In 1968, Dr. Frank Oppenheimer proposed the creation of a science museum and exploration center, where people could learn about science and technology by "controlling and watching the behavior of laboratory apparatus and machinery." In 1969, he realized this dream by founding the Exploratorium, a unique participatory museum.
Over the past 22 years, the Exploratorium has become internationally known for its innovations in exhibit design and science education. Today, the Exploratorium has over 650 interactive exhibits where people can experiment, raise their own questions, and discover the answers. Around the world, museums have emulated the Exploratorium's interactive style of exhibit building.
In 1991, when I accepted the position of Executive Director at the Exploratorium, I felt that this museum was already the most original science museum in the world. Over the coming years, I hope to help it make a major impact on the general problem of science education as well. The challenge we face is to encourage the public to understand and appreciate their world, to attract talented young people to science. and to provide new ideas for the teaching of science.
Over the past few months, I have been working with Associate Executive Director Dr. Rob Semper and other members of the Exploratorium staff to meet this challenge. We have considered both the concepts underlying the Exploratorium and its exhibits and the organization of the museum.
The questions that the study of cognition poses are basic human questions of how the mind works and interacts with the world. It is a fantastically rich and multi-disciplinary field that incorporates everything from physics to linguistics to neuroscience to statistics to art to cultural anthropology. It is my hope to make the Exploratorium a bridge that connects the general public with the latest in cognitive research in a lively and engaging way.
This focus on cognition will include the museum's art exhibits and programs, as well as its scientffic content. There are cognitive aspects of art, just as there are aesthetic aspects of science -- and the focus on cognition reveals the overlap between the two disciplines. At the same time, artists and scientists provide windows of understanding and experience of the world around us. An exhibit like Ned Kahn's Tornado can be looked at from an artistic point of view as well as from a scientific point of view. As a result, the exhibit has both a degree of depth and a sort of openness which attracts a very large audience. For these reasons, the place of art in the Exploratorium will remain central.
The Center for Public Exhibition will focus on the Exploratorium's already rich learning environment. At the Exploratorium's exhibits, people are encouraged to raise their own questions and to search for answers in a social way -- speculating with friends and family about possible answers. Through the resulting discoveries, they construct their own knowledge of the world. Through the Center for Public Exhibition, the Exploratorium will develop exhibits that relate to cognition, challenging visitors to further examine the ways in which they think and leam, remember and forget. In addition, the Center for Public Exhibition will continue to develop exhibits that fit into the museum's existing themes, with a special emphasis on additions to our exhibits on modem aspects of life sciences.
The Center for Teaching and Learning will expand existing programs for the in-service and pre-service training of teachers and other educators, stressing the interplay between informal and formal approaches to science. The Exploratorium makes use of an informal approach to science. In school, students usually leam a more formal approach to science, which focuses on learning facts and working quantitatively. The best scientists combine these two approaches, gaining an overview on a problem from informal investigation and exploring further with rigorous formal examination. Through the Center for Teaching and Learning, the Exploratorium will work to help bring about a blending of the informal and formal approaches.
More about the Center for Teaching and Learning
The Exploratorium's third center, the Center for Media and Communication, will focus on the national dissemination of the Exploratorium's approach to learning. Traditionally, educational programs are disseminated by creating products -- books, videos, pieces of software -- and distributing them to teachers. The Exploratorium is interested in distributing a way of thinking, a process rather than a product. The challenge will be to use whatever communication tools we can to promote this leaming process.
The Center for Media and Communication will make use of both mass media and one-on-one forms of communication. We plan to create a multimedia laboratory designed to foster the development of new learning tools that combine computer, video, and audio technology. Plans in this area include Exploratorium-based public television programming, an international workshop focusing on video, CD-ROM, and other new media for communication, and a "scientist of the month" series, in which eminent scientists meet with middle-school and high-school students. This last program will open a much needed link between scientists and engineers in the laboratory and young people, giving students direct contact with an expert who offers a certain way of thinking about the world.
More about the Center for Media and Communication
In 1968, when Dr. Frank Oppenheimer proposed the Exploratorium, the nation faced a crisis in science education. Today, science education has once again taken a center stage in the nation's consciousness. In 1991, the Exploratorium is poised to continue and expand its role as the innovarive leader.
For the last eight years, Dr. Delacôte has been the Director of the Science and Technology Information Department, one of eight scientific divisions of the Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), France's leading primary scientffic research organization. In this position, he was responsible for the creation, design, and implementation of a private publishing company and subsidiary of the CNRS, which released 200 new titles annually, and of the Agency for Scientific Communication, a center for publications, films, and audiovisual materials, broadcasting and distribution, exhibit design and traveling exhibitions. He also was responsible for the creation of the INIST Group, an organization similar to the American National Library of Medicine. The INIST is a highly computerized scientific information document delivery and databank center. As part of this project, Dr. Delacôte oversaw the design, construction, and completion of a $100 million facility for the INIST Group.
Dr. Delacôte holds a Ph.D. in Physics from the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, under the supervision of Professor Pierre Aigrain. He is a Professor of Physics at the University of Paris, currently on leave.
January, 1992