Andy, et al,
 
Just a thought...
 
Why not 'bundle' these relies about exhibits and send them to those
who really need to see them...museum directors. It won't do any
good...more than venting frustration...if those responsible for creating
museum exhibits don't know how people really feel about them.
 
Kim Hutsell
San Diego
 
Andrew K. Rindsberg wrote:
>
> Dear Conchlanders,
>
> I'm of the opinion that museums cater too much to children, but that this
> is a temporary aberration in museum history that will blow over when the
> boomers' children are grown. Unfortunately, the curators and collections
> may not survive the experience. Let me tell you about one recent experience
> at a major American city museum of natural history.
>
> My companion and I walked in the door of a refurbished railway station, an
> enormous space that now holds three museums. It was magnificent, a splendid
> use of a building that might have been torn down otherwise. We walked in
> and found a noisy children's interactive center to one side and relatively
> quiet galleries to the other. Not being children, we chose the galleries.
> The old museum exhibits had been completely replaced: no dust here. Still,
> I missed the old cabinets with their arrays of multiple specimens and
> labels, which had always impressed me with the sheer richness and diversity
> of life. Instead of a hundred good fossils, here there were a handful of
> exquisite ones, each carefully labeled to tell a story or a point of
> natural history. The care taken to make each label correct and exciting was
> really impressive, yet something was lost.
>
> It turned out that all of the exhibits are now interactive. Some have
> microscopes or other tools to manipulate. Others can be turned on and off.
> Most ask the viewer leading questions. One whole gallery had a breathtaking
> sequence of exhibits, with a taped guide to tell you about each one. We
> were the only ones to take advantage of it, though, and we were handicapped
> by children racing past us at high speed, occasionally halting to glance
> momentarily at something that caught their eye. What was wrong with these
> kids? I wondered. And where were their teachers or parents?
>
> After a while, the exhibit labels began to grate on our nerves. They were
> too interactive, constantly demanding our attention and directing us to
> answer particular questions. My own thoughts were swamped under a deluge of
> audio, interactive labels, and noisy children. I was not to be allowed to
> create my own thoughts it seemed, though the exhibits were excellent, some
> of the best I'd seen, so to some degree it didn't matter.
>
> The visit continued like this in one gallery after another. There was
> nowhere to sit and contemplate, and it was hard to ignore the distractions.
> The low point was reached as I peered into a plexiglas case at a dinosaur
> specimen. A child ran up and started banging his hand loudly on the case,
> and something in me snapped. I turned to the boy and told him firmly to
> stop. That got his attention (well, to be honest, it would get my attention
> too if a tall, bearded man said the same to me). He stopped banging, but my
> concentration was lost for good. Do they feed these kids anything but
> sugar?
>
> I hope that common sense will prevail in the long term. I think it's
> wonderful to have children's interactive exhibits in one part of the
> museum. A soundproofed part; the rest should be for adults. I deplore the
> fact that so many museums have been taken over by children's exhibits
> altogether. A worse travesty happens behind closed doors: Curators tend to
> be laid off, and research collections given away, after new exhibits are
> completed. Worst of all, the public is getting the idea that art galleries
> are serious matter for adults, but natural history is just for kids.
>
> Andrew K. Rindsberg
> Geological Survey of Alabama
> Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA