Exploring Science in Museums

Exploring Science in Museums PDF Author: Susan M. Pearce
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 9780485900064
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
The relationship between science and the public is one of the great contemporary debates. Understanding between scientists and non-scientists is a key figure in the dialogue and here the interpretation of science in museums has a vital part to play.

Exploring Science in Museums

Exploring Science in Museums PDF Author: Susan M. Pearce
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 9780485900064
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
The relationship between science and the public is one of the great contemporary debates. Understanding between scientists and non-scientists is a key figure in the dialogue and here the interpretation of science in museums has a vital part to play.

Science Museums in Transition

Science Museums in Transition PDF Author: Carin Berkowitz
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822982757
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
The nineteenth century witnessed a dramatic shift in the display and dissemination of natural knowledge across Britain and America, from private collections of miscellaneous artifacts and objects to public exhibitions and state-sponsored museums. The science museum as we know it—an institution of expert knowledge built to inform a lay public—was still very much in formation during this dynamic period. Science Museums in Transition provides a nuanced, comparative study of the diverse places and spaces in which science was displayed at a time when science and spectacle were still deeply intertwined; when leading naturalists, curators, and popular showmen were debating both how to display their knowledge and how and whether they should profit from scientific work; and when ideals of nationalism, class politics, and democracy were permeating the museum's walls. Contributors examine a constellation of people, spaces, display practices, experiences, and politics that worked not only to define the museum, but to shape public science and scientific knowledge. Taken together, the chapters in this volume span the Atlantic, exploring private and public museums, short and long-term exhibitions, and museums built for entertainment, education, and research, and in turn raise a host of important questions, about expertise, and about who speaks for nature and for history.

Idea Colliders

Idea Colliders PDF Author: Michael John Gorman
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262359200
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
A provocative call for the transformation of science museums into "idea colliders" that spark creative collaborations and connections. Today's science museums descend from the Kunst-und Wunderkammern of the Renaissance--collectors' private cabinets of curiosities--through the Crystal Palace exhibition of 1851 to today's "interactive" exhibits promising educational fun. In this book, Michael John Gorman issues a provocative call for the transformation of science museums and science centers from institutions dedicated to the transmission of cultural capital to dynamic "idea colliders" that spark creative collaborations and connections. This new kind of science museum would not stage structured tableaux of science facts but would draw scientists into conversation with artists, designers, policymakers, and the public. Rather than insulating visitors from each other with apps and audio guides, the science museum would consider each visitor a resource, bringing questions, ideas, and experiences from a unique perspective.

Controversy in Science Museums

Controversy in Science Museums PDF Author: Erminia Pedretti
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429017758
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
Controversy in Science Museums focuses on exhibitions that approach sensitive or controversial topics. With a keen sense of past and current practices, Pedretti and Navas Iannini examine and re-imagine how museums and science centres can create exhibitions that embrace criticality and visitor agency. Drawing on international case studies and voices from visitors and museum professionals, as well as theoretical insights about scientific literacy and science communication, the authors explore the textured notion of controversy and the challenges and opportunities practitioners may encounter as they plan for and develop controversial science exhibitions. They assert that science museums can no longer serve as mere repositories for objects or sites for transmitting facts, but that they should also become spaces for conversations that are inclusive, critical, and socially responsible. Controversy in Science Museums provides an invaluable resource for museum professionals who are interested in creating and hosting controversial exhibitions, and for scholars and students working in the fields of museum studies, science communication, and social studies of science. Anyone wishing to engage in an examination and critique of the changing roles of science museums will find this book relevant, timely, and thought provoking.

about Museums, Culture, and Justice to Explore in Your Classroom

about Museums, Culture, and Justice to Explore in Your Classroom PDF Author: Therese Quinn
Publisher: Teachers College Press
ISBN: 0807778370
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 113

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Book Description
Museums are public resources that can offer rich extensions to classroom educational experiences from tours through botanical gardens to searching for family records in the archives of a local historical society. With clarity and a touch of humor, Quinn presents ideas and examples of ways that teachers can use museums to support student exploration while also teaching for social justice. Topics include disability and welcoming all bodies, celebrating queer people’s lives and histories, settler colonialism and decolonization, fair workplaces, Indigenous knowledge, and much more. This practical resource invites classroom teachers to rethink how and why they are bringing students to museums and suggests projects for creating rich museum-based learning opportunities across an array of subject areas. Book Features: Links museums, classroom teaching, and social movements for justice.Focuses on the cultural contributions of people of color, women, and other marginalized groups.Organized around probing questions connecting history and contemporary events, museum formats and content, and activities. Includes pull-out themes and resources for further reading. “It is with this brilliant new book by Therese Quinn that I have gained an entirely different framework for seeing and experiencing and valuing museums, particularly as vital resources for social-justice movement building.” —From the Foreword by Kevin Kumashiro, consultant and author of Bad Teacher! How Blaming Teachers Distorts the Bigger Picture

Life on Display

Life on Display PDF Author: Karen A. Rader
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022607983X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 482

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Book Description
Rich with archival detail and compelling characters, Life on Display uses the history of biological exhibitions to analyze museums’ shifting roles in twentieth-century American science and society. Karen A. Rader and Victoria E. M. Cain chronicle profound changes in these exhibitions—and the institutions that housed them—between 1910 and 1990, ultimately offering new perspectives on the history of museums, science, and science education. Rader and Cain explain why science and natural history museums began to welcome new audiences between the 1900s and the 1920s and chronicle the turmoil that resulted from the introduction of new kinds of biological displays. They describe how these displays of life changed dramatically once again in the 1930s and 1940s, as museums negotiated changing, often conflicting interests of scientists, educators, and visitors. The authors then reveal how museum staffs, facing intense public and scientific scrutiny, experimented with wildly different definitions of life science and life science education from the 1950s through the 1980s. The book concludes with a discussion of the influence that corporate sponsorship and blockbuster economics wielded over science and natural history museums in the century’s last decades. A vivid, entertaining study of the ways science and natural history museums shaped and were shaped by understandings of science and public education in the twentieth-century United States, Life on Display will appeal to historians, sociologists, and ethnographers of American science and culture, as well as museum practitioners and general readers.

Museum Matters

Museum Matters PDF Author: Miruna Achim
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 081653957X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Museum Matters tells the story of Mexico's national collections through the trajectories of its objects. The essays in this book show the many ways in which things matter and affect how Mexico imagines its past, present, and future.

Science Arts

Science Arts PDF Author: MaryAnn F. Kohl
Publisher: Bright Ring Publishing
ISBN: 0935607234
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 146

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Book Description
"ScienceArts" builds upon natural curiosity as children experience and explore basic science concepts as they create over 200 beautiful and amazing art experiments. Projects use common household materials and art supplies. The art activities are open-ended and easy to do with one science-art experiment per page, fully illustrated and kid-tested. The book inclues three indexes and an innovative charted Table of Contents. Suitable for home, school, museum programs, or childcare, all ages. Kids call this the "ooo-ahhh" book. Examples of projects include: - Crystal Bubbles - Dancing Rabbits - Building Beans - Magnetic Rubbing - Stencil Leaves - Magic Cabbage - Marble Sculpture - Immiscibles - Paint Pendulum - Ice Structures - Bottle Optics - Erupting Colors - Chromatography 1993 Benjamin Franklin Gold Award, Education/Teaching/Academic 1993 Benjamin Franklin Silver Award, Interior Design 1993 Benjamin Franklin Silver Award, Book Cover 1993 Washington Press Communicator Award, First Place Winner, Non-Fiction Book

Why Icebergs Float

Why Icebergs Float PDF Author: Andrew Morris
Publisher: UCL Press
ISBN: 1911307045
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
From paintings and food to illness and icebergs, science is happening everywhere. Rather than follow the path of a syllabus or textbook, Andrew Morris takes examples from the science we see every day and uses them as entry points to explain a number of fundamental scientific concepts – from understanding colour to the nature of hormones – in ways that anyone can grasp. While each chapter offers a separate story, they are linked together by their fascinating relevance to our daily lives. The topics explored in each chapter are based on hundreds of discussions the author has led with adult science learners over many years – people who came from all walks of life and had no scientific training, but had developed a burning curiosity to understand the world around them. This book encourages us to reflect on our own relationship with science and serves as an important reminder of why we should continue learning as adults.

Useful Objects

Useful Objects PDF Author: Reed Gochberg
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197553486
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
'Useful Objects' examines the cultural history of nineteenth-century American museums through the eyes of writers, visitors, and collectors. Throughout this period, museums gradually transformed from encyclopedic cabinets to more specialized public institutions. These changes prompted wider debates about how museums determine what objects to select, preserve, and display-and who gets to decide. Drawing on a wide range of archival materials and accounts in fiction, guidebooks, and periodicals, this text shows how the challenges facing nineteenth-century museums continue to resonate in debates about their role in American culture today.