Too often modern “museology” is a smudge on the nose of a fine old museum collection. A few years ago, the big museology fad was that old-fashioned science museums were boring. Therefore every science museum, everywhere, cleared some big chunks of space for a show about ¨Sharks are scary!” or “Snakes are dangerous!”*
I understand that not everybody loves, as I do, the massed ranks of whitened skeletons that Paris displays (probably, just as Georges Cuvier organized them.)
But it is possible for museum displays to be fresh instead of stale without losing scientific value. The Barcelona science museum, under the direction of Jorge Wagensberg, is proof of this.
The display of 6 giant iguanodon skeletons amusingly shows the sequence of scientists´ideas about how to pose them. Did they walk on four legs or two? The huge thumb-claw was depicted as a nose-horn for many years, until intact skeletons made it clear where it went. Another sequence of signs talks about scientists´changing theories about the finding of 23 skeletons so close together, and talks about how evidence supports or contradicts each one.
In addition to big displays to ooh and ahhh over — let me re-mention the sunken Amazon rainforest — the interactive exhibits are clever, relevant, and in good repair. (Frank loved the Coriolis force machine and was delighted to find its twin in Madrid. Both museums are funded by CosmoCaixa Foundation, so they share inspirations back and forth.)
The CosomoCaixa Science Museums of Barcelona — it´s up near Tibidabo — and Madrid — go see them if you get a chance!
*You can see exactly the same effect when school curricula get re-written by people who hated school and thought all their subjects were boring or too hard. I was lucky enough to attend public school when some of the smartest and most ambitious career women in my home town were proud to teach kids the subjects they had learned and loved in those very same schools.