Dang! Sorry I am late on this, but time has been limited --- things that should have taken minutes this weekend seemed to take hours. Time is still limited, even now at 11:10pm Sunday, and I will talk enough in class this week (as you all well know by now), so just some very quick thoughts.
The article "Can Museums Capture the Future" is one of my favorites. Reading it again, I am reminded how much of my own philosophy, belief system and approach to being a Curator and museum person has been built from much of this article. We have talked a fair amount about the informatics angle, but we haven't discussed how museums will continue to train students, and how museum management will need to shift with the shifting societal trends - many of them based on technology growth - in our world. We may not get to these questions in the time remaining in this class, but they are worth considering. Those that have some thoughts on these "macro" questions may indeed find their services in demand.
What do you think about the future of museums - and how it relates to our societal needs? Can museums capture the future?
The article "Can Museums Capture the Future" is one of my favorites. Reading it again, I am reminded how much of my own philosophy, belief system and approach to being a Curator and museum person has been built from much of this article. We have talked a fair amount about the informatics angle, but we haven't discussed how museums will continue to train students, and how museum management will need to shift with the shifting societal trends - many of them based on technology growth - in our world. We may not get to these questions in the time remaining in this class, but they are worth considering. Those that have some thoughts on these "macro" questions may indeed find their services in demand.
What do you think about the future of museums - and how it relates to our societal needs? Can museums capture the future?
posted by rpg at 10:03 PM
2 Comments:
Since this article is 5 yrs old, it gives a place from which to assess how we're doing today. The ideals are timeless, even though implementation strategies may change.
I appreciate their battle cry of "Be proactive. Guide your own future". It's not a way that natural historians are used to thinking. I think if you asked most of them whether they consider themselves to be part of an "army" they'd give you a blank look.
It was also interesting to me that these guys come from Kansas, where the current definition of science doesn't even include the word "natural". I guess that there they're just History Museums, and they probably have little future.
Three changes we will see in the natural history museums 25 yrs from now:
1. Collaborating for funding with corporate sponsors; the public side of museums will become more marketing driven, and separate from the research side.
2. Compartmentalizing exhibits, so that researchers in each sub-field design modular exhibits focused on their specialty.
3. Streamlining media; the gee-whiz of technology will have faded (just as websites today are more useful and less nutty than they were 10 yrs ago). Emphasis will be on sophisticated technology that tailors information to the level of the user.
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