“All museum material should speak for itself upon sight. It should be an open book which tells a better story than any description will do.” – William Wilson
One profound generational achievement across the globe is the existence of museums, and the evidence is clear that there are positive outcomes to visiting and interacting with museum content. In the past there were occupational benefits to absorbing the context of objects. Charles Willson Peale, who curated his own museum in the 19th century, displayed fossils, animal specimens, and portraits with the justification that
“The farmer ought to know that snakes feed on field mice and moles, which would otherwise destroy whole fields of corn….To the merchant, the study of nature is scarcely less interesting, whose traffic lies altogether in material either raw from the stores of nature or wrought by the hand of ingenious art….The mechanic ought to possess an accurate knowledge of many of the qualities of those materials with which his art is connected.” 1.
Today, the benefits are wider in scope, especially after exposure to more than just creatures in jars. Museums now offer perspectives on various topics, historical narratives, and meaningful experiences, engaging all who take part. If, for instance, you visit the Tenement Museum in New York City and witness examples of squalid living conditions and abject poverty of lower Manhattan residents during the 1860s through the 1930s, you may become sympathetic towards immigrants’ struggles and voice progression for clean and affordable housing. Or, say you are beckoned to visit the Thomas J. Boyd Museum in Wytheville, Virginia and learn that it takes more manual energy than you imagined to power a 5-watt lightbulb using a hand-generator. You watch as elementary school students struggle to achieve the same result, but their interest never wanes. Curiosity encompasses them and they start asking questions. You ponder to yourself, if these children are highly interested in types of energy now, perhaps there is a way to amplify their motivation to continue studying the subject; just maybe the road to becoming a scientist or engineer is being paved with this museum visit!
- Steven Conn, Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1876-1926 (Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1998), 13, 14, 35
I encourage each of you to share your story about how you were impacted after visiting a museum or any cultural site, historical society, monument, or even after a particular class. We can discuss the benefits and engage audiences what magic can happen after soaking up material in pedagogical atmospheres. So feel free to comment below!