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47th Conference of CIMUSET
International Committee for Museums & Collections of Science & Technology
1-7 September, International Conferences Centre, Kyoto, JAPAN
This publication is made with the support of National Museum of Nature and Science, Japan

ICOM- CIMUSET Publication Policy:
ICOM-CIMUSET seeks to make all contributions to the conference widely available. Contributors who accept to
publish their presentations during CIMUSET conferences, they automatically assign non-exclusive publication
rights to ICOM-CIMUSET so as to publish and use the contents. However, because it is non-exclusive, it does not
prevent authors from continuing to use and publish their own papers.
We also reserve the right to make
editorial changes and to request revisions where necessary.
ICOM- CIMUSET: International Committee for Museums and Collections of Science and Technology
ICOM, Maison de l'UNESCO, 1 rue Miollis, 75732 Paris Cedex 15, France
Tel: +33 (0) 1 47 34 05 00/ Fax: +33 (0) 1 43 06 78 62
http://network.icom.museum/cimuset
Notice: The views and opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect
the official policy or position of ICOM-CIMUSET .
Images & illustrations: © authors
Conception & book cover: National Museum of Nature and Science, Tokyo, Japan
ISBN: 978-2-491997-08-3
ISBN of digital copy: 978-2-491997-09-0

Copyright © 2020 ICOM-CIMUSET

CIMUSET 47th annual conference, Kyoto 2nd -4th September 2019
Within the ICOM’s general conference Theme “Museums as Cultural Hubs: The Future of Tradition”, the
International Committee for Museums and Collections of Science & Technology (CIMUSET) established its own
program for the triennial, in cooperation with the National Museum of Nature and Science, Tokyo. CIMUSET 47th
conference in Kyoto debated around a topical theme witch concerns all technical-scientific museums and science
centres in the world: “Traditions for a Sustainable Future.” : How can science and technology museums advance
ecological, economic, cultural and social sustainability? What is sustainable scientific and technical heritage? How
can science and technology museums be spaces for change? What is the role of traditional know-how and
techniques in the future?
It was noted that this topic stimulated a particular interest among ICOM Kyoto 2019 participants, during our 6
sessions we had 22 presentations with more than 400 participants.
CIMUSET off-site meeting: 5th September 2019
Our guests spent also an intense moment, during our off-site meeting in Nagoya region, the third-most-populous
urban area in Japan, with many museums of traditional handicrafts, industrial high-tech and nature and science
museums.
CIMUSET participants benefited from a wonderful guided tours in Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry &
Technology and Nagoya City Science Museum.
CIMUSET 2020 conference:
Our next 48th conference will be in the Iranian National Museum of Science and Technology in Teheran, from 26th
to 30th October 2020.
Theme: “Museums & Environmental Concerns, New Insights”.
Conference web site, call for paper and registration: http://cimuset.inmost.ir/

See you soon !
Ech cherki DAHMALI
CIMUSET Chair

4

Table of Contents
Session 1: New Museums Concepts & Roles
Moderator: Ech cherki Dahmali
Scientiﬁc Exhibitions for Historical Buildings: How Traditional Fiocruz Collections Serve
Contemporary Science Communication
Diego Vaz Bevilaqua & Marcos José de Araújo Pinheiro

7

Connecting Past and Present: Transforming an Iconic Power Station into a Modern Science
and Technology Museum
Jacob Thorek Jensen

20

New Ways to Interpret Your Museum Collection
Julie Leclair & Monique Horth

28

Postmodern Museology—Study Museum Approaches to Improve Informal Education from the
Past to Modern Times
Mehran Norouzi & Parvaneh Asghari

32

Session 2: Engaging Audiences
Moderator: Johanna Vähäpesola
Low Budget, High Impact Festivals for a Sustainable Future
Tal Bar-Lev

41

An Analysis of a Dialogue between a Parent and a Child in the Hands-on Exhibitions at
Science Center
Saya Mori (Anzai) & Motoko Okumoto

48

Session 3: Sustainable Museums
Moderator: Hartwig Ludtke
Practices of Sustainable Development in Science and Technology Museums:
Taiwan Experiences
Shang-Ching Yeh

55

5

Sustainable ʻHardware and Softwareʼ of Museums—Challenges and Opportunities for the
Technical Museum of Slovenia (TMS)
Natalija Polenec

63

Session 4: Communicating Ecology and Natural Science
Moderator: Juliette Raoul-Duval
How “Natural History Museums” Can Perform as “Science Centers”
Takashi Toda

69

A Museum as a School?—Old Techniques Brought to Life in the UNESCO Town of
Banská Štiavnica, Slovakia
Jozef Labuda

74

Connecting Humans to the Universe—The New Shanghai Astronomy Museum
Thomas J. Wong, Ji Minqing & Alexander Brandt

77

Collaborating on Freshwater Conservation and Urban Sustainability
Song Ji

83

Session 5: Sustainable Heritage
Moderator: Markita Franulic
Sustainability through Co-operation and Co-creation
—Managing Finnish Intangible Industrial Heritage
Hanna-Kaisa Melaranta & Kirsi Ojala

89

Traditional Knowledge for Sustainable Future: Indian Indigenous Museumsʼ Initiative
Indrani Bhattacharya

97

Scientiﬁc Heritage—How to Understand and Study It?
Ewa Wyka

109

Research and Conservation of Bio-cultural Heritage and Traditional Technologies
Lilian García-Alonso & José Luis Ruvalcaba

116

From the Portal for Science Archives in Italy to the New Collection Catalogue—Two Examples
for an Accessible, Reusable and Interoperable Heritage Information using Linked Open Data
Giovanni Cella
126

th

47 Conference of CIMUSET, pp. 7–19, 2020

Scientiﬁc Exhibitions for Historical Buildings:
How Traditional Fiocruz Collections Serve
Contemporary Science Communication
Diego Vaz Bevilaqua1 and Marcos José de Araújo Pinheiro2
Casa de Oswaldo Cruz, Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, Rio de Janeiro/RJ, Brazil

Abstract The Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) is a scientiﬁc institution devoted to public
health which is highly active in heritage preservation and science communication. Fiocruz was
founded in 1900 and has a long tradition in museums and collections. The Foundation is home to
a historical site that is listed as a Brazilian national heritage site, partly accessible to the public
through Museu da Vida (Museum of Life), the institutionʼs science museum. This paper presents
the plan for requaliﬁcation of this historical site, a master plan that will reshape Museu da Vida
and enlarge its exhibition galleries, with an emphasis on the museumʼs relationship with the public, the city, and Fiocruz collections. The plan aims to expand access to the historical buildings,
make the Fiocruz collections more accessible to the public, renovate the long-term science exhibition at Museu da Vida, strengthen the relationship between the institution and its territory, and
enhance the popularization of knowledge produced by Fiocruz. A major challenge for this project
is to communicate contemporary scientiﬁc research at Fiocruz, integrating interactive devices
with collections and historical perspectives in galleries located in the heritage buildings. A key
element here is to understand the institutionʼs tradition as a gateway to contemporary innovation
and as an element to spark public engagement with the subject. We present the planʼs principles
and guidelines and its approaches to the new long-term exhibitions, and conclude by discussing
the projectʼs sustainability.

1.

Introduction

The Museu da Vida (Museum of Life) of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation celebrated 20 years in
2019. The museum was created through a collective aspiration to innovate in the institutionʼs tradition of harboring museums, bringing new concepts at the time of its development to enhance interaction between the public and science. Following the model that was characteristic at the time of its
inauguration, Museu da Vida incorporated various aspects from the Science Centers movement,
while valuing its own collection. Another characteristic is that the museum occupies several historical buildings whose value stems precisely from their role in the history of science, and where science continues to be produced. Museu da Vida is thus a science museum in which science is alive
and is produced constantly by Fiocruz, sharing space with the public that want to interact with this
1
2

diego.bevilaqua@ﬁocruz.br
marcos.pinheiro@ﬁocruz.br

Diego Vaz Bevilaqua and Marcos José de Araújo Pinheiro

8

science. This close relationship between heritage preservation and science communication gave rise
to the Plan for Requaliﬁcation of the Manguinhos Historical and Architectural Heritage Site
(NAHM), whose principles and main exhibitions are described herein.
2.

Fiocruz: 120 years of tradition in museums and collections

The history of museums at Oswaldo Cruz Foundation is nearly as old as the institution itself. The
Federal Serotherapy Institute (the institutionʼs ﬁrst name) launched its activities in the year 1900,
installed temporarily in the houses on the Manguinhos Farm, on what was then the outskirts of the
city of Rio de Janeiro, with Oswaldo Cruz as the founding scientiﬁc director.
The years 1904 to 1922 witnessed the construction of the buildings designed by Portuguese
architect Luiz Moraes Jr. to house the institutionʼs scientiﬁc activities: the Stable (1904), Dovecote
(1904), Plague Pavilion or Clock Building (1905), Teahouse (1905), Moorish Pavilion (1918),
Oswaldo Cruz Hospital (1918), Quinine Building (1921), and Vaccine Pavilion (1922). This ensemble, part of which is listed by Brazilʼs National Institute of Historical and Artistic Heritage
(IPHAN), features as its grand symbol the Moorish Pavilion (or “Castle”), built to house the institutionʼs ﬁrst research laboratories and now home to the Oﬃce of the President of Fiocruz

Figure 1. Buildings on the historical site around the Castle at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, c. 1920. Source:
DAD/Fiocruz Collection.

Scientiﬁc Exhibitions for Historical Buildings

9

(OLIVEIRA, 2003).
Already in its inaugural decade, the institute began to form its ﬁrst in-house scientiﬁc collections,
as was the practice in such institutions at the time. From the beginning, these featured the entomology and anatomical pathology collections. The Castleʼs original ﬂoor plan already had a scientiﬁc
museum, conceived along the lines of early 20th-century museums of natural history. The collections were transferred to the Castle as soon as construction was concluded, and the museum opened
its doors and became a place for research, exchange among researchers, and reception of distinguished visitors (especially scientists) (NOGUEIRA and ROCHA, 2018). In the 1960s and 1970s,
the institution suﬀered an intervention by the military government installed in Brazil by a coup
dʼétat in 1964, and many scientists were stripped of their positions and parts of the collections were
destroyed. After Brazilʼs re-democratization in the 1980s, many collections were recovered and
reorganized, and they now comprise the rich body of collections of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation.
There are now 33 biological collections, many of which are international references, whose tradition began in the early 20th century.
Following Oswaldo Cruzʼ death in 1917, his oﬃce on the Castleʼs second ﬂoor was preserved
and maintained as a memorial room with the purpose of extolling the man who went down in history as the institutionʼs founder and patron. His oﬃce came to be known as the Oswaldo Cruz
Museum and became the memorial setting for visitors to the institution to learn about Oswaldo
Cruzʼ feats. Over time, personal objects were added to the room, which became the original nucleus
of the Fiocruz museum collection as a whole (NOGUEIRA and ROCHA, 2018).
Brazilʼs re-democratization in the 1980s also created new forms of democracy inside the institution. Since then, the relationship between Fiocruz and society has been reclaimed according to
democratic values. From that moment on, museums at the institution have been redesigned through
the proposal for the creation of Museu da Vida, which has added its museum collection to the proposal to communicate science through dialogue and innovation.
3.

Museu da Vida: innovation in science communication

The proposal for the creation of Museu da Vida emerged in the early 1990s with the aim of
expanding the Foundationʼs educational activities and establishing a bridge between specialists and
a wider audience. The new museum is organized by Casa de Oswaldo Cruz, the unit of Fiocruz created in 1986 with the aim of preserving the memory of health and science, healthʼs cultural heritage, and science communication, adding the experiences from previous museums and their historical collections, but with the perspective of introducing innovations in the models.
First of all, the idea was to build an interactive museum along the lines of the experience with the
Exploratorium, inaugurated in San Francisco in 1969, with a focus on understanding scientiﬁc processes as part of humankindʼs immaterial heritage. This movement intended to lend a historical
view to scientiﬁc knowledge, seeking a critical vision of the scientiﬁc process itself. The goal was
ultimately to create a living museum inside an institution in full operation, coexisting with, contrib-

10

Diego Vaz Bevilaqua and Marcos José de Araújo Pinheiro

Figure 2. Schematic map of a visitorʼs tour to Museu da Vida. Source: Museu da Vida/Fiocruz.

uting to, and being fed by this living science.
Museu da Vida thus opened its doors to the public in 1999. Rather than occupying a single building, the Museum was structured in various spaces on the Manguinhos campus, including both
indoor and outdoor spaces, interactive exhibitions, historical buildings, ecological trails, a tent for
theatrical shows, and more recently a butterﬂy house and an archeological site, among other attractions. The Museumʼs exhibitions been worked with diﬀerent languages and resources, with human
mediation as an important part of the educational proposal (BEVILAQUA et al., 2017).
Preserving history and reﬂecting on the current context also help light the way for the future.
Museu da Vida now needs to strengthen itself as a space for dialogue between diﬀerent forms of
knowledge, linking discourses capable of associating scientiﬁc knowledge with personal interpreta-

Scientiﬁc Exhibitions for Historical Buildings

11

tions and local contexts, as an actor capable of inﬂuencing the social territory it occupies in the city
of Rio de Janeiro.
In this context, the Plan for Requaliﬁcation of the Manguinhos Historical and Architectural Heritage Site (NAHM) features a proposal to reposition the Museum in the territory it occupies, aimed
at lending a broader meaning to this occupation, expanding the exhibiting spaces and linking more
to preservation of science communicationʼs own cultural heritage.
4.

The plan for requaliﬁcation of the historical site

History has shown that ever since Fiocruz was founded, the institution has taken an innovative
and active stance to its activities in research, education, production, and services, with a focus on
public health and the reduction of social and health inequalities. This reveals an institution engaged
in preserving and making accessible the diﬀerent cultural and scientiﬁc collections built throughout
the Foundationʼs history, understanding its memory and cultural heritage as strategic and structural
elements in its organizational culture and the fulﬁllment of its mission. This stance led Fiocruz to
take a step ahead of the state and municipal agencies in charge of overseeing cultural heritage, proposing the recognition of various cultural assets under the Foundationʼs custody, which led the
National Institute of Historical and Artistic Heritage (IPHAN) to list the Moorish Pavilion, Clock
Pavilion, and Stable as national heritage buildings in 1980. In 1985, Fiocruz requested IPHAN to
extend the listing to include the green area around these buildings and other buildings from the
eclectic period, the Quinine Building and the Dovecote. The polygon corresponding to this green
area served as the reference for the Campus Master Plan in 1988 and for subsequent plans. This
proactive approach was repeated over time, resulting in the Rio de Janeiro state heritage listing of
two modernist buildings in 2001, and more recently in the Moorish Pavilionʼs candidacy as a
UNESCO World Heritage Site, based on its value as cultural heritage of the sciences and health.
The year 2013 witnessed the conclusion of the Plan for Occupation of the Preservation Area of
the Fiocruz Manguinhos Campus (POAP), an institutional planning and management tool for the
architectural, urban, and landscape heritage of the Fiocruz Manguinhos campus, aimed at guaranteeing the integrity, visibility, and legibility of the relevant assets for preservation on the siteʼs area
and consolidating the campusʼ calling as a “Campus-Park”, seen “as a healthy, safe, comfortable,
and culturally enriching campus for its employees and visitors”. (Casa de Oswaldo Cruz, Instituto
Brasileiro de Administração Municipal, 2011, pp. 18–19)
The NAHM site was recently favored by the expansion of new areas for occupation by Fiocruz,
capable of housing administrative functions that are currently installed in the historical site. This
created challenges that had to be dealt with and that might otherwise jeopardize the conservation
and valuation of the NAHM site, since the lack of appropriate projects would leave the historical
buildings at the mercy of improvisation and occupations resulting from lack of planning. This also
allowed elaborating a project for new uses of the historical spaces as they were vacated, which led
to the Plan for Requaliﬁcation of the Manguinhos Historical and Architectural Heritage Site, under

12

Diego Vaz Bevilaqua and Marcos José de Araújo Pinheiro

the coordination of Casa de Oswaldo Cruz, based on recommendations in the POAP. The Requaliﬁcation Plan seeks to value the historical site through interventions that preserve its identity and
uniqueness, besides generating a greater supply of sociocultural activities for society at large, especially the population in the territory of the Manguinhos campus.
5.

Guidelines

Based on the participatory management model adopted by Fiocruz in its corporate decision-making process and the election of its leaders, which assumes that the decisions, guidelines, and planning result from collegiate deliberations, the ﬁrst working group was set up in 2011 in Casa de
Oswaldo Cruz, consisting of professionals from the areas of cultural heritage, science communication, research, and education. The working groupʼs ﬁrst task is to discuss and draft a reference document deﬁning the values, objectives, and orientation for all the projects and activities needed to
develop and implement the Plan. Joining the working group were external guest specialists from
the ﬁelds of preservation of architectural heritage, museology, museography, and museum communication. The working groupʼs composition was revised and expanded in 2013 under a ruling by the
Oﬃce of the Director of Casa de Oswaldo Cruz, and strategies were created to expand the projectʼs
visibility and participation.
The working groupʼs attributions involved the deﬁnition of uses and occupations, needs schedules, management model, and the internal and external target publics. The planʼs development used
project management models as the basis for its macroplanning, in order to take the various scenarios into account and to establish, for each model, the associated risks and possible alternatives. The
underlying principles were deﬁned as the projectʼs full accessibility and sustainability, and diﬀerent
programs were created to lend greater autonomy and agility to the processes needed for the Plan to
materialize, focused on communication, cooperation, fundraising, exhibitions, restoration of the
buildings, and institutional management.
The Requaliﬁcation Plan includes the buildings that comprise the institutionʼs original site,
namely the buildings constructed in the early 20th century (except for the Oswaldo Cruz Hospital
and the Vaccine Pavilion): Moorish Pavilion, Clock Pavilion, Quinine Building, and Teahouse, plus
the Pasteur Square, the Oswaldo Cruz Path, and the Henrique Aragão Pavilion, thus shaping a continuous intervention area. After deﬁning the space for intervention, the working group produced a
reference document, which required listening and establishing consensuses in the institution on the
principles and guidelines capable of translating the values and identity of Fiocruz and intensifying
the institutionʼs relationship with the territory where the Manguinhos campus is located and with
the city of Rio de Janeiro as a whole. According to the reference document, the requaliﬁcation of
the NAHM site incorporates the POAP in its entirety and is an integral part of the master plan that
orients the occupations and interventions in the Manguinhos Campus as a whole. The central principle in the Planʼs development is that the interventions should be based on the cultural, social, ethical, and scientiﬁc spheres that translate human action in that speciﬁc place over time. It means that

Scientiﬁc Exhibitions for Historical Buildings

13

all the activities should be centered on the institutionʼs artistic and historical values; symbolic
aspects and memory; the right to transmission and enjoyment, from one generation to the next, of
the testimonies, daily life, and individual and collective memories; and the centrality of the recognition that this is a noteworthy place for generation of knowledge, building relevant cultural and scientiﬁc collections, and living in the production of new research in diﬀerent areas of science
(FUNDAÇÃO OSWALDO CRUZ, 2014). The Requaliﬁcation Plan should be oriented by strengthening the relationship between Fiocruz as an institution of science and technology and society in
the ﬁeld of health; by sustainable requaliﬁcation; by preserving the institutionʼs uniqueness and
identity; and by valuing the Foundationʼs daily reality and work.
6.

Sustainability strategies

To address the principle of sustainability, the orientation is comprehensive, integrated conservation and sustainable requaliﬁcation, the latter as a more expanded concept in the issue of rehabilitation of historical areas, considering that a project of this nature should not be limited exclusively to
the search for eﬃcient use of natural resources and lower environmental impact, which are necessary but insuﬃcient conditions. This concept was taken as a reference in the studies produced by
Rehabimed3, an interdisciplinary network in the Mediterranean Region, oriented to sustainable
rehabilitation, restoration of heritage, and urban upgrading, aimed at socioeconomic revitalization
of the historical centers in the Mediterranean, and these experiences are intended to back activities
in other regions. It is thus necessary for the Requaliﬁcation Plan to focus on improvements in the
quality of work and life for staﬀ and users of the NAHM site and the Manguinhos campus as a
whole; valuation of the campusʼ cultural and natural heritage; improvement of social cohesion by
promoting citizenship and valuing diversity; and promotion of the territoryʼs socioeconomic vitality.
As described previously, a favorable factor is the institutionʼs history with its active and proactive
position in the preservation of its cultural assets and training teams with the skills to conserve its
cultural collections and develop projects with this approach and size. Such action has been
acknowledged by various national awards and the fact that three of its archival funds and a manuscript have been acknowledge by the UNESCO Memory of the World Program, at the national and
regional levels. In addition to this component of institutional culture, it is necessary to act on various strategic fronts, in special two of these fronts. On is focused on production of the projectʼs core
narrative, its principles and values, and on the methodology in its development. Another focuses on
the political commitment by the top management of Fiocruz. One of the lines successfully organized for the projectʼs sustainability is the Cooperative Program, essential for the projectʼs visibility
and for sharing experiences and knowledge, having established cooperation with international institutions (such as the Museum National dʼHistoire Naturelle and Universcience from France and the
Science Museum Group from the United Kingdom), motivated by the interest in sharing experi3

http://www.rehabimed.net/

14

Diego Vaz Bevilaqua and Marcos José de Araújo Pinheiro

ences in the ﬁeld of heritage preservation and science communication and demonstrating the credibility built by the project. This was reinforced by the Fundraising Program, described previously as
relevant for obtaining supplementary revenue to the regular budget, and which has achieved noteworthy success, for example with the agreement signed in late 2018 with the National Economic
and Social Development Bank (BNDES, an important Brazilian public investment bank) for ﬁnancing the services planned in the Stable and Dovecote. Fundraising from external sources is a strategic element in the institutionʼs internal aﬃrmation, enabling the Requaliﬁcation Plan politically by
minimizing the perception by other parts of the Foundation that the Plan is competing for internal
resources with the research departments, education, services, and production at Fiocruz.
These components add to sustainable requaliﬁcation as one of the projectʼs underlying principles,
thereby aﬃrming the sustainability of the Requaliﬁcation Plan for the NAHM site, based on the following (PINHEIRO et al., 2019, p. 86):
・The Foundationʼs tradition in the preservation of its cultural heritage
・Recognition and attraction of core competences
・The proposalʼs social acceptance
・Adoption of sustainable standards in the architectural and urban planning projects
・Public-private partnerships
・Commitment by the institutionʼs administrators
7.

Thematic lines

A dialogue between staﬀ members at Casa de Oswaldo Cruz and Fiocruz and external consultants resulted in the deﬁnition of crosscutting themes (DEAN, 2003) that will be developed in the
new exhibitions that will occupy the historical spaces that are being requaliﬁed. Importantly, in
principle, these themes will cut across all the new exhibitions, rather than each one materializing in
a single exhibition. Each exhibit galleryʼs narrative seeks to connect the buildingʼs history to a
cross-section of these themes.
・Public health in Brazil
This thematic line deals with the history of health in Brazil, with a focus ranging from the First
Republic to the history of the present.
・Science and Technology in Health
This thematic line deals with contemporary research, scientiﬁc innovation, and technological
development in the ﬁeld of health.
・Health, Environment, and Sustainability
This thematic line addresses the relations between health and the environment, with a focus on
the sustainability of human development.
・Cultural collections in Health
This thematic line aims to lend visibility to the wealth and diversity of cultural and scientiﬁc collections under the custody of Fiocruz.

Scientiﬁc Exhibitions for Historical Buildings

15

・Fiocruz and Cities
This thematic line discusses the relationship between the Fiocruz campuses and its territories,
with a special focus on the Manguinhos campus and local urban development.
8.

New exhibitions and their buildings

Among the various buildings on the Fiocruz historical site, we selected those that will house new
long-term exhibitions with their respective themes already deﬁned.
Stables
The Stable was originally built to house healthy horses that were used to produce antisera, and
particularly bubonic plague antiserum, which was produced in the adjoining building, the Plague
Pavilion. The outer design was inspired by an imposing stable in English architectural style and an
ornate façade, while inside it is characterized by a concern with typical laboratory and hospital
hygiene, with the walls covered in while porcelain tile. The construction used state-of-the-art sustainability technologies, such as reuse of wastewater to irrigate the pasture and the manure for fertilizer and to produce biogas for lighting. The Stable was listed as a national heritage building in
1981. Since the 1970s, the Stable has housed various museums and exhibitions, the most recent of
which was the Biodiscovery exhibition, one of the original long-term exhibitions of Museu da Vida.
Under the new proposal for occupation, the Stable Building will house an exhibition that will

Figure 3. Stable Building. Photo: Celeste Souza.

16

Diego Vaz Bevilaqua and Marcos José de Araújo Pinheiro

discuss health in its diﬀerent scales and components (historical, biological, cultural, and social).
The proposal is for the public to enter the exhibition and to able to explore the theme of health in its
microscopic and macroscopic dimensions through diﬀerent exhibit tours. The exhibition will draw
on a wide variety of techniques and languages, using audiovisual modules, interactive multimedia,
collections, hands-on interactivity, etc.
Dovecote
Situated at a short distance from the main historical site, the Dovecote was also known as the
Small Laboratory Animal Facility. It was built to house the rearing of birds, rats, rabbits, frogs, and
other small animals for research purposes. At the center of eight circular buildings, there is a ninth
building originally used to house homing pigeons that were used to send messages between the
institute and the Rio de Janeiro city center. There is a wall around the ensemble, surrounded by a
garden. The Dovecote is now in the process of national heritage listing and enjoys the status of
interim listing.
Under the new proposal for exhibitions, the Dovecote will serve as an area with a mix of
museum, urban planning, and environmental interventions. The space will host activities for the
open-air Museum, allowing free exploration by visitors as well as leisure activities, alongside interactive equipment to facilitate visitorsʼ communication with nature. The built areas will present narrative tours on the Manguinhos campusʼ environmental history, animal experimentation in the sciences, and the use of homing pigeons. The Dovecote will also be the starting point for the
historical-environmental trails to be promoted on the campus by Museu da Vida.
Plague Pavilion
Also known as the Clock Pavilion, the building was built from 1904 to 1905. As a response to

Figure 4. Dovecote. Photo: Peter Ilicciev.

Scientiﬁc Exhibitions for Historical Buildings

17

Figure 5. Plague Pavilion or Clock Building. Source: COC Collection.

the bubonic plague epidemic that had struck Brazil, the Pavilion was designed for research on the
plague bacillus to produce antisera and vaccine. It was built to house horses inoculated with the
plague bacillus and two laboratories, one each on the north and south wings. The Pavilion was also
listed as a national heritage building in 1981.
An exhibition will be installed in the Plague Pavilion to discuss the technological and social processes in the production of antisera and vaccines, from the early 20th century to today. The proposal
is to feature an early 20th century laboratory for the production of antisera and vaccines in one of
the wings with historical objects kept at the storage at Museu da Vida, and modern-day vaccine production in the other wing, thus establishing a 120-year journey crossing the building from one wing
to the other.
Moorish Castle
The Moorish Castle or Pavilion is the third building from the national heritage listing of 1981.
Considered the main building on the historical site and the symbol of Fiocruz, ﬂoor plans for the
Castle began in 1903, but the construction was not ﬁnished until 1918. It was built with the most
advanced technology of the time, with electrical installations and an eclectic style featuring an
important Moorish inﬂuence. Located on a hilltop, the Castle is an imposing structure on the surrounding landscape. It was designed personally by Oswaldo Cruz together with Portuguese architect Luiz Moraes Jr. to house the institutionʼs research laboratories and to be identiﬁed as a symbol
of Brazilian science. It has ﬁve stories in addition to a ground ﬂoor and two towers standing out on
each wing. The building now features monumental lighting for it to be visible from diﬀerent points
in the city.
3rd Floor
Ever since the Castle was ﬁrst built, the third ﬂoor has featured an area dedicated to collections.

18

Diego Vaz Bevilaqua and Marcos José de Araújo Pinheiro

Figure 6. Moorish Pavilion at dusk. Photo: Peter Ilicciev.

One wing housed the institutionʼs library, now a Rare Works Library, and the other wing housed the
Museum of Anatomical Pathology in the early 20th century. The wing where the museum was
located is now occupied by Museu da Vida and serves as a gallery for temporary exhibits.
Under the current project, this exhibit will feature the Fiocruz collections, exemplifying the
importance of science collections in the process of science production, but also illustrating the different research subjects today in the ﬁeld of biomedical and health sciences. This exhibit will mix
historical objects, documents, biological specimens, digitized collections, and interactivity using
new technologies to approach the theme.
2nd Floor
The Castleʼs second ﬂoor originally held various laboratories and the oﬃce occupied by Oswaldo
Cruz. Thus, since his death, this space is dedicated to institutional memory and was occupied for
most of the 20th century by the Oswaldo Cruz Museum. Since the creation of Museu da Vida, the
space has been dedicated to an exhibit on the lives of Oswaldo Cruz and Carlos Chagas.
In a new reformulation proposal, the exhibition will discuss the history of public health in Brazil,
emphasizing the contribution by Fiocruz in this scenario. Both Oswaldo Cruz and Carlos Chagas
appear as key characters in this history, which will discuss the consolidation of the idea of a public
health system, the need for the systemʼs nationwide expansion, and the importance of technological
production in this scenario, particularly vaccine production.

Scientiﬁc Exhibitions for Historical Buildings

9.

19

Final remarks

The Plan for Requaliﬁcation of the Manguinhos Historical and Architectural Heritage Site
(NAHM) provides for greater use of the historical spaces at Fiocruz by the population, shifting
many activities to other locations and expanding the exhibit areas, while actively pursuing the preservation of this heritage. This will allow Museu da Vida to rethink its own relationship to its territory. This project is thus an opportunity to view the historical site as integral part of a place that
experienced enormous changes in the 20th century. It is important for this Plan to be a vector for the
institution to act in local social development, integrating the site in the cultural map of the city of
Rio de Janeiro. In addition, through the approach between the science exhibitions and historical
areas, it will foster a greater dialogue between traditional history exhibitions, with their objects and
collections, and contemporary science communication, seeking to diminish these tensions and view
a history that deals with both the past and the present.
References
BEVILAQUA, Diego Vaz et al. (Orgs.) Museum of Life: Science and Art in Manguinhos. Rio de Janeiro: Fiocruz/
Casa de Oswaldo Cruz, 2017.
CASA DE OSWALDO CRUZ. INSTITUTO BRASILEIRO DE ADMINISTRAÇÃO MUNICIPAL. Plano de Ocupação da Área de Preservação do Campus Fiocruz Manguinhos: POAP—Documento Final. Rio de Janeiro:
[n.p.], 2011.
DEAN, David. Museum Exhibition: theory and practice. New York: Routledge, 2003.
FUNDAÇÃO OSWALDO CRUZ. Casa de Oswaldo Cruz. Plano de Requaliﬁcação do Núcleo Arquitetônico
Histórico de Manguinhos. Documento de Referência. Rio de Janeiro: Fiocruz/COC [n.p.], 2014.
NOGUEIRA, Inês Santos; ROCHA, Luísa Maria. Coleção museológica da Fundação Oswaldo Cruz: Do culto à saudade à memoria institucional. IN: XIX Encontro Nacional de Pesquisa em Ciência da Informação—ENANCIB
2018, Londrina: Universidade Estadual de Londrina, 2018.
OLIVEIRA, Benedito T. (Coord.); COSTA, Renato G. R.; PESSOA, Alexandre J. S. Um Lugar para a Ciência: a
formação do campus de Manguinhos. Rio de Janeiro: Editora FIOCRUZ, 2003.
PINHEIRO, Marcos José de Araújo et al. Arquitetura E Espaços Museológicos: Experiências a Partir do Plano de
Requaliﬁcação do Núcleo Arquitetônico Histórico de Manguinhos Na Cidade Do Rio De Janeiro. Cadernos de
Sociomuseologia, v. 57 n. 13, p. 69–107, 2019.

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47 Conference of CIMUSET, pp. 20–27, 2020

Connecting Past and Present:
Transforming an Iconic Power Station into
a Modern Science and Technology Museum
Jacob Thorek Jensen
Danish Museum of Science and Technology, Helsingør, Denmark

Abstract This paper is addressing how we are trying to rethink the role of a museum of science and technology. It is about connecting past and present, and together creating a more sustainable future. Science and technology have such a huge impact on the world today. Everyone
is aﬀected by technology on a daily basis and its signiﬁcance is evident in most aspects of society. So, there is no question in regard to the relevance of our museums, but maybe we need to
rethink what we do and why we do it in order to be relevant for more people today. That is what
we are experimenting with at the Danish Museum of Science and Technology.

Photo 1 View of the current exhibitions at the Danish Museum of Science and Technology. Credit: Christoﬀer
Askman.

The resurrection of a museum
The Danish Museum of Science and Technology is an autonomous museum with a national
responsibility to deal with the technological and industrial development of Denmark. We receive
support from the Danish government to carry out this work.

Connecting Past and Present

21

At the moment, the museum is located north of Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, in a
medium sized town, but will move to Copenhagen when the new museum opens within the next
5–7 years. The museum is visited by approximately 60–70,000 people a year.
The museum was established in 1911 by the Confederation of Danish Industry and the Association of Craftsmen in Copenhagen. The diversity of the collection is enormous; from steam engines
to smartphones; a Soyuz-space capsule; the original LEGO; production facilities; and Denmarkʼs
ﬁrst car from 1888, which is the worldʼs oldest functioning car. There are more than 30,000 objects
in the collection. The unifying term is innovation. Every single object in the collection is an example of new ideas or new discoveries.
Even though the museum is more than 100 years old, it has been somewhat neglected in recent
years with falling visitor numbers and a collection in poor condition. The museum is at the moment
located in an old industrial facility, which is not suited for a modern museum. Large parts of the
museum are not heated for instance. So, the development of the new museum is in fact also the
rebirth of the old museum. It has now been decided to transform the museum and relocate it.
Five reasons for a new museum
Why do we even need a new museum? We have identiﬁed ﬁve main reasons why Denmark needs
a new museum of science and technology.

Photo 2 The relationship between humans and machines will be at the core of the new museum. Credit: Mads
Høbye.

22

Jacob Thorek Jensen

1.

Technology is the future
The world as we know it is changing rapidly, and might altogether collapse if we continue as we
are living today. We need to act and come up with new solutions for a more sustainable future. Here
we want to discuss the challenges and potentials, which the technological future brings. Robots,
digitization, artiﬁcial intelligence, biotechnology, and other advanced technologies are changing the
way we work, live, and communicate—that is the very core of social and cultural aspects of human
beings.
2.

Denmark is a high-tech society
Denmark is a high-tech society with a unique industrial and technological history, which is not
properly dealt with in the country at the moment. The museum will deal with the stories about the
creation of the modern Danish society—in other words the DNA of the Danish model and way of
living. We want to explore the challenges and potentials, which science, technology, and innovation
create for Denmark and the world.

Photo 3 The Svanemølle Power Plant in Copenhagen will be the site of the new museum.

3.

A cultural powerhouse
We want to engage citizens, researchers, institutions, companies, and others in the shaping of a
more sustainable future by developing new perspectives on our collection and unfold new potentials, which lies in rethinking the history of Denmark seen from an industrial and technological perspective. We will do this by creating a platform or meeting place for many diﬀerent activities, such
as exhibitions, talks, events, festivals, discussions, learning, digital content, and so on. We have a

Connecting Past and Present

23

broad approach to our subject, so it includes everything from science, technology and innovation to
design, art, and ethics.
4.

A power station for everyone
The museum will be placed in one of the most iconic industrial sites in Copenhagen, the
Svanemølle Power Station, a power plant from 1953. The power station is a landmark in the northern part of the city, which has been closed to the public because of its functions. When the turbines
move out within the next years, it will be transformed into the museum in part of the building. The
vision is that the remaining part of the building should house start-ups, co-working spaces, educational and research institutions, or other players within the ﬁelds of science, technology, and innovation and thus making the entire plant a hub and incubator for new sustainable ideas and solutions.
The plant is located in Nordhavn, an old industrial area of Copenhagen. The area is being transformed into a new sustainable neighborhood in Copenhagen, where 40.000 people will live, and
40.000 people will work.
5.

Strong partnerships
The plans of creating a new national museum of science and technology can only be accomplished with strong partners. The project is supported by key stakeholders such as the Confederation of Danish Industry, the Association of Craftsmen in Copenhagen, the Corporation for Development of City and Port Copenhagen and the Municipality of Copenhagen.

Photo 4 View from the inside of the power station.

24

Jacob Thorek Jensen

Transformation
We are still working on the plans and identity and concept of the new museum. It is a process
that is carried out in dialogue and collaboration with stakeholders such as citizens, educational and
research institutions, companies, politicians, communities, and artists.
The aim is to link the museum with the history, aesthetics, architecture, atmosphere, and intangible heritage of the building itself. Itʼs about preserving the industrial look of the plant, but still make
it a dynamic sustainable museum ﬁt for the future.
From coal to culture
The museum will be placed in the kettle hall, which is the main facility in the plant. Based on a
market analyses the museum will, when fully developed, take up 12,000 square meters of the
22,000 square meters in the building.

Photo 5 Visualizing of how the rooftop garden might look when the museum opens.

Facilities
There will be a wide selection of activities in the museum with of course exhibitions, where the
main space will be the large kettle hall with 40 meters to the ceiling.
The museum will host a studio, which is a hub or incubator within the museum with a large number of interlinking cultural, tech and science-related activities, such as talks, makerspaces, economic and social innovation, start-ups, residencies, digital culture production, and art. This space
will also play a key role in the educational programs, which we will provide at the museum.
There will be ﬂexible spaces that can be used to host all sorts of events and activities such as festivals, seminars and conferences, presentations, and talks. This is where key stakeholders around

Connecting Past and Present

25

science, technology, and innovation get together and share experiences, insights, and knowledge
about new future solutions and ideas.
The ʻHimmelrummetʼ is the rooftop garden of the museum. The garden and the green houses will
function as a reﬂective space for the visitors to enjoy and discuss topics, which are raised in the
museum. This is also a space where we can discuss and present future foods and production methods such as vertical farming. The garden also provides a unique view of the northern part of the city
making it an attractive hangout for the local inhabitants in Nordhavn.
A museum about science, technology and innovation
The frame of the new museum can be divided into three:
• Technology and industry: the possibilities of technology and the drivers behind it
• Humans and culture: the interactions between technology and our civilization, values and existence
• Local and global challenges: everything between the very near and the future of the planet

•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

The core of this frame, and what the museum will be dealing with is:
Curiosity
Science
Creativity
Innovation
Design
Production
Entrepreneurship
Sustainability

This means that we have a very broad perspective on science and technology and want to focus
not just on what, but why. This is of course part of the paradigm shift in museums from the modernist paradigm to the socio museologic paradigm; and maybe the hybrid museum paradigm, which I
believe is what characterizes most museum practice today.
Itʼs all about people
The technological development raises questions about how we live our lives and how we are
organizing our societies. There is a need to develop new citizen skills that are reﬂecting the technological and digital revolution.
New technologies have endless possibilities. There is almost no limit to the capabilities of human
beings. But what are the consequences on the social and cultural well-being of citizens of these new

26

Jacob Thorek Jensen

technologies? The same goes for the digital revolution. Digital technologies have restructured the
power balance of the world and are questioning the future of democracies and our basic human rights.
Science and technology might have created a lot of the problems we are facing today, but we also
need to look for new ideas and discoveries within these ﬁelds to solve the challenges our world and
its inhabitants have.
We need institutions that can facilitate an open and honest discussion about these important issues
with all kinds of people in society with no regard to age, gender, educational background, ethnicity,
sexual orientation, spirituality etc. We want the museum to take on this important role. We want to
be a platform for discussions, dialogues, reﬂection, and meetings about the challenges and potentials of science, technology, and innovation in an equal frame between past, present, and future.

Photo 6 The Bits & Beers event at the museum is an opportunity for diﬀerent people to engage with science.

Engagement
How do we engage more diﬀerent kinds of people in science and technology? We are looking at
the concept of science capital to engage a variety of groups in science, technology and innovation.
Science Capital is developed by the Science Museum in London and Kings College. It is a tool to
give insight into why some people engage with STEM, and why a lot of people donʼt. It is an
approach that is looking at every single individual and what they know about science, what they
think about it, what they do, and who they know. We have found it to be a very inspirational tool
for organizational change, so we can facilitate experiences that engage more diﬀerent kind of people with science and technology.

Connecting Past and Present

27

Creating a better future together
Museums of science and technology are dealing with the very core of the creation of the modern
world and how we need to develop a sustainable future together for everyone. That is why we
believe that museums of science and technology—in the many shapes they come—are among the
most important museums that exists. Because of this we have an obligation not only to deal with
the past, but we need to have our focus on the present and future.
More of the same will not do
I want to conclude this paper with a quote from the former UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon
as he before the agreement of the new UN sustainable development goals said: “More of the same
will not do”. He called out for a sustainable turnaround for our globe on a social, economic and
environmental level. But we believe that museums, as part of a cultural level, also need to change.
“More of the same will not do” also applies to museums.
That is why we need to rethink what we do and why we do it in our museums. And that is what
we are experimenting with at the Danish Museum of Science and Technology.

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47 Conference of CIMUSET, pp. 28–31, 2020

New Ways to Interpret Your Museum Collection
Julie Leclair and Monique Horth
Ingenium—Canadaʼs Museums of Science and Innovation, Ottawa, Canada

Abstract Ingenium–Canadaʼs Museums of Science and Innovation oversees Canadaʼs three
museums of science and technology: the Canada Agriculture and Food Museum (CAFM), Canada Aviation and Space Museum (CASM), and the Canada Science and Technology Museum
(CSTM). Located in Ottawa, Canadaʼs national capitol, these three national museums celebrate
creativity, discovery, and human ingenuity, focusing on the stories of people. In 2016, the Government of Canada funded Ingenium $150,000,000 to build a state-of-the-art collection and
conservation centre. During the design and build of this new institution, Ingenium took advantage of this unique opportunity to develop a new research strategy as well as develop the Ingenium Research Institute, driven by the Corporationʼs extensive experience and knowledge in
unique ways to interpret a museum collection.

In 2016, Ingenium embarked on the development of the Ingenium Centre, a 36,000 square meter
building dedicated to the research and care of the national science and innovation collection. Ingenium was committed to building a place where Canadians can be inspired by the science, technology and innovations that transformed Canada and had an impact on the world. The following 3
goals were set in place as markers for success.
– Access＝Knowledge Creation
– Adding diversity to the knowledge economy
– Strengthening Ingeniumʼs role (and voice) in the arts, sciences, education and policy
The heart of the Ingenium Centre is its collection, with over 85,000 3D objects and over 2 million pieces of archival material. The collection includes artifacts of diﬀerent shapes and sizes, from
locomotives and tractors to porcelain plates, seeds, and medical and scientiﬁc instruments. As Ingeniumʼs three museums can only display around 12 percent of the collection at any given time, the
Ingenium Centre will allow visitors to explore the collection with accessible guided tours. The
Ingenium Centre also houses 150 dedicated and inspired staﬀ.
Artifacts began to move into the new building in 2019, and will be completed by the end of
2021. The complexities of the artifact move cannot be understated and Ingenium wanted to share
this exciting time in the organizationʼs, and Canadaʼs, history. Public engagement with the move has
been very important, as well as successful. For example, at 7:00 am on July 25, 2019, Ingenium
invited the public to come and see staﬀ hard at work moving one of the collectionʼs largest, and
most iconic artefacts into the building: the 1201 locomotive. The success of this event was amazing
and surprising. Enthusiasm for an early morning event was gratifying for the public and for staﬀ

New Ways to Interpret Your Museum Collection

29

Photo credit: Ingenium – Canadaʼs Museums of Science and Innovation

Photo credit: Ingenium – Canadaʼs Museums of Science and Innovation

who had been working tirelessly on the logistics of this complex task. Creating the hashtag #IngeniumBigMove along with a strong social media presence provided excellent earned media uptake.
Building on a strong social media presence and seeing a gap within the online community of science communication, Ingenium created The Channel. The Ingenium Channel is a digital hub featuring curated content related to science, technology and innovation. Its goal is to facilitate science
enthusiasts, teachers, parents, and curious Canadians to share and engage with innovative stories

30

Julie Leclair and Monique Horth

through focused news, articles, blogs, podcasts, and videos. The Channel is just one aspect of the
many digital assets that Ingenium develops in support of the collection.
A tremendous success on the digital front for Ingenium has been the creation of a number of
gaming apps. To date, Ingenium has created 7 gaming apps based on its collection, and available on
both iOS and Android platforms. These apps are both educational and fun, and have been a key
component to the organizationʼs international outreach, having been downloaded over 3.5 million
times and in over 175 countries worldwide. Using the Ingenium collection and research has brought
a level of authenticity and creativity to these games that often game developers to not have access
to. The latest game is StarBlox Inc., launched on the Nintendo Switch platform, which combines
incredible game play along with fun and educational facts about Earthʼs Solar System.

Gaming apps developed by Ingenium and available on iOS and Android platforms

Another innovative way in which Ingenium is providing access to the collection is through 3D
scanning. A number of artifacts from the collection have been 3D scanned at a very high resolution.
These wire frame ﬁles are oﬀered for free download, along with full educational programs. This
allows teachers and educators to 3D print the artifact and have a full lesson plan around it to use in
the classrooms and educational workshops. Knowing only a fraction of Canadians will be able to
visit their national collection in person, Ingenium aims to bring the collection to Canadians in as
many diverse and accessible ways possible.
As staﬀ begin to get settled in the new Ingenium Centre, the Ingenium Research Institute is tak-

New Ways to Interpret Your Museum Collection

31

ing shape. This Institute invites Canadians, and people from around the world, to change how they
think about science and technology by cultivating a better understanding of the material culture of
humanityʼs past, present and future. The Institute will use the national collection to explore the
many ways that science and technology are embedded in society, culture and history.

The Ingenium Institute consists of: a fellowship program for university and college students at all
levels; digital multi-media labs and collaborative spaces to put research into practice; an artifact
examination room for hands-on research, symposia and seminars on material culture; a library and
archives; an extensive online collection; and opportunities for researchers to engage with visitors at
Ingeniumʼs three museums.
Ingenium is committed to diversifying its approach through the reciprocal exchange of ideas
with people of diverse culture and ethnic background, as well as exploring gender studies and the
role of women in STEM (Science, technology, Engineering and Mathematics). But this cannot be
achieved in a vacuum. Collaborations with researchers and curators from around the world will be
sought out. And strong relationships will be built with Indigenous communities to learn about
Indigenous science, technology and Ways of Knowing from them.
Exploring new ways to interpret a museumʼs collection can be challenging, but the rewards and
outcomes are worth it. Encouraging staﬀ to be creative and to take some risks can have surprising
and incredibly rewarding results.

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47 Conference of CIMUSET, pp. 32–40, 2020

Postmodern Museology—Study Museum Approaches to
Improve Informal Education from the Past to Modern Times
Mehran Norouzi and Parvaneh Asghari
Iranian National Museum of Science and Technology, Tehran, Iran

Abstract Museums as educational centers play a key role in the progress of informal education in societies. This informal education forms more than 90% of all the knowledge a person
obtains throughout his or her life. To have a better understanding of museumsʼ function we need
to know museums and their stand through history.
– What is the role of museums in the informal education of societies?
– How are museums eﬀective in promoting informal education?
– How do museums interact with their visitors in the process?
Through this paper, the place of the museum during the history- especially from the Renaissance era to modern times- and the role of these multidimensional institutes in the progress of
informal education are studied
Key words: Museum, Informal Education, Postmodernism

The paper theme intends to study informal education in museums. The quantitative and qualitative role of museums in this regard has a historical background, hence the paperʼs main purpose is
to describe how museums reach this goal and achieve this place. Undoubtedly museumsʼ activities
and programs for informal education have changed over time. These changes even capture the
museums goals. As far as today, education is museums main purpose. Understanding how museums
achieve educational goals is the main motive for this paper.
Alexandria, the beginning of the quest for modern education?
The Musaeum or Mouseion at Alexandria, which included the famous Library of Alexandria,
was an institution said to have been founded by Ptolemy I Soter. This original Musaeum (“Institution of the Muses”) was the home for music or poetry, a philosophical school, and a library such as
Platoʼs Academy, also a storehouse of texts. It did not contain a collection of works of art, rather it
was an institution that brought together some of the best scholars of the Hellenistic world, analogous to a modern university. This original Musaeum was the source for the modern usage of the
word museum. However, this museum cannot be regarded in the same sense of modern museums
and cultural heritage, but the main question is that does the quest for a new type of education lead
to display objects that were not necessarily historical? It seems that this attitude distinct it with its
other contemporary examples.

Postmodern Museology

33

Renaissance, New Attitude, New type of Education
Since the late fourteenth century, by the Renaissance, enlightenment period, a new way of looking
at society, we see fundamental changes in human attitudes. What shapes a mutual chapter between
this revolutionary phenomenon, museum and museology are the fundamental inﬂuences led to the
emergence of the deﬁnition of museum and museum in the modern sense through the renaissance.
The intellectual changes and the materialistic and spiritual attitudes transformation toward art
and culture, the prevalence of the spiritual and cultural dimensions of artistic works in comparing to
materialistic dimension all le to a fundamental impact on collecting and displaying artistic works by
diﬀerent social classes.
Other chain developments like civil and spiritual reforms and the empirical science development,
national governmentsʼ formation, new approach to the concept of nationality or nationalism,
humanistic movements and Romanticism tendencies, and the intellectual thoughts and achievements in enlightenment centuries led to collect cultural objects, natural samples and the accumulation of private collections and royal art galleries and artistic aristocratic centers and the remnants of
the Ancient, especially ancient Roman-Hellenistic objects and remnants paved the way for the
emergence of modern museums that we see today. The term “gallery” meaning showroom, formed
at that time. Using special architectural space and the emergence of galleries to display objects led
to preserve and protect these objects as a profession (Curating). The two other important events
resulted from this archeological approach are Museumiﬁcation and Muzeolization.
These activities originated from capitalist families and the owners of the Renaissance period like
Medichi family who invited people to visit their collections. On the other hand, allocation of a particular architectural space “gallery “to display artistic works is also an
important step toward step by the community toward the museum.
After all, in spite of opening art galleries in the Renaissance,
there is no accurate reason to show that these activities were done
to promote informal education in societies.
In the ﬁfteenth century, Florence, the biggest center for supporting art and science, dedicated the
term “museum” to the rich collection of the Medici family. this gallery had various collections up to
200 years later that public museums became popular.
17th century:

Moses sculpture by Michelangelo

In the 17th century, some
important events changed the attitudes toward museum objects and

34

Mehran Norouzi and Parvaneh Asghari

their status. The most important event is opening Ashmelon Museum by Oxford University in 1683.
Elias Ashmole acquired his collection from two gardeners: John Tradescant, father, and son. The
Tradescants were no ordinary gardeners; they were employed by the wealthy Earl of Salisbury. The
Tradescants voyaged overseas, traveling the known world and shipping back new and exotic plant
specimens for the Earlʼs gardens. In the course of their travels, they also acquired a remarkable collection of curiosities that included botanical, geological and zoological items as well as man-made
objects. Ashmole gifted this collection to the University.
This museum is unique for 2 reasons. First, it had an entrance to receive money for visiting its
collection and second the Tradescant collection gives an opportunity to scientists to produce natural
science, therefore Ashmelon is the ﬁrst natural science museum in the world. We see a new
approach; people pay to visit precious collections and it is a new chapter in museum evolution.
Against the Renaissance period that objects were demonstrated to show the political and economic power, at this time education is an important element and the primitive way of it is to sell
information through a ticket. As museums had income, the number of museums increased. by this
increase the number of museums, a competition occurred among them which led to producing
knowledge and informal education among the communities that have museums.
18th century:
By the 18th century, however, ʻcabinets of curiositiesʼ gave way to diﬀerent types of collections
prized for their comprehensive ranges of plants, animals and various other types of artifacts. Europeans had come to recognize that nature itself oﬀered enough diversity to delight the observer without recourse to the marvelous. In 1753 century the British Museum was founded and the main core
of this museum was a collection by Hans Sloane, the successful English physician, and naturalist
who left in his will some 71,000 plants, animals, antiquities, coins and many other objects of the
time.3 years later in 1756, The Vatican Museum
was established.
People who were interested to visit had to
write their requests two and after two weeks they
could visit the museum and this procedure continued till 1800. Private collections and museums were inspired by two inﬂuential groups.
Artists and natural science researchers one of the
most important is the French Natural History
Museum opening. This expansion and the
improvements in attitudes toward museums attitude are the beginning of the competition to
achieve success and social popularity.
Painting: France situation in European revolution
It should be noted that although there were
(www.rieke.tk)

Postmodern Museology

35

restrictions to visit museums at that time, the most signiﬁcant
movement to form museums was shaped by England, and the
result of it was a revolution in the history of museums in
which transformed into public and it is referred as European
Revolution in museums. This process had a profound eﬀect
on the museolization of European societies. Even as we study
the evolution of museum architecture, we also discover the
remarkable transformation of private collections into public
museums. On the other hand, the museums with educational
role had more chance in this new market. In America, the ﬁrst
oﬃcial museum is Charleston Museum, which was opened in
1773 in Southern Carolina.
19th Century

Charleston museum
(www.charlestonsouthernhomes.com)

The ﬁrst half of the nineteenth century was inﬂuenced by the France great industrial revolution.
A revolution that needs researches to know its roots. It started with a few simple inventions but
ended up with great social movements. Over time this revolution became a social revolution and it
created social, legal and mental equality that formed the basis of our modern life. We still live amid
this industrial revolution, and we cannot judge the eﬀects of it well, but the future will prove its
importance sublimity of humans. It is somehow comparable to the Renaissance. The Renaissance
promised personality, dignity, and respect while the Industrial Revolution established a kind of
monotheism in nature.
By industrial revolution emergence, wealth came back to Europe, Copernicus was rejected, business routes created new cities, universities emerged in the cities. Science improved by universities
and it brought industry. The impact of the revolution is tangible on museums and it was so powerful
that it has aﬀected all aspects of human thought.
The emergence of specialized academic disciplines is one of the most signiﬁcant eﬀects of the
Industrial Revolution on the world of museums. The specialized people in these majors moved
toward museums. This led to a mutual relationship between museums and academic disciplines,
leading to the promotion of museums in the academic world.
Among various museums formed at that time, the science and technology museums had a special
place. London Science Museum (1851) is a prominent example. The main reason for the emergence
of this particular type of museum was to train new technologies to a 19th-century man. Maybe a
folding cabinet bed, a stereoscope machine, a mechanical elevator made up few pieces were called
machine. These items along with other simple and complicated devices were displayed in science
and technology museums to reﬂect the modern and artiﬁcial history of humans and stimulate visitorʼs minds to design something that can be found in the museum. At this point, museums knew

36

Mehran Norouzi and Parvaneh Asghari

their role in informal learning and moved in this
direction.
The theory of evolution by natural selection, ﬁrst
formulated in Darwinʼs book “On the Origin of Species” in 1859, aroused peopleʼs interest to visit natural history museums and it was an educational step
by the museums.
But another aspect of Darwinism was the impact
of museums on community education and the educaLondon science museum
tional role of the museums in general. If by the late
(www.sciencemuseum.uk.org)
19th century, families and educational systems did
not force children to go to school more than half of them refused to go to school. In spite of this
fact, these children and adults had a keen interest to visit natural history museums and even other
types of museums. This social attraction and motivation for museums was another reason to rise
museums as a powerful social media. Museumsʼ pervasive role in promoting informal education.
Twentieth Century, rise and decline of education in museums
Arising out of the rebellious mood at the beginning of the twentieth century, modernism was a
radical approach that yearned to revitalize the way modern civilization viewed life, art, politics, and
science. By deﬁnition of 20th-century museums, we ﬁnd that museums are the product of modernism.
The museumʼs role to arouse audience curiosity, convey ancestorsʼ experiences through visits,
provoke a sense of inspiration for visitors and audiences, is an important form of education in
museums. Considering this unique type of education in museums led to the formation of classrooms in the museum environment. The École du Louvre (1882), the Pennsylvania Academy of
Sciences in Philadelphia (1900) and the University of Chicago (1919) are examples of this movement.
But World War II in twentieth century became the decline of the museums. The overwhelming
trend of museums in physical dimensions (increasing number of museums), research (publication
specialized museum researches) and international relations due to the war stopped and it was the
darkest image in the history of the museums.
In the 1960s the path of museums in diﬀerent parts of Europe was separated. In the Mediterranean region of Europe by the expansion of tourism, the museum was partially restored, and interestingly, it served as a place to attract groups of people. But in northern Europe, they shifted toward
education in museums that led to establishing museums. In the United States, too, the process of
developing a museum network accelerated more than ever, and according to the statistics.
In 1964 in every 3 days, one museum was opened. The same trend has led to an increase in the
value of artistic works in the US art market. Documents show that many objects came to New York

Postmodern Museology

37

through London, Paris, and Zurich. The emergence of human-centered museums in the face of
object-centered museums, in the years after World War II, their ascendance due to postmodernism
all occurred in the second half of the last century. But the peak of this generation of museums can
be traced in the last third of the 20th century. At this time human-centered is a type of thinking that
can dominate all kind of museums. The set of policies that aﬀects the attitudes of the museum managers, the museum ranking in compare with other, and these principles can be applied to any natural and scientiﬁc historical, anthropological and eco-museums.
Human-centered museums do not deny object-centered museums. They emphasize on visitors.
Since human is the target of modernism and the museum of these decades is a showcase of the prevailing thought in human societies, the inﬂuence of museums on the ideas of modernism has led to
the formation of human-centered museum. Museums.
Getting more comfortable with modern machinery has captured the human of the modernism era,
and the tendency of visitors shifted to museums with more attention to welfare and satisfaction. At
this time the leading role to deﬁne museums was by ICOM and academic museological centers.
The museums of modernism were moving simultaneously in two opposite directions. Large cultural collections on one side and small museums for a particular subject increasingly became popular on the other side. We have witnessed the evolution of two opposing trends: multi-purpose and
specialized museums.
At that time, the museum was not only a place to preserve and display valuable objects but also
the focus and attention of professionals and curators on using technologies, creating comfort for
visitors - as a major goal of museums, deﬁning amusement spaces in museums and even shops and
restaurants. This was all due to increasing number of museum visitors, the preservation and promotion of museums in societies, and the multifunctionality of these institutions, which was directly
inﬂuenced by modernism. This modern atmosphere had directly inﬂuenced the quality and quality
of museum education.
Twenty-ﬁrst Century and Museum-Based education:
During this period museums were not just a place for preservation or display objects and in many
cases, they became regional, national, and sometimes religious and political. Apart from the cultural and social role of museums, their economic role in tourist attraction is worth mentioning. such
as increasing museum construction and its impact on the growth of cultural tourist populations in
countries such as Germany, Spain, and the United States. The political role of museums in promoting certain ideas should also be mentioned, such as museums built by Jewish investors in major cities in the world, such as Berlin and San Francisco, by famous architectsʼ reputation. As architecture
was an important element in museum success, the type of museum had a signiﬁcant impact on
museum architecture. although in a general sense, museums are divided into two categories of artistic and non-artistic to have their architectural principles.

38

Mehran Norouzi and Parvaneh Asghari

Postmodernism
Postmodernism is largely a reaction against the intellectual assumptions and values of the modern period in the history of Western philosophy (roughly, the 17th through the 19th century).
Indeed, many of the doctrines characteristically associated with postmodernism can fairly be
described as the straightforward denial of general philosophical viewpoints that were taken for
granted during the 18th-century Enlightenment, though they were not unique to that period. Post
modernists believe that:
“Our world is rebuilt. Mass production, mass consumption, and the big city are all on the
decline, and ﬂexibility, diversity, diﬀerentiation, mobility, communication, decentralization
and internationalization are on the rise. In this process, our own identities are on the rise.
Our understanding of ourselves and our minds is also changing.”
Museum, Museology, Postmodernism:
The rise of modern museums in a sense is due to postmodern museums. These museums are due
to their form and content do not deny modern museums and they supplement museum parts of their
museums. The main important issue in this era is the way to convey information to visitors.
New educational methods and approaches for museums lie in this attitude. postmodern museums
are considered educational institutions rather than political, economic and national institutes; thus,
contemporary museums are education-centered.
In the postmodern world, museums act as powerful and inﬂuential media to give awareness to
the public about their surroundings. The most important manifestation of postmodernism in the
world of museums and museology is applying concepts in museumsʼ social structure. Therefore, the
ultimate goal of new museology is to explain museumsʼ social role. As a reason today we have
more museums and social media that socially and culturally are developed. Due to postmodernism
museums can show the communities cultural growth.
In New museums, the curatorship is modern and incomparable to the past. The twenty-ﬁrst century- curator acts as a teacher. He does not only convey knowledge to the students but also teaches
the scientiﬁc method of thinking to visitors. Before responding to him, he asks him questions to
provoke thinking. This is vital for visitors. Visitorsʼ evaluation is in three phases: before display,
during the visit, and after the display to ensure how successful this visit is. Postmodernism also had
a special impact on museum objects. Today visitors do not go to museums just to see magniﬁcent
dishes and ornaments of the nobility. The main reason is to know the creatorsʼ ideas. While it is
important to understand the process of building a two-thousand-year-old metal idol, recognizing the
thought behind it is the reason of attraction toward museums in the postmodern era. The direct and
free expression education, without censorship, is the main achievement for museums in informal
education in history. Museums independence from economic, political and national contexts on one
hand, and their focus on the scientiﬁc, educational and ethical contexts on the other, is another rea-

Postmodern Museology

39

son for promoting informal education.
Conclusion
• In the Alexandria Museum, we see a new event. A great change in educational methods.
• Chain developments in various social, cultural, economic and political dimensions led the aristocratic tendency to collect and display collections. In this way informal education occurred in a
particular community, the visitors of galleries.
• In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, museums expanded in numbers but education in
museums was not profound and in almost every country in this period there was a museum.
America was one of these countries.
• The Great Industrial Revolution in the 19th century and its various scientiﬁc, cultural, economic
and social dimensions were major steps to change the quality of informal education in museums.
Science museums were opened rapidly, and education was the center of their attention. The Role
of Museums in informal education by pioneering natural history museums to deﬁne and disseminate Darwinʼs theory reached a new level which is a modern approach in this regard.
• In the twentieth century, by World War I and II, the quality of informal education declined in
museums. 3 decades after World War II, human-centered museums were formed and they
focused on visitors. Fun and amusement besides education was the main activity of them. It also
inﬂuenced on museum architecture.
• The role museums in informal education reached the highest point in the late 20 and early 21
centuries. Education in this phase goes beyond scientiﬁc ﬁelds and moves toward ethical issues
and outlines contemporary social problems and in this way the educational role of the museum is
highlighted more than any other social media. Certainly, this position is due to postmodern theory and thought-centered museums. Therefore, museums tried to design galleries based on
thought-centered approaches. They ask questions from visitorsʼ questions rather than answer their
questions and this is the main role that museums in informal education.
References:
Ambrose, Timothy and Crispin Paine, 1994. Museum Basics. London: Routledge.
Carbonell, Bettina Messias, 2005. Museum Studies. Oxford: Blackwell.
Edson, Gary and David Dean, 1994. The Handbook For Museums. London: Routledge.
Thompson, John M.A., 1992. Manual of curatorship. Oxford: Butterworth Heineman.
Knell, Simon J., 2007. Museum Revolution. London: Routledge.
Hooper-Greenhill, Eilean, 1992. Museums and The Shaping of Knowledge. London: Routledge.
Hooper-Greenhill, Eilean, 1994. Museums and their visitors. London: Routledge.
Hooper-Greenhill, Eilean, 1999. The Educational Role of Museum. London: Routledge.
Hooper-Greenhill, Eilean, 2007. Museums and Education: purpose, pedagogy, performance. London: Routledge.
Hourtson, laura, 2004. Museum Builders II. UK: Willey-Academy.
Marstine, Danet, 2006. New Museum Theory and Practice. Oxford: Blackwell.

40

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Pollock, Griselda and Joyce Zemans, 2007. Museums After Modernism: Strategies of Engagement. UK: WileyBlackwell.
Sandel, Riechard, 2005. Museums, Society, Ineguality. London: Routledge.

Websites:
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www.ambassadors.net/archives/issue27/opinionsfront.htm (accessed July 13, 2011)
www.amu.ac.in/ShowPapers.jsp?did=41 (accessed August 9, 2011)
www.ashmolean.org/about.html (accessed May 11,2011)
www.britishmuseum.org/images.html (accessed May 15, 2011)
www.charlesdarwin.fr/darwin.html (accessed June 8, 2011)
www.charlestonsouthernhomes.com/Downtown_Charleston_SC_Real_Estate.html (accessed May 18, 2011)
www.contemporaryartscenter.org/architecture (accessed July 7, 2011)
www.dezeen.com/tag/daniel-libeskind.html (accessed June 22, 2011)
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www.guggenheim.org/new-york/about/guggenheim-images (accessed June 30, 2011)
www.ICOM.museum/history.htm (accessed April 12, 2011)
www.ICOM.museum/keyconseptsofmuseology.htm (accessed January 28, 2011)
www.jmberlin.de/betriﬀtisrael/en/kontakt.html (accessed June 22, 2011)
www.jmberlin.de/main/EN/04-About-The-Museum/00-about-the-museum.php (accessed July 2, 2011)
www.kimbellart.org/MuseumInfo/Museum-Information.aspx (accessed June 27, 2011)
www.media.rhizome.org/sculptures/gpgnoA14.html (accessed May 7, 2011)
www.mercedes-benz-classic.com/content/classic/mpc/mpc_classic_website/en/.html (accessed June 8, 2011)
www.namuseum.gr/collections/prehistorical/neolithic/neolithic08-en.html (accessed May 7, 2011)
www.old-print.com/mas_assets/full/D3161955111.jpg (accessed July 25, 2011)
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www2.le.ac.uk/departments/museumstudies (accessed April 20, 2011)

th

47 Conference of CIMUSET, pp. 41–47, 2020

Low Budget, High Impact Festivals for a Sustainable Future
Tal Bar-Lev
The Bloomﬁeld Science Museum Jerusalem (BSMJ)

Abstract The Bloomﬁeld Science Museum Jerusalem was established 27 years ago under the
auspices of the Hebrew University and the Jerusalem Foundation. Each year, we serve more
than 300,000 visitors and participants from all over Israel and from all sectors of Israeli society.
Our activities are operated in our oﬃcial languages-Hebrew, Arabic and in English.
The museum aims to foster curiosity and interest in the ﬁelds of science and technology, presenting them as part of our daily culture, encouraging the making of the decision to study these
ﬁelds, and promoting excellence in them.
The museumʼs activities focus mainly on the following:
• Developing and producing exhibitions, festivals and events with interactive exhibits that
encourage seeing, touching, and learning, as well as the understanding of scientiﬁc phenomena and the development of engineering solutions.
• Developing and operating together with the Israel Ministry of Education educational programs in science and technology for students and teachers, that take place both in the
museum and in the schools.
• Promoting a culture of ʻthinking with your handsʼ, while encouraging creativity and innovation that integrates the ﬁelds of science, technology, and crafts. Activities in the international Maker spirit are held both within and outside the museum, while emphasizing the integration of diverse populations of all ages. Emphasis is placed on developing educational
programs that encourage problem solving.

Museum ʻproductsʼ
In this lecture I will introduce three categories of ʻproductsʼ of our museum, that are aimed
mainly at the general public. I will then drill down and talk about one of those three categories in
more detail–ʻFestivalsʼ.
Every year the museum curates and produces approximately 3 EXHIBITIONS. Exhibitions are
the ʻbread & butterʼ of museum life but they require investment of a lot of resources and they
demand high maintenance, especially in a highly interactive museum such as BSMJ since we are
not a ʻcollectionʼ museum.
Why do we develop exhibitions if they are costly? Firstly, because we are an oﬃcially recognized museum and as such, we are expected to present exhibitions, which for us are a major contribution to science communication and science culture. The exhibition for us is like ʻhardwareʼ, on
top of which we can add the ʻsoftwareʼ. What do I mean by that? For each exhibition — whether it
is a self-curated exhibition or a rented one — our content development team develops additional
activities to accompany it. For example: science encounter for the educational system; scientiﬁc

42

Tal Bar-Lev

demonstration; building workshop etc. All are geared to enhance the visitor experience and understanding.
As you can see in the pie chart, our exhibitions account for about 65% of our audience attendance.
So, what products account for the remaining 35% of our audience attendance?
The answer is museum EVENTS and FESTIVALS.
When I refer to Events, I mean a very short duration happening that might last from a few hours
to a maximum of two to three days. These museum Events provide an agile response both in terms
of the theme as well as the production with limited resources. For example: Space Day, National
Science Day, evening lectures for adults etc.
However, today Iʼd like to talk about the museum Festival that ﬁlls the gap between agile very
short-term museum Events and long term museum Exhibitions. These museum Festivals now
account for approximately 25% of our audience attendance.
The Nature of a Festival
Festivals always have a single well deﬁned theme. This helps to focus the development process
as well as the communicating of it to the target audiences through publicity and public relations.
It can relate to, BUT NOT NECESSARILY BE DEPENDENT ON, an exhibition. There are
some examples in the past where we had a museum Exhibition that correlated to a museum Festival. In this case it supported the Festival and enriched its content, but it wasnʼt the focus of the Festival.
A museum Festival typically will have a ʻstand-aloneʼ theme, that addresses a speciﬁc topic
which is on the agenda of your museum and is part of public debate. The museum Festival does not
involve a large amount of investment, resources and massive production. It should involve a high
level of interactivity and experimentation, supporting one of the focus areas of the ʻthinking with
your handsʼ culture. Like in any festival, there is A LOT to do and try out.
The museum Festival is of limited duration — 3 to 4 months — which has the marketing beneﬁt
of encouraging the target audience to act quickly, and visit the museum, so as not to miss the relatively narrow window of opportunity.
For BSMJ, the museum Festival is also one of the ways to smooth out the overall museum attendance highs and lows by focusing on bringing visitors in between the big waves during school
vacations. We start our museum Festivals around the beginning of school break and ʻpullʼ its ʻtailʼ
once the vacation is over.
Top Level BSMJ Festival Themes: MATERIALS
For the last few years BSMJ has focused its Festivals on the general theme of materials, looking
in-depth at one kind of material each year.

Low Budget, High Impact Festivals for a Sustainable Future

43

This spring (2019) we focused on PLASTIC, as a major global ecological problem. We didnʼt
address the subject only from the ecological angle, but also from the scientiﬁc point of view. As a
relatively new material in human life, plastic is already very central to our economies and we probably couldnʼt imagine life without it. However for the sake of future generations, we have to take
responsibility today and think carefully about our use and consumption of plastics. In our museum
Festival, we took the approach of educating on how to cut our consumption of plastics and reuse
rather than one-time usage, at the same time developing eco-friendly plastic or substitutes.
In this presentation, I will ʻdrill downʼ into a case study of our 2018 festival which dealt with a
simple, low proﬁle material, handy to all and consumed everywhere – CARDBOARD.
Case study: Only Cardboard
• Budget: $40,000＋in-kind (〜$30,000)
• Duration: Spring, 3 months
• Activities: All/most were developed in-house
• Building workshop: Cardboard animals – Make & Take (age 4＋)
• Scientiﬁc demonstration: The Story of Cardboard (for the entire family)
• Theatre show: Cardboardella (age 3＋)
• Accumulative workshop: Cardboard City (for the entire family)
• 24 hour Hackathon-Makerthon: Temporary shelters (for Design students)
• Cardboard Maze: Mazes & Boxes (age 3＋)
• Design & Build Make workshop: Illuminating Cylinders (Age 12＋)
• Festivalʼs interior design and huge artworks
The ʻOnly Cardboardʼ museum Festival lasted three months starting with the spring break
through to a couple of weeks before the summer break.
BSMJ made the ʻOnly Cardboardʼ Festival a part of its yearly workplan, and allocated very carefully chosen and limited BSMJ museum resources for its development and production. However,
we managed to almost double allocated resources with proactive requests to relevant major stakeholders in the industry. Recognizing the potential in Israeli industry we targeted major companies,
including the largest Israeli consortium of paper and cardboard manufacturers. This enabled us to
signiﬁcantly reduce costs for materials we used for both activities and interior design. These industry partners were so committed to our scientiﬁc story, that they shared with us their expertise, as
well as their pride in locally developed innovative solutions and their corporate social responsibility.
This museum Festival was very rich in content, addressing a wide range of audiences both in
terms of age and sectors.
• Building workshop: Cardboard animals — Make & Take: Visitors constructed surprising and
amusing imaginary animals from cardboard. They put together diﬀerent cardboard shapes to create elephants, mice, and everything in between.

Tal Bar-Lev

44

Photo 1

Building workshop Cardboard Animals. Photography: Adi Kofman

• Scientiﬁc demonstration — The story of cardboard: How long does it take to ʻgrowʼ a cardboard
box? What is a template? How many tons of weight can a cardboard box handle? During the
demonstration visitors learned surprising things about cardboard, including what are the traits
that make corrugated cardboard the worldʼs most popular packing material.
• Scientiﬁc Theatre — Cardboardelle: Original museum production in collaboration with a young
artist and graduate of The School of Visual Theater in Jerusalem, Ms. Anat Bosak. The play tells
the story of Cardboardella, a girl who lives in a cardboard world. One day she receives a message that a strange phenomenon called Rain is expected to reach her world. Cardboardella immediately packs a bag and goes on a journey to save the cardboard kingdom. Cardboardella meets
strange and interesting people along the way and has strange and amusing adventures.

Photo 2

Cardboardella Theatre show. Photography: Idan Vaaknin

Low Budget, High Impact Festivals for a Sustainable Future

Photo 3

45

Cardborad City Accumulative workshop. Photography: Adi Kofman

• Outdoors, we oﬀered the visitors the opportunity to get lost in a self-constructed cardboard maze
in the shape of a cactus ﬁeld, or to jointly build their imaginary cardboard city with a parking lot,
houses, city center, zoo and more.
• Accumulative workshop — Cardboard City: Cardboard is much more than a box; it is the material dreams are made of! Using plastic screws and tools designed especially for cardboard, visitors built a variety of structures that they wished to ﬁnd in the city of the future. They built buildings in the Cardboard Court neighborhood, animals for the Live Cardboard zoo, and vehicles for
the Cardboard Parking Lot.
• 24-hour Hackathon-Makerthon — Temporary Shelters: For many years we have collaborated
with the Bezalel Academy for art and design. In the ʻOnly Cardboardʼ Festival we hosted a

Photo 4

Students Hackathon. Photography: Adi Kofman

46

Tal Bar-Lev

Photo 5

Interior decoration of museum. Photography: Adi Kofman

24-hour Hackathon in which more than 50 students from all the academy faculties had the challenge to design and build temporary houses for disaster areas, all made out of cardboard.
• Experimental construction building arena — Mazes & Boxes: Visitors took part in building a
puzzle maze by connecting cactus pads to prickly pears. Visitors built hedges serving as the borders of the maze, in which one can walk and get lost without being pricked by even one thorn
• A design and construction workshop — Illuminating Cylinders: Youth were invited to design,
plan, and use a laser cutting machine to create individually designed light ﬁxtures. The workshop
combined digital planning and design skills alongside work in the maker space and use of the
laser cutting machine. Participants took home their creations.
• Interior design: The indoor and outdoor areas in which the festival took place were decorated
with huge cardboard creatures and constructions all made by Ms. Elian (Lula) Kaczka, cardboard
art designer and artist, who works mainly with cardboard.
Festival Impact
• Directly in BSMJ: 30,000 visitors
• Outreach: ＞ 200 kindergarten teachers and indirectly to thousands of children
＞ Science Celebrations in community centers – thousands of beneﬁciaries
* Public relations raised the awareness of the public regarding recycling, ecology and sustainability
The impact of this festival was obvious in the number of visitors and the interest it raised. We
were invited by the Ministry of Education to present a 3-hour workshop for kindergarten teachers.
In this very successful workshop teachers became familiar with the material and the possibilities it
has as working material for young kids in kindergarten. Handy, available, cheap and ecological
material which develops imagination, motoric skills and STEAM orientation from a very young
age.

Low Budget, High Impact Festivals for a Sustainable Future

47

The public relations the museum Festival generated has beneﬁtted BSMJ with high demand from
all around the city to hold Science Celebrations in community centers and schools in the weeks following the festivalʼs peak. This outreach has brought a wider exposure for the museum to thousands
of new participants and a wider exposure and awareness among the general public to the material
itself as well as to the importance of recycling it to beneﬁt the environment.
Resourcing
•
•
•
•

Partnerships with leading companies (in-kind and professional knowledge)
In-house development
Collaboration with academia
Museum allocated budget
As brieﬂy mentioned previously, museum resources were deliberately limited from the beginning, but eﬀective planning doubled the available and the resulting impact of the Festival.
√ We managed to raise in-kind funds from industry partners and stakeholders, which saved the
museum signiﬁcant costs.
√ We enhanced our collaboration with local academia, and ʻstretchedʼ the students experience to
new horizons.
√ We exceeded our target numbers for visitors.
√ We developed most of the activities, which are now available to be shared with others.
Advantages
•
•
•
•
•

Good platform for increasing STE(A)M interest among children and youth.
Relations with related stakeholders in the economy/business sector
Cost- and resource-eﬀective
Easy to produce and modular in operation
All materials and forms of activities are available to share with other museums
Contact me!
This event template can be adapted to your needs and resources.
Tal Bar-Lev, Deputy Director-General, Business Development
The Bloomﬁeld Science Museum Jerusalem (Israel)
tal@mada.org.il
mada@mada.org.il

th

47 Conference of CIMUSET, pp. 48–54, 2020

An Analysis of a Dialogue between a Parent and
a Child in the Hands-on Exhibitions at Science Center
Saya Mori (Anzai)1 and Motoko Okumoto2
1

Sapporo Science Center, Sapporo, Japan
2
Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan

Abstract Science museums and centers are used by visitors of various ages. Especially, families with preschool children are one of the major visitors. Sapporo Science Center has many
hands-on exhibits to make visitors feel science more familiar. The hands-on exhibitions make it
possible for visitors to understand the exhibition sensuously, while enabling them to interpret
and explore the exhibition on their own initiative. However, when hands-on exhibition operations are complicated, or tangible actions are not link to scientiﬁc information directly, visitors
can not fully utilize hands-on exhibits. When family visitors experience hands-on exhibits, the
parentsʼ supports for children are indispensable. In this research, we recorded and analyzed
qualitatively a dialogue among mother and child in the hands-on exhibition to clarify their
unenviable points to use it. As a result, the familyʼs learning in museum had been developed
when the mother became able to understand the mechanism of hands-on exhibition.
Key words: Science center, Conversation analysis, Hands-on, Minds-on

1.

Introduction

In science centers that are used by a wide range of age groups, family visitors are one of the main
visitor groups, and in particular, there are many families whose children range from preschool children to younger children. In the type of museums frequently visited by the age of youngest child,
69.1% of the children who are not yet in school use the science museum (Matoba, 2006).
1.1 Background of Hands-on exhibit
Hands-oﬀ exhibits are traditional forms of museum displays and are intended to look without
touching the exhibits. On the other hand, with hands-on exhibits, you can touch the exhibit. Handson exhibits are used in many museums, especially in science museums and children's museums.
ʻHands-onʼ implies that visitors physically interact with an exhibit, whether this is simply pushing
buttons, using a computer keyboard, or engaging in a more complex activity with a multiplicity of
outcomes. However, a hands-on exhibit that simply involves pushing a button is not truly interactive, rather it is reactive, in that the exhibit simply follows a predetermined outcome. When the
term “hands-on” is normally used there is an assumption that hands-on activities will also involve
1

Present address : Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan

An Analysis of a Dialogue between a Parent and a Child in the Hands-on Exhibitions at Science Center

Hands-oﬀ Exhibit

49

Hands-on Exhibit

interaction and provide added educational value, that hands-on will lead to “minds-on”, although
the term itself does not suggest this (Caulton, 2000).
I work at science center, and it is not always the case that the hands-on exhibits reached mind-on.
This is because it is diﬃcult for preschoolers to learn from the exhibits created based on the educational
level of primary schooler, and that the intention of the exhibits is not transmitted to the parents who
experience with them, and it is diﬃcult to understand how to experience the exhibit in the ﬁrst place.
In this research, we studied how to support preschoolers and parents to experience hands-on
exhibits and develop their experiences to minds-on.
2.

Methods

I choose “Snow Design Lab” which is one of hands-on exhibits at the Sapporo Science Center.
Experiment cooperator is a preschool child and his mother. First, I observed their usual experience during this exhibit without any support and I recorded their dialogue. I analyzed the dialogue
to identify where visitors were struggling to learn from the hands-on
exhibit. Then I considered what kind
of support I can give to them and
how they can actively think about it.
At their second visit, they experienced the same exhibit, this time
with a support sheet. I recorded their
dialogue too, and analyzed the diﬀerence between the ﬁrst and second
time.
At the Snow Design Lab, the visitor can set temperature and humidity

50

Saya Mori (Anzai) and Motoko Okumoto

Snow Design Lab

conditions freely on the screen to create a snow crystal. Visitors can create diﬀerent shapes of snow
crystals by changing the temperature and humidity conditions. Visitors can name their snow crystals
they created. Afterwards their named snow crystals will be appeared on the wall of the next exhibit.
3.

Results and discussions

First, I divided the conversation
into sentences. Next, I categorized
them according to their meaning.
And I divided these categories into
hands-on or minds-on.

It is a part of the conversation
of the ﬁrst inspection. A parent
and a child had to try three times
to make the shape they wanted to.
They failed to make crystal and
ﬁnally succeeded on the third try.
His mother didnʼt know the relation among temperature, humidity
and shapes of the crystal. Therefore, they failed twice.

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