Big real stuff

I’m not about to say I could construct a definitive list of ‘things kids like in museums’, but I think I can confidently say BIG THINGS and REAL STUFF would make appearances on said list. Kids in museums are like an illustration of the academic Stephen Greenblatt’s description of the wonder and resonance that can occur in the exhibition space.* It’s the wow factor of the big stuff! So, at the National Museum of Australia:

• Phar Lap’s heart is a hit (it’s big and it’s real)
• the buffalo catcher is a hit (it’s HUGE and it’s real) and
• the diprotodon initially rates, but is ultimately a miss. Yeah, it’s big (and who doesn’t like gargantuan prehistoric wombat skeletons?) but it isn’t real. Kids say ‘Wow – is that real?’ and when they realise is a replica they seem to feel a little cheated and the wow factor evaporates. They wander to the next exhibit, the next story, the next object.

Like lots of us – I’m guessing – kids are often arrested by exhibits that operate on wonder, rather than the often subtler and less easy to read stories that construct a sense of resonance within the responder.

I guess that’s why I believe facilitated museum programs are pretty important. The museum educator is a unique position to help students learn to ‘read’ a museum display and provide the interpretive hooks to engage students in objects that have the capacity to create a sense of resonance for the young visitors in the stories, and by extension, in the public space of the museum. Oh, and if all that fails, you get to show them really cool, BIG, REAL stuff.

* ‘Resonance and Wonder’ by Stephen Greenblatt was first published in Ivan Karp and Stephen D Lavine (eds.) Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display, The Smithsonian Press, Washington DC and London, 1991, pp. 42–56.