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To:             ISMTP@FDA-OC-TRAINING@FDAOC[<[log in to unmask]>]
From:           Aydin Orstan@[log in to unmask]
Date:           Friday, April 17, 1998 at 9:14:49 am EDT
Attached:       None
 
Natural History Museums have unfortunately become boring places (that is, the exhibit areas, not the research areas closed to the general public). I remember visiting a natural history museum in Brussels (or it may have been somewhere else in Belgium) in 1975. There were cabinets after cabinets full of fossils, jars of preserved specimens. I was delighted to go from one cabinet to the next & examine the specimens. They aroused my curiosity, because there was very little explanation of what each item was. But, now when I go to the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History in Washington, I see one or two specimens, followed by panels & panels of writing. Nobody reads those panels. Do the curators/exhibitors really think kids, or the parents running after them, will stop & read those? Get serious. I don't want to spend my time in a museum reading; I do my reading elsewhere. I go to a museum to see things or to visually confirm what I have read.
 
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