Exhibit Development Resource
Exhibit List
Thinking Skills
Seeing the Unseen
Finding the Pattern
Making Models
Testing the Theory
Putting It to Work
Playing with Ideas
Exhibit Prototyping
Universal Design (Accessibility)
Education Standards
Traveling Exhibits
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A deep unity can be found between art and science, and it lies in a rather strange place -- perception. Science, with the exception of mathematics, rests upon sensory perception, aided by instrumentation.
Philip Morrison
In 1991 the Museum of Science opened The Observatory: A Place for Seeing the Unseen, the first component of a long-range exhibit plan based on providing visitors with practice in scientific thinking skills. It was made possible in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation Informal Science Education program. [MDR-9050232: "Science Is an Activity: A New Approach to Exhibits in Science Museums" 7/90–12/92].
Goals
The Observatory: Seeing the Unseen, the first activity center in the Museum's Science Is An Activity plan was designed with the following goals in mind:
- to provide opportunities and encouragement for visitors to become active observers
- to encourage visitors to use all their senses in making observations
- to help visitors gain confidence in their observational skills
- to make visitors self-aware of their strengths and limitations as observers
- to give visitors experience in using tools to extend their senses
- to encourage visitors to transfer their observational skills to other Museum exhibits and to their own lives.
Thematic Organization
The exhibits within this 2500 sq. ft. space are divided into 3 thematic areas:
- Learning to Look: Seeing with more than your eyes
This introductory area is a place for visitors to learn how to look, and to practice their observation skills with all of their senses. Activities in this area challenge visitors' expectations and break down preconceptions in order to provide a framework for looking at the world anew.
- Peepholes of Perception: Testing the limits of your senses
The exhibits in this area allow visitors to develop an awareness of the limits of human perception of nature by testing the limits of their own sensory observations.
- Seeing the Unseen: Looking at the world beyond your senses
Microscopes, infrared cameras every technique or device developed for "seeing" nature in a new way allows an observer to perceive the world with a new freshness and clarity. The exhibits in this area give visitors an opportunity to explore worlds that normally remain hidden to human perception.
On a macro - level, the exhibit components in The Observatory are organized to emphasize these three broad themes about the human process of observation, but on a micro - level (the level at which most visitors interact with exhibits), clusters of components are organized according to subject matter. Visitors to date have found The Observatory to provide a fun, exciting, active and satisfying experience equally good for children and adults.
Evaluation Results
The first of the activity centers, The Observatory: A Place for Seeing the Unseen, opened in November of 1991. This project had several important results:
- Formative evaluation became central to exhibit development.
- These techniques dramatically improved accessibility and usage of the exhibit.
- Interviews revealed that visitors became self-aware of their own abilities as observers.
- Visitors asked for more exhibit experiences of this kind.
Additional Resources
Comparison of time spent in interactive optics exhibit (1991) and The Observatory (1992)
(downloads: STU Summative evaluation)
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