musEum
Linda Dackman, public information director, Exploratorium
the big idea
The Exploratorium, which reopened in April at a new site, three times its original size Question everything, learn by doing, and show, don’t tell is the philosophy at
Visitors can take centre stage within a kaleidoscope in the Tinkering Studio, which encourages people to think with their hands
What is the Exploratorium? The Exploratorium is an internation- ally celebrated museum based in San Francisco, USA. It’s considered the prototype for participatory museums around the world. Its original home, the Palace of Fine
Arts, closed in January 2013. Work began on its new home on Pier 15 on San Francisco’s Embarcadero in October 2010 and it opened on April 17, 2013.
What was the inspiration? The Exploratorium was originally
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founded in 1969 by physicist and educa- tor Frank Oppenheimer. He was a gifted experimental physicist and Renaissance man, who worked on the Manhattan project [an American research and development project that produced the first atomic bombs during World War II] with his brother J Robert Oppenheimer, known as the father of the atom bomb. Oppenheimer was convinced that
museums of science and technology were vitally needed, both for the general public and as a supplement for sci- ence teaching curricula at all levels. He
Read Attractions Management online
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was invited to do the initial planning for a new branch of the Smithsonian, but turned it down to work on what he called his “San Francisco project”. In 1969, with no publicity or fanfare, the Exploratorium opened its doors with the aim of showing that museums are educational centres. From teacher professional develop-
ment, to exhibit development, to the notion of informal science learning out- side of schools, the Exploratorium first disseminated its ideas through open source sharing. Oppenheimer’s ideas
AM 2 2013 ©Cybertrek 2013
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