the annoying need for health and safety 'this way out' signage and plug sockets for the cleaners' hoovers...such things, though sadly necessary, can destroy a little illusion.... -
Message 16
Posted by Jak (U1158529) on Sunday, 25th September 2011
Thanks Hugh - that sounds like really worthwhile and effective work you are doing.
I'm sorry I haven't experienced any of the 'walk-through' exhibitions (I queued outside Jorvik for a bit, until the rain came on) but I was quite shaken by a visit to the Cloth Hall in Ypres - not a walk-through, but hellish sights & hellish sounds. If they'd made me wear a lice-infested shirt and a steel helmet it might have been even more realistic, but I suppose there are limits.
Your remarks on "gizmology" are spot-on. Instead of simple printed cards, my local museum now has screens ("Touch me!") which are supposed to give the gen on the nearby exhibits. Sometimes they don't work. When they do, they contain mistakes.
Mistakes on a printed card would be easy to rectify. Correcting nonsense on the screens seems to be a bit more difficult.
And of course the screen "gizmology" costs a lot more than simple printed (but oh-so-boring!) printed cards. -
Message 17
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Sunday, 25th September 2011
As someone has already noted, the difficulty is for museums to cater for the range of audiences wishing to use them. I'm not a big fan of touch screens, too easily jiggered for a start and I don't enjoy having someone trying to read them over my shoulder, but they do allow various different levels of information to be available by having increasingly in-depth screens. Providing that amount of info on signage can take up a lot of space leading to one of my complaints about current display practices; there is often too little room left for showing more than one or two items.
Kelvingrove, our local big municipal museum and art gallery, was refurbished quite recently and is hugely popular but then it always was. I went often as a child and fondly remember the stuffed animals and the mummies. The new set up is very much child orientated in the main halls but less so as you move out into the side galleries. I have noticed, though, that the art exhibits are more traditionally displayed with generally much less interpretation.
On the whole, I think I feel that whatever gets folk in the door must be encouraged so long as those of us who want a different, more in depth experience, have that option somewhere. In Glasgow we have the Museums Resource centre where, as in all museums, a majority of the their collection is stored and they not only have regular curators' tours of different parts of the collections but will provide specialist tours and access if requested - and they're all free! -
Message 18
Posted by Jak (U1158529) on Sunday, 25th September 2011
Yes, so I travelled 400 miles to look more closely at an item I'd seen, years before, in a national museum in London. But now it isn't on view. (It's in the store room, so please write in advance if you want ro see it.)
Meanwhile, half of the museum's ground floor is given over to a Regent Street toyshop, where lots of fun objects are demonstrated - and all for sale!. -
Message 19
Posted by stalti (U14278018) on Wednesday, 28th September 2011
hi grasshopper
come on admit it - we are sad old gits - we can see bits of pottery and say wow
kids nowadays see it and say "and what" - put it into a graphic of the whole pot as in time team and they can be interested
kids have to be tempted into history - their graphical view of the world has to be replicated to get them involved - why should they be interested in the pastwhen they live in an unreal world of guns and violence thrown at them on a pc screen
st -
Message 20
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 28th September 2011
I think that museums are suffering because we are living after "the end of history " and "The Past" is a theme park that lots of places and people think that they may be able to turn into a "little earner".
The great Cambridge Historian of the scientific school W. Stubbs has gone right out of fashion:
βThe true field of Historic Study is the history of those nations and institutions in which the real growth of humanity is to be traced: in which we can follow the developments, the retardations and perturbations, the ebb and flow of human progress, the education of the world, the leading on by the divine light from the simplicity of early forms and ideas where good and evil are distinctly marked, to the complications of modern life, in which light and darkness are mingled so intimately, and truth and falsehood are so hard to distinguish , but in which we believe and trust that the victory of light and truth is drawing nearer every day.β
( From βLectures on Medieval and Modern Historyβ(1886) quoted G.G. Coulton βMedieval Panoramaβ page 1)
Cass -
Message 21
Posted by RusEvo (U2126548) on Thursday, 29th September 2011
Have they really been dumbed down?
I remember when I was a child it was exciting to go to a museum, they never could teach you as much as books and documentaries, but they stimulated your interest to do so. And many of the old displays were so static, Im sure many did not have much of a true educational value anyway.
But that was New Zealand museums 20 or more years ago.
The last museum I went to was the New Plymouth local museum in Taranaki. It had many interactive and media displays.....I think these were fairly informative. -
Message 22
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 29th September 2011
I must confess to never having been particularly fond of museums..
But then a child in Oxford has living history all around, from the possible arrow heads I found on the Shotover Hills through the Saxon and Medieval Churches in the villages nearby and then Oxford itself.. The Ashmoloen just extended that.. But the Pitt Rivers Museum did open up a wider world- and I only recently read about "Pitt Rivers" in a history of Achaeology and understood that collection a little better.
And of course the great oaks and the Isis were constant reminders of the interdependence of Man and the rest of Nature.. Museums can so easily turn into humankind being proud of its own creations. ..
But I am not too sure that young people see too much to be proud of.. We just keep telling them that they have to be prepared for "the nice mess you've got me into".
Cass -
Message 23
Posted by Jak (U1158529) on Thursday, 29th September 2011
I must confess to never having been particularly fond of museums..
But then a child in Oxford has living history all around... Β
Well, you were lucky there then, Cass.
Where I grew up, in Lancashire, apparently there hadn't been any history. Everything interesting - the arrow in Harold's eye, signing Magna Carta, cutting the head of Chas I, and so on - had all happened 'way Down South.
Except at our junior school they did mention the opening of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway, but that seemed to be mainly important because some M.P. was run over by one of the first trains.
So, as a kid with an interest in history, I was always keen to visit any museum. And, as a kid, the Children's Gallery in the London Science Museum basement was an extra treat - pushing buttons, making sparks fly.
But my feeling is that the "Children's Gallery" has taken over the whole building in many museums. To the exclusion of adults, who don't need to be amused by revolving wheels and flashing lights and sound effects, but who go there to study something they already find absorbing.
All those bo-o-o-ring cards have gone, replaced by expensive "Touch me!" screens, which give simple and sometimes wrong info, and often don't work. But hey! It's fun. Quick, on to the next... -
Message 24
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 29th September 2011
jak
I have often written of the blessing and the curse of an Oxford childhood.. I believe that the point about Lancashire is that it changed so much during the industrial revolution that Lancashire pride often became focussed on the relatively recent urban/industrial history- which industrial archaeologists and such are only beginning to reall show in their true colours.
I finally got around to reading C.R. Fay's classic "Adam Smith to the Present Day" last year.. Fay was a proud Lancastrian one of whose ancestors had invented some key component of the steam trains.. and he juxtaposed the great cities of "King Cotton" that gave the world that powered industrial revolution-- and yet not far away still in Lancashire there were some at least of the lakes of the Lake District.
But I follow J.R. Green in believing that it was much easier to believe in effective extra-parliamentary democracy in places like Oxford that had worked that way for centuries than it was in towns and cities only set up through the Muncipal Corporations Act c1835.. And to their credit the people embraced the new powers in order to enrich their impoverished environments by parks, libraries, museums and concert halls-- municipal public property and self-improvement that the Labour Party llargely forgot about once it had the chance to get the power of the centralized state.
Nowadays "home entertainment" has broken up not only those communities- but also families- there is not much "family entertainment now"..
Cass -
Message 25
Posted by Jak (U1158529) on Thursday, 29th September 2011
Well Cass, maybe C R Fay was a descendant of Charles Fay (1811-1900), Carriage & Wagon Superintendent of the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway, 1846-1877. He invented a mechanical train-brake which involved long shafts and screw-wheels in 1856, but it was soon superseded.
For the interested, maybe there's a model of his brake tucked away somewhere out of sight in the Railway Museum, but their website only seems to list "C. R. Fay's" carriage-door key. (Wow!) This, the website description says, is engraved "S. Fay" (? Sir Sam Fay, 1856-1953, General Manager, Great Central Railway, 1902-22) but in the picture the key is clearly engraved "C. Fay Esq". So despite the refs to "C. R. Fay" and "S. Fay" it probably belonged to the Lancs & Yorks Rly chap. Not that it matters very much, but the info given is wrong.
I'm really sorry if this is all too boring. I'm just using your C R Fay reference to try to get back to the subject - the inadequacies of present-day museums. -
Message 26
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 29th September 2011
jak
Not at all boring..
C.R. Fay - Reader Emeritus in Economic History at Cambridge and Professor of Economic History at the University of Toronto- says in his Preface that his grandfather as a boy was employed on the construction of the fisrt coaches used on the Liverpool Manchester Railway, and later invented the through chain brake used by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, though he gives no initials.
Talking of Lancashire he acknowledges that industrial Lancashire is unsightly, but it is when he has been walking in Wessex with a novel of Thomas Hardy in his pocket "that I have felt a great longing to explain and rejoice in the county of my birth. Progress comes by specialization. Here are docks, mills and mines; there, two hours away, are Coniston and the Furness Fells, and these too are in Lancashire. But how can I enjoy them unless I believe, and try to show, that the throbbing life of industrialism will yet win through to happiness and beauty?"
He wrote that in 1928 when it was still just about possible to keep faith with Adam Smith, Free Trade and what I call "potato patch economics"- specialising and therefore having really just one core economic activity.
The South of England, and even Yorkshire had always had a mixed economy.
But part of the difficulty of having museums that would show
how the "throbbing life of industrialism will yet win through to happiness and beauty" is because of the legacy of Gothic Horror propaganda about that process that was produced in Lancashire making the whole thing appear to be more of a holocaust to have survived than the building of a Brave New World.
Cass -
Message 27
Posted by Jak (U1158529) on Thursday, 29th September 2011
Cass -
I should have mentioned that all my references of Charles Fay were from John Marshall's authoritative 3-volume history of the L&YR (1969-72). Marshall (who died last year) was a brilliant writer - not only factually correct and very thorough in his research, but wonderfully readable. He once said that most of the recent writers of railway history books seem to have read nothing at all - except other books about railways. Very perceptive, IMHO.
And - it pains me to say it - so many of these writers have simply copied from the multitudinous printed works of one Clement Edwin Stretton (1850 - 1915), son of the Mayor of Leicester (sorry, don't have his dates to hand), who wrote acres of nonsense about the history of railways in books, and in hundreds of newspapers and magazines, from the 1870s to 1914. Now - wouldn't he be an interesting case for a psychiatrist? Why would anyone write absurd lies about the minutiae of railway history?
But, fascinating as all this undoubtedly is (yawn) I ask again -
What are museums for? -
Message 28
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 29th September 2011
Jak
What are museums for?
Well they used to be part of educating the general public in an age when there were no schools and education and knowledge were seen as something important and crucial in the struggle for the Future.
Not far away we have the Dulwich Picture Gallery which apparently was the first ever such place in Britain c1803.[ or do they claim the world].. Actually come to think of it that was during that terrible time when people could not go on the Grand Tour of Europe, and (perish the thought) sent their sons to 'crammers' in Edinburgh before they went to Oxbridge.
But I remember in the early Fifties the British age of "the Grand Tour". Once we had our little 1936 Austen Seven we would drive out to visit the stately homes that had worked out that they might be able to pay the death duties by allowing in the paying public. We would also fit in some on our caravan touring trips.
I think that many museums galleries etc that I hear about are similarly associated with "decline and fall".. in this case declining industrial cities that are trying to re-invent themselves in this new age of service industries.
So whereas when we drove up to London and visited the Science Museum it meant something to my Father who could take that Austen 7 to pieces and rebuild it without any workshop books, and who invented things - enough to be on TV Inventors Club with one of his things, which we showed on the programme's stand at the Ideal ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Exhibition at Earls Court in 1954-5. Years later I took out an initial patent on something that I invented myself.
There always seemed to be something to learn or think of and a purpose to it all.. There is I think a programme this week about the Festival of Britain and that whole culture of trying to involve everyone in inventing the future..
But that kind of creativity has gone. Now a great deal of leisure is either just idle curiosity or trying to arouse some response in line with "The Feelies" described in Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World".. We have tried to make life so boring and settled that the only way people can feel alive is through contrived and artificial attempts to produce a "gut reaction"- usually through the response of our children- who have not yet learned to be bored with life.
Cass -
Message 29
Posted by Jak (U1158529) on Thursday, 29th September 2011
What are museums for?
Well they used to be part of educating the general public in an age when there were no schools ...Β
Where on earth are you going with this, Casseroleon? No schools, you say. In the 19th century, when most of these museums were started?
Once more I ask (despairingly) - what are museums for, nowadays? Are they just big sheds for kiddies to run about in and have fun, when it rains? Do museum directors now see themselves simply as part of the entertainment industry? Why? And if so, are they any good at what they do?
Why have they got rid of the informative cards and replaced them with "gizmology": whizz-bang screens which - even when they work - contain simplified misinformation?
That's all I want to know. -
Message 30
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Thursday, 29th September 2011
But have they got rid of information cards, Jak? We looked round quite a lot of museums in England and they were still full of information for adults (far more than I could absorb in the Magma one in Sheffield, for instance. And as for all the stuff to see at the York Museum it was just mind-boggling. We didn't go to so many this trip but the York Rail Museum certainly impressed my uncle, very keen on and knowledgable about trains. It had rather too much info about trains for my liking - I would have liked a few bits specifically aimed at children!
We have a new museum in our small town - comments still say it is the best small museum people have ever seen. We have some things to appeal to children, but not a lot specifically. They usually like the old hut with the possum and bits, there is one thing to pull out and see what is behind, and we have some colouring-in bits but they are really to take away. Twenty-minute videos on shipwrecks probably stretch their concentration spans, but we don't hear complaints about this, there's shipping bits to look at and feel, but the rest is informative panels about farming, shipping, pioneering, prohibition, a war room with items, photos and pages on individual soldiers, and behind-glass displays of old household items, magazines from the past, shops, shoe-making etc. It's a colourful display but mostly aimed at adults with an interest in the local history of our area or country.
Bigger museums can probably aim at more for children - I always love those games where you choose something and it takes you somewhere or gives you some problem (but then I do like childish things!). They also have more outside space for reenactments and soldiery bits or pageantry.
Cheers, Caro. -
Message 31
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 29th September 2011
jak
Elementary Schooling in England started ic 1870 and even then it was not compulsory
Cass -
Message 32
Posted by Thomas (U14985443) on Friday, 30th September 2011
Hi Jak,
... what are museums for, nowadays? Are they just big sheds for kiddies to run about in and have fun, when it rains? Do museum directors now see themselves simply as part of the entertainment industry? Why? And if so, are they any good at what they do?Β
The principle of the museums are still the same as they were when they were founded. The changing times demands them to keep up with modern developments and this incluedes, like it or not, to bring up some facilities to serve as well the interests of children. Whether the museum directors see themselves simply as parΒ΄t of the entertainment industry is questionable and depends on the kind of museum youΒ΄re refering to. That means that some museums of special interest, like The Guards Museum in London are serving people with special interest in Britains military history. IΒ΄ve been there to a visit last year and although itΒ΄s a small museum in compare to the National Army Museum which IΒ΄ve visited as well. The Guards Museum has no need and no demands to keep up with what is provided in other museums in London.
Why have they got rid of the informative cards and replaced them with "gizmology": whizz-bang screens which - even when they work - contain simplified misinformation?Β
It would be of interest to me if you could name the museum(s) youΒ΄re referring to.
Thomas -
Message 33
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 30th September 2011
Jak
Further to my last- posted just before the "witching hour"-
Forster's Education Act of 1870 challenged the voluntary sector with building enough schools to school all the children within c4 years. After that Municipalities would have to duty to building them from the rates, and had the power to make them both free and compulsory.. By about 1880 this could be done.
And museums were very much a part of that process- as I recall from my teacher-training in the Sixties when museums quite deliberately catered for schools and most had their schools liaison officer.. Last time I was near the Natural History Museum this still seemed to be the case...
But compared to the Sixties children now have access both at school and very often at home to small screens (like this one) and grow up building their world on such images the way that some of us had to do with the printed word and books.
At the same time I am not sure school trips are quite as common as they used to be for various factors, and I wonder whether children get the same experience of exploring museums as a family of five- as we were. I think that museums are more fun when the experience is shared- and when the children (whose enthusiasm is refreshing) can benefit from the significance that two parents can bring to the objects on display.
Cass -
Message 34
Posted by Jak (U1158529) on Friday, 30th September 2011
Cass -
Elementary Schooling in England started ic 1870 ... Β
As late as that! Amazing. It's like learning from the A&A Board, as I recently did, that most fossils date from c2348 BC.
So it's no wonder I hear so many smug remarks, up here in Scotland, about the superiority and antiquity of the Scotch education system. The name of John Knox (1505-1572) is often mentioned.
But - that the museums were started for the benefit of the poor and uneducated? How good of these philanthropists! And now that everyone has been given a free education, the museums seem to be dumbing down. To appeal to ... er, I don't get it.
Maybe another thread should be started about English vs Scottish schools. But on this one, I'd like to stick to museums.
I don't want to hear about the Sabines and the influence of their womenfolk in Renaissance art and in Hollywood musicals of the 1950s, or the dissimulation of the Phagosites in 1573/4, or whether Zimmermann took his stage name from Matt Dillon, or whatever. These subjects may be all very interesting, I'm sure, but on this thread at least, I'd like to keep to the subject - museums, and dumbing down. OK? -
Message 35
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 30th September 2011
Jak
Yes.. All economic and social historians acknowledge England's debt to Scots popular education.. Almost all the innovations of the industrial revolution that called for literacy rather than common sense tended to involve Scotsmen..
I have just deleted all the rest in accordance with your last request
Anyway in case you are a rugby man.. All the best for tomorrow.
Cass -
Message 36
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Friday, 30th September 2011
It's probably fair to say that in the Victorian age the public museums, like the public parks, were seen as part of the project to improve the moral and physical fibre of the lower orders and as crucial in reinforcing national identity and ethnic superiority. What else is the British Museum than a physical manifestation of Social Darwinism saying all the evolution of civilisation has lead to the triumph of the British Empire and here's the proof in the trophies that have been carried home.
They didn't start out as educational institutions but as cabinets of curiosities which got larger and larger and were definitely not for the edification of the common man but as evidence of the wealth, intellect and culture of those who had collected their disparate contents. Many of the major museums started out this way and were then later handed over to universities or to the nation.
Looking at the curatorial choices in selection and display in many museums is sometimes nearly as interesting as the contents. What is really being said here?
The Pitt Rivers museum was expressly designed to elucidate his theories of the evolution of complex societies, an archaeological museum I was in, in Croatia, managed to skip neatly over some of the less glorious episodes in the national history - WW 2 for example - but made great play of the 'ethnic continuity' of the Croats in their emphasis. -
Message 37
Posted by Jak (U1158529) on Friday, 30th September 2011
Hi, Caro,
My big local museum was recently.revamped, with a big splash in the papers, so I went in to have a look.
From my point of view, very disappointing. They've installed lots of TV screens - with sound effects, wow! - and got rid ot of those (oh, so boring) cards. Naturally (who'd have guessed it?) the screens sometimes don't work, and even when they do, the info they contain is inadequate and in some cases wrong.
Now I'd like to correct the mistakes on the screens, in areas which I know something about, but I don't think it will be too easy. Because - They KNOW they know best.
I only put the subject up here because I wondered if anyone else had experienced this nonsense. So, try to stop it dead before other museum directors get the Cecil B deMille bug... ? Fat chance!. -
Message 38
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Friday, 30th September 2011
Hi Jak, I assume you're referring to the National in Chambers St., is it really that bad? I've been meaning to go through but I've been waiting until it quietened down a bit. I know I was so disappointed when I heard they'd evicted the goldfish but I hoped that would be the worst of it.
It's not so much the use of screens that I object to, more that they are not used to their full potential. New technology should be able to provide so much information without cluttering up the displays with cards and such; I could think of so many ways they could be used to set artefacts in a much more useful context and allow access to as much or as little information as the visitor wanted. Wouldn't it be helpful if, for example, there was a video available to see a piece of industrial machinery in action and fitting into the process or a 3d reconstruction of the tomb from which a wall painting originated? -
Message 39
Posted by Jak (U1158529) on Friday, 30th September 2011
Aye, Ferval.
I was impressed by the headline in 'The Scotsman' in July when the National Museum reopened: "Every object is either SCOTTISH or it was a SCOT who brought it back". Which is inaccurate nonsense of course, but what a strange thing to claim. -
Message 40
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 30th September 2011
ferval
Actually I would say that the Great Exhibition of All The Nations in 1851 was really conceived and driven through by Prince Albert precisely because the English at least did not really think that they were very good at being much else than English.. Albert thought that Britain should show off its achievements.
The German Albert and that crucial Committee Man of French flair Isambard Kingdom Brunel were able to push through the idea that what Britain did produce- largely its industrial machinery alongside all the galleries of fine and luxury goods from places as far as India and near as Frane- was really in "the front line"... But England had got there almost by accident-- just by constantly raising its game to keep off the power of its Celtic neighbours, then Spain and then France...
Yet- now the "cat was out of the bag"- the more cultured and civilised places in Europe once they had got over the religious wars and then the age of revolution were going to carry the march of progress forward..
In the 1860's Matthew Arnold- Her Majesties Inspector of Schools- toured Europe and saw the "shape of things to come"..A series of three Royal Commissions looked at the very inadequate state of education and set about a sort of English educational revolution in the 1870's, much of its based upon French and German models.
As for the Pitt Rivers Museum it seems to me it just reflected the digs and researches of Pitt Rivers himself.
Cass -
Message 41
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Friday, 30th September 2011
Yes Jak, particularly given the declared intent, during the set up and organisation of the Museum of Scotland, to display thematically rather than chronologically as a way of challenging the myths of national origin and ethnic identity that bedevil the Scottish view of the past.
-
Message 42
Posted by Jak (U1158529) on Saturday, 1st October 2011
Ferval -
Please don't let me put you off visiting the (whatever it's now called) Museum.
The goldfish are away (shame!) but hey! - there are two new cafes. And you can enter either from the corner, the "antiquities museum" replacement in that new block - or by a door further down Chambers Street, but don't go up the flight of steps to the entrance as you used to. The Way In > is down at the side of the stairway. Thereafter, lifts and stairs upwards.
Or, in the "antiquities" bit, there's that warren of confusing passages. No doubt it was some architect's bright idea of affording the visitor an "inside the souterrain" experience.
Remembering (fondly) the layout of the old Victorian museum - open, straightforward and simple - I came out feeling unhappy about trendy arty persons, architects etc, and went straight into a pub to cool down.
But - as I say - please don't let me put you off a visit. Maybe your speciality will be covered adequately, or - hopefully - well. Mine certainly was not.
Enjoy!
Jak. -
Message 43
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Saturday, 1st October 2011
"Every object is either SCOTTISH or it was a SCOT who brought it back". Which is inaccurate nonsense of course, but what a strange thing to claim.Β
How do you know it is inaccurate unless you know the provenance of all the items? Our local museum, small but new and flash, only accepts items that are relevant to our area, either through originating here or coming from someone who lived here (though even then, it's expected to have relevance to the area and not just something they owned). We can't - and no museum can - accept all old things that people would like protected. Or want to throw out, but feel it might have some value.
But there are certainly complaints from people who have given us things over the years that are no longer on display; the displays are more planned than they were in our old museum run just by volunteers and we don't have everything out like a jumble sale. I regret the quaintness of our old museum a bit, but our museum is highly praised by visitors and there is a clarity to the way the exhibits are shown now.
We unfortunately couldn't manage to incorporate a cafe, and that is a shame, because definitely cafes are an advantage. Apart from meaning you can combine food and entertainment/knowledge, they mean that you can spend ages wandering round a museum while someone not interested fills in their time pleasurably.
You will get used to your new museum, Jak, and maybe even be proud of it later. People do, I admit, still moan about Te Papa, the National Museum of New Zealand, which is free (unusual for NZ museums), because it is quite child and family focussed, but there's enough to keep others interested too.
Although I work and volunteer at our museum, museums aren't quite my favourite places, because I like words more than things, so after the 5 millionth bone or Roman statue or insect compartment I have usually got a little bored. I like the stories about people and timelines and an account of the historical framework of the area. But not much the 'stuff'. Fortunately now there are a lot of storyboards used in museums now which keep me happy.
Cheers, Caro. -
Message 44
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Saturday, 1st October 2011
Hi Jak, I know the Scottish bit in the new building pretty well, it's the refurbished original part I haven't seen yet. You're right about the 'Early Peoples' section downstairs, finding your way around it needs a map, compass and a ball of string but the view from the restaurant is pretty impressive.
Caro, I think I understand Jak's point. Why should it matter if the exhibits in the 'World Cultures' or the 'Animal World' galleries were collected by Scots? It seems terribly parochial to me but then he did say the quote was from 'The Scotsman', or as we Glaswegians call it 'The Hootsmon'. Apologies if I'm misinterpreting you Jak. -
Message 45
Posted by Jak (U1158529) on Saturday, 1st October 2011
Hi Caro!
Yes, maybe I shall get used to this museum, if I can persuade them to make a few corrections and improvements. I'm trying.
However, I know that the bizarre claim ("every object is ... Scottish") as well as being a bit of a weird thing for a museum to say, is inaccurate. I can think of one British object - of world importance - which is in there, and has nothing at all to do with Scotland.
But as I don't feel in any way nationalistic, and have no sympathy with the notion that (say) the Elgin Marbles should be sent to Greece, I shan't identify the item.
Unless these "patriotic" opportunists start shouting again about bringing those medieval chessmen back to Scotland from the British Museum. Or the even sillier cry that the bones of Mary Queen of Scots should be brought "home" from Westminster Abbey... Yes, maybe then I could start a campaign.
Could be fun.
Jak. -
Message 46
Posted by Jak (U1158529) on Saturday, 1st October 2011
No probs, Ferval. Yes, it was The Hootsmon magazine section, quoting the Mus Director: 23.7.11, p8.
I groaned when I saw it. Diz it no mak ye feel fair prood? Er, no, not really. -
Message 47
Posted by stanilic (U2347429) on Sunday, 2nd October 2011
Jak
Museums need footfall and that does mean some dumbing down but that need only be piece-meal. If you can introduce some fun into it then all the better. You need the children to come back both as children and adults and then again as parents.
One day I was alone in the study room of our local museum which includes a specialised library open only to those engaged in formal research when two lads tried the door and walked in. They had the frightening experience of meeting yours truly - I have a face like a Frankish cavalry charge - but were astonished to see so many books in one place. I took a little time to explain it to them and they went on their way rejoicing to perhaps steal from elsewhere. I will never forget their amazement at all those books: gobsmacked would be a good word to describe it.
I firmly believe that people should be exposed to knowledge, know some history preferably of their family and/or where they live, and be given a context that is relevant to them today. A museum can do a lot about that and they should be supported. -
Message 48
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Sunday, 2nd October 2011
Not a museum, but historical knowledge, I think. I was amused by news on the radio this morning, which had something to do with a fleet of ships in Wellington harbour and changing the navy's Queen's colour (I don't know why or even just exactly what that means).
One or more of the ships must have been admitting the public for a visit, and they interviewed a young boy. He was very enthusiastic, couldn't wait to get on the ship, and said, "I hope they have a gadget to push". They asked what he was looking forward to most, and he wanted to see the captain's rooms and push the gadgets. When asked, he said he would like to be in the navy later. He sounded delightful, and I'm sure he will learn from this visit at the same time as he enjoys the buttons to push.
Cheers, Caro.
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