Why Science Museums Talk to Children

Science museums are often built for school groups while art museums are built for adults, and exhibit designers can close that gap.

This essay asks why science museums so often speak to school groups while art museums speak to adults. It weighs the reasons usually given and what the split costs grown-ups. It then gives exhibit designers four ways to build a science gallery adults take seriously, with layers of depth, evening programs, real objects with stakes and interactives that test an idea.

Visit a science center and then an art museum, and the gap is hard to miss. Many science museums are built like playgrounds for school groups. Most art museums speak to adults. Why the split? The answer matters for anyone who designs science museums for adults, or wants to.

The reasons usually given

There are a few reasons. None is the whole story, but each pushes the same way.

The first is money. School groups pay. A class on a day trip is a steady source of visitors, and education funding often follows the school curriculum. Galleries built to serve that class are built for its age.

The hands-on tradition points the same way. Frank Oppenheimer, a physicist, opened the Exploratorium in San Francisco in 1969. Touching the exhibit was the point. The model spread around the world, and over time hands-on came to mean for children.

Then there is a habit of thought. Science is often assumed to need making fun, while art is assumed to be for grown-ups. Art museums also grew from collections of objects to look at. Many science centers have no collection at all, only effects to trigger.

What the split costs adults

John Falk and Lynn Dierking study learning outside school. They put the stakes plainly in American Scientist in 2010. "Average Americans spend less than 5 percent of their life in classrooms, and an ever-growing body of evidence demonstrates that most science is learned outside of school."

If most science is learned outside school, museums are one of the places adults learn it. A gallery built for ten-year-olds leaves out the people who vote on climate rules, run companies and make choices about their health. It also slows how new science reaches the public at all.

Science shown as finished answers

There is a deeper gap. The French scholar Bruno Latour, in Science in Action (1987), described two faces of science. One is ready-made science, the settled facts in textbooks. The other is science in the making, where results are still argued over.

Most science galleries show only the first face. The answer is already known, and the exhibit turns it into a game. Art museums do something else. They hang work that people still argue about, and they invite adults to judge it. Adults lean in when something is at stake and the answer is open. That is the face of science most galleries leave out.

Four moves for science museums for adults

Layers of depth

One exhibit can hold a quick effect at the edge and real depth at the center. The Eameses' Mathematica shows how. For adults, the deep layer must be the real thing. That means the data, the paper, the open question and the person who did the work. The test is simple. An expert should find something new there.

Evening programs

Some museums already open for adults at night. The Science Museum in London runs Lates, free evenings for adults once a month. The Exploratorium runs After Dark on Thursday nights for visitors 18 and over. Evenings change the plan, not just the hours. The gallery needs light for night, places to sit and talk, a bar that does not block the exhibits and sound low enough for talk.

Real objects with stakes

Real objects carry weight that a model cannot. Picture a cracked part shown beside the test that missed the crack. It says more than any cartoon of a failure. Choose objects tied to a decision, a risk or a mistake. Show the evidence the people at the time had, and let visitors weigh it. That is how art museums treat adults, as people able to judge.

Interactives that test an idea

Many interactives reward a button press with a light or a sound. Nothing is tested. Science teachers use a better pattern called predict, observe, explain. Richard White and Richard Gunstone set it out in Probing Understanding in 1992. The visitor first commits to a guess. Then the exhibit shows what happens. Then it explains why so many people guess wrong. Being wrong is the lesson.

A brief for the adult gallery

1. The open question the gallery is about, in one sentence.
2. One real object that carries the stakes.
3. One interactive that asks for a prediction before it shows a result.
4. A deep layer an expert would respect.
5. An evening plan, with light, seats and sound for talk.
6. A test with adult visitors before opening, asking what they would argue about afterward.

Children lose nothing

A gallery adults take seriously still works for children. Children also like real things, open questions and the shock of a wrong guess. Build for the adult and bring the child along, not the other way round.

A gallery that serves schools by day and adults by night needs two layouts in one room. Monet lays out exhibits and seating to scale on the real venue plan, and one change regenerates the plan, the 3D renders and the drawings.