Since 2005, the IMLS Office of Museum Services has funded research projects under the auspices of the National Leadership Grant program. These grants support projects that ‘raise the bar’ in museum research and practice. Funded projects have national impact and generate findings that, through broad dissemination, move the field forward. This project was funded in the program’s inaugural round. Why Zoos and Aquariums Matter: Working with Community Perceptions to Achieve Your Goals draws on the illuminating research conducted as part of the IMLS-funded study. Its findings provide useful
This program is a pilot project and collaborative effort to develop partnerships and educational programming using state of the art technology. The project partnership is comprised of a leading ocean science research and education institution, the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography and its new state of the art Inner Space Center (ISC), and two strong national ocean science education networks: the National Centers for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence (COSEE) Network and NOAAs Office of Exploration and Research (NOAA-OER) Education Alliance. In addition, two partner sites will serve as proof of concept sites and education hubs - Mystic Aquarium and Institute for Exploration (CT) and South Carolina Aquarium (SC), both affiliated with COSEE, the Coastal Ecosystem Learning Center Network (CELC), and NOAA-OER. Through this initiative, the ISC will install new Exploration Command Stations (ECSs) and enhance Ocean Today kiosks at the partner sites, strategically selected aquariums. Through this pilot project, the ECSs and kiosks (modeled after the original Ocean Today kiosk in the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History s Sant Ocean Hall) will form an Ocean Interpretive Station at the partner sites. The ISC will provide live links from the Centers facilities to the newly installed ECSs and kiosks using feeds from various remote Ocean Exploration platforms, including the NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer and the exploration vessel, E/V Nautilus. The projects Content Development Team (CDT) will develop associated educational materials for use in public programs at the partner sites.
To promote ocean and climate change literacy that addresses the needs of the Gulf of Mexico region, six aquariums based on the Gulf are partnering to educate the communities on both risks and ways to contribute locally to sustainability. The aquariums are combining community outreach programs, stewardship promotion, social networking and workshops for non-formal educators to reach broad audiences throughout the Gulf in Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas and Mexico. Each partner is developing content that emphasizes local ecosystems and consequences of climate change, tailoring stewardship activities to address them. Over five years, the aquariums will reach out to diverse audiences in their communities, which have populations that total over five million people. With evaluated programs, exhibits, and websites in place, the partners will be able to continue building stewardship and educating their communities after the award ends.
As part of its on-going commitment to engage, inform, and inspire visitors around issues of critical importance to ocean conservation, the Monterey Bay Aquarium opened the nation's first live aquatic animal exhibition on climate change and the ocean. This award supports a comprehensive and integrated suite of associated informal educational activities, designed to extend the exhibit experience and allow visitors to explore this critically important topic in more depth during their visit and after leaving the Aquarium. These activities include: community engagement events, virtual reality auditorium programs using Google Earth, musical theater presentations, and exhibit interactives that allow audiences to discuss solutions to ocean issues. Over the course of three years, this initiative will reach more than 4.5 million people and: 1) raise public awareness about the connection between climate change and ocean health; 2) demonstrate that public actions do have an impact on climate change (and therefore ocean health); and 3) encourage meaningful action to address climate change.
This slide describes historical trends in museum funding, showing the changing shares of government, private, earned income, and investments in museum business models.
Poet’s House, a preeminent poetry library in New York City, will collaborate with ten public libraries and zoos across the United States to support library-zoo partnerships in five cities. The project teams will install exhibitions that use poetry as an interpretive tool to deepen visitor thinking about wildlife and conservation in each zoo. This project follows a year-long planning grant funded by IMLS and extends the success of an IMLS-funded partnership in New York City between Poets House and the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Central Park Zoo, which pioneered the installation of poetry in the zoo. The new project will create a set of models and tools for developing strong collaborations and exhibits by carefully documenting the process of building these partnerships and evaluating their impact on visitors, the community, and professional audiences.
In January this year, the US saw the publication of the preview of an impressive review work on the practices and the studies concerning learning science outside schools and universities, i.e. what is referred to as informal education. The document, promoted by the National Science Council of scientific academies (National Academy of Science, National Academy of Engineering and Institute of Medicine), is the result of the work by a committee comprising 14 specialists who collected, discussed and then organized hundreds of documents on pedagogical premises, places, practices and pursuits
In the last decades, production of science and technology as well as science-society relationships started changing rapidly. Research is asked to be more effective, fast, accountable, trans-disciplinary, result-oriented, policy-driven and able to generate benefits for people and firms in the short and middle run. While a strong intensification of science-society relationships is occurring, an increasing number of actors and stakeholders are involved in research production. At the same time, pervasiveness of technology is rendering users an active part in technological development; economic and
There is a fundamental difference between artists, who use science as an object of social examination, and artists, who believe that science represents a component of their expressive style. The idea that different ideological manipulations of the Art&Science concept can cause a distorted view on this fascinating and at the same time controversial relation is becoming clear. In our projects we use different technological and scientific applications; to us technology is an integral part of our artistic expression. The scientific and analytical approach that we use when we investigate and solve
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Hannah Redler’s paper examines the 13 year history of Science Museum, London’s contemporary art programme and explores how changing cultural conditions and the changing function of museums are making the questions raised by bringing art into the Science Museum context increasingly significant. It looks at how Science Museum Arts Projects started as a quirky, experimental sideline aimed at shaking up the Museum and its visitors’ assumptions, but has now become a fundamental means by which the Science Museum chooses to represent the impact of science, medicine, engineering and technology on
The Natural History Museum’s contemporary arts programme is described and discussed, in particular the developments since 2006. The various models of engaging with artists and the rationale behind the resulting exhibitions and displays are explained in more detail. Artists who have created new works enabled through the programme include Mark Dion, choreographer Siobhan Davies, Tania Kovats, Tessa Farmer, Dan Harvey and Heather Ackroyd.
In present times it would not be appropriate to say art made a “debut” in science centres, as it has been a feature since the beginning of their history, and it appeared precisely in the ‘parent’ science centre, the Exploratorium. However, now it is time to check the progress. There is unrest for this issue, as in history-making times, and it is worthwhile to follow the new developments and hear the words of the coordinators of the artistic activities in science centres and, more in general, in science museums, and also of the artists involved in the process. The goal is to promote a debate on