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EducationIdeas needed for museum displays.
14th Apr 2012 05:56 UTCRalph S Bottrill 🌟 Manager
14th Apr 2012 08:58 UTCRalph S Bottrill 🌟 Manager
14th Apr 2012 11:55 UTCBob Harman
So, having said that, I use the TELLUS MUSEUM OF SCIENCE museum in North Georgia as an example. The museum is a "new" one about 30 miles North of the city of Atlanta. It is the site of the previous William Weinman Mineral Museum. A bit of history.......William Weinman owned barite mines in this area and also collected minerals. His museum legacy was a nice medium sized classic mineral museum. Then, about 6 or 7 years ago that museum was closed and the new, much, much larger state of the art and more complete TELLUS MUSEUM was built. His mineral collection was incorporated into the William Weinman Mineral Galleries as only one part of the whole Tellus museum. Less total minerals displayed (I guess the rest of his minerals are in storage), but much more of the interactive learning experience as described above. Everything is now very modern and there is even a great gift shop. The general public loves it and the museum gets very good reviews, but the few of us just wanting to see cabinet after cabinet of crystal groups and small lumps of rare mineral containing rocks might be disappointed. The bottom line is that the mineral displays are geared toward a learning experience for the general public with families; the die hard and advanced mineral collectors might be disappointed.......
I have been a member now since the Tellus opened, and when visiting my family in Atlanta, we all go GOOD LUCK BOB HARMAN
14th Apr 2012 12:49 UTCEarl Verbeek Expert
14th Apr 2012 13:19 UTCSteve Sorrell Expert
Regards
Steve
14th Apr 2012 14:53 UTCMichael Croxell
Also they used the method of lableing useing numbers and a legend on one end of a 10' display, you lose where your at. I think the lable should be right there with the mineral. I have seen displays of the periodic table along with minerals and their uses that I thought were very good. Hands on for kids and adults really seem to draw people...Just my 2 cents...Mike
14th Apr 2012 16:11 UTCFrank Ruehlicke 🌟
The general public seems to always like gold and gems so I don't think you can go wrong with that. How about a display based on birthstones - everyone has one so people have an automatic interest and association with it and you can show both the mineral and the cut gem.
Cheers,
-Frank
14th Apr 2012 19:20 UTCUwe Kolitsch Manager
14th Apr 2012 19:27 UTCRobert Rothenberg
Bob
14th Apr 2012 19:50 UTCDean Allum Expert
Since I joined a Friends of Museum organization recently, I have been thinking about this.
Having a visual "gimmick" is always good, and the fluorescent display has already been mentioned.
1) Assemble a cloud chamber with the ability for a viewer to move different specimens close to the display to see the relative reactivity. Also include a poster which discusses the benefits of radiation, such as people who have been cured of cancer.
2) A hands-on display using polarized light. Set up flat screen monitors displaying white. Have polarized glasses (such as those for 3-D movies) on leashes and available to wear. Have on hand a variety of transparent specemins include mica.
-regards,
Dean Allum
14th Apr 2012 20:15 UTCDarren Court
One thing we are working on where I work, we have a large chunk of blue marble, containing dehydrated, white nodules of what were once chert - they have a "rind" of epidote. We hope to get a nice chunk of limestone with "fresh" chert soon, and can create a label discussing how heat and pressure applied to the limestone/chert changes it into the marble and other minerals. Yeah, not what people expect in an army museum, but we're a bit different! People no longer go to museums to see "cool stuff." Increasingly, they want to be educated, they want to be engaged, and it's not enough to have pretty rocks (or other artifacts); the interpretation really has to grab and hold their attention.
Anyway, that's my 2 pfennigs worth!
Darren
14th Apr 2012 22:39 UTCPaul De Bondt Manager
I used to put together exibitions, not in museums but on local fairs and clubs.
What interests the people is not only minerals but what you can make out of it.
That makes it interesting for collectors and for the non collectors. This kind of exhibits is focused especially for the people who are NOT interested in minerals and to catch their attention. The people interested in minerals are coming anyway.
Do you imagine how many minerals you use every day ? Well, not really minerals but tools and things made out of them.
So I put on display cases with vanadinite and a chromite specimen with a small wrench. Label the specimens as " vanadium ore or vanadium bearing, also with the chromite. Just take care to put the Chrome-Vanadium sign on the wrench upwards
I had a quartz crystal with a solar element who produced electricty and let turn a little specimen around.
A piece of malachite and a copper electric wire.
An ilmenite specimen with artist Titaniumoxide paint tube.
Halite with salt.
Sphalerite, graphite and manganite with a battery.
Native silver with a silver coin.
Bauxite with a piece of aluminium window frame.
Cassiterite with a printplate from a computer.
Renierite or germanite with a transistor.
Cinnabar with a thermometer.
Fluorite with a toothpaste tube ( mentionning " fluor " )
And so on. You can put as much minerals as you find things made out of them and the combinations are infinite. Just look around in your house, workplace and garage. And let the brain work.
I can guarantee you amazing results.
Everybody watching the exhibit can find something she or he uses frequently and often EVERY day. ( toothpaste, salt, computer, batteries, money etc.... )
I hope this helps.
Take care and best regards.
Paul.
14th Apr 2012 23:14 UTCDarren Court
15th Apr 2012 03:13 UTCSteven Kuitems Expert
Ralph, let us know what you finally decide on.
Steve.
15th Apr 2012 03:20 UTCJenna Mast
Well lit displays.
Examples of specimens in situ.
A gold in situ and diamond in situ exhibit along with examples of their practical uses.
An exhibit on cryolite and it's importance, along with the Hall Heroult Process.
Meteorites.
Radioactive minerals with cloud chamber and GM counter.
Geology related:
A liquefaction demonstration.
Weather:
Tornado chamber.
Lightening chamber.
15th Apr 2012 03:37 UTCStephanie Martin
Having just recently done a talk on zeolites, I would have to suggest those as they are not only numerous
but also have many common uses in our daily lives.
We recently had a representative from the Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto) give a presentation at our club regarding gem minerals.
One of the interesting parts of the presentation had to do with prepping the displays.
From start to finish, with all the design and ergonomic planning, graphics, labelling and lighting, the finished product takes 7 years to complete.
I think you will get far more ideas than you are able to manage!
Good luck with this project!
regards,
stephanie:-)
15th Apr 2012 05:28 UTCJohn Kirtz
15th Apr 2012 06:32 UTCJenna Mast
Much of my original Ivigtut, Greenland collection comes from a man named David Snair, also known as "The master of glazes" for his work in crystalline glazes. I believe he was using cryolite from Ivigtut in some of these glazes. In with the collection was also metallurgy equipment (which someone else bought), and I think originally belonged to a woman named Dawn King. I speculate they also did some of their own aluminum extraction with the cryolite.
15th Apr 2012 06:50 UTCJohn Attard Expert
Other considerations: Lighting needs to be nothing but Excellent! This not only on the minerals but light where you walk as well. Some displays light up only the minerals and keep you in the dark apparently hoping you would look at the minerals rather than the floor. Museums are not supposed to make you yawn.
Labels in front of the minerals and not on a directory on the side!
In my opinion one of the best displays is at the Terra Mineralia Museum at Freiberg, Germany. Attractive display cases and enough of them at low level that can be viewed from front AND top so young kids can see the contents well, not just adults.
Interactive displays are great. At Terra Mineralia they even have microscopes available for use by visitors (guidance provided) and for those advanced enough into the science they have students from the nearby University demonstrating the use of an electron microprobe to analyze a mineral! Ralph that's when funds are not limited.
John Attard, San Diego, California.
15th Apr 2012 07:07 UTCMalcolm Southwood 🌟 Expert
I have to confess to being just a tad conservative in my thinking on museum displays. To me, the systematic collection in London’s Natural History Museum – little changed, I believe, since Victorian time – is truly magnificent in concept, though I’d be the first to concede that the display cases are old-fashioned, and the lighting sub-optimal. It also saddens me to note, every time I visit, that it appears increasingly short of tender loving care, (though I should hasten to add that this is a criticism of institutional financing, and certainly NOT of the excellent and dedicated staff who maintain the display on, presumably, a shoestring budget.) Exhibits that focus on the applications of minerals, with all the attendant button-pressing, clearly have a place but not, in my view, at the expense of allowing a wide range of minerals to be exhibited for their own sake.
For many years I was truly concerned about the death spiral that seemed to be sucking in more and more of the traditional mineral displays around the world, and their replacement (if any) with more gimmicky, dumbed-down, “let’s pull in the punters” displays.
Then in 2009 I visited the newly opened mineral gallery at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto, sponsored by Teck Resources (and, more recently I believe, by Vale-Inco as well). I was massively impressed; I have been back on two subsequent occasions and, as you know, Toronto is a long way from Melbourne! In my opinion, the ROM sets the benchmark for modern mineral displays.
Firstly, the gallery is highly educational and informative, and the visitor learns about minerals, their origins, their properties, and their uses but all in sensible proportion. Secondly, the exhibition is fun! The labelling system is interactive, so that younger button-pushing addicts will not be starved of opportunity. Thirdly, and most importantly from my perspective, there are a lot of high quality mineral specimens on show to keep serious and knowledgeable mineralogists engaged for many hours. There is no dumbing-down here; yet judging from the number of youngsters enjoying the display during my most recent visit – a December Sunday morning – the exhibits have been successfully pitched for wide appeal.
Clearly there has been a lot of money spent at the ROM, and the sponsoring companies deserve the highest praise in my opinion for what has been achieved; likewise the staff at the ROM and I had the very great pleasure of chatting to Kim Tait about this a few weeks ago in Tucson. Not all curators will enjoy such funding. Ralph, don’t know whether you’re familiar with the display at the ROM, but I would strongly suggest that it might provide some very fruitful ideas for what we all hope will be a fine mineral display in Tasmania.
Cheers
mal
15th Apr 2012 09:10 UTCKnut Eldjarn 🌟 Manager
lots of great ideas from other contributors. I have a suggestion which could be combined with any of them. Museums are often visited by families and there may be conflicting interests. Many of the interactive and colourful displays will attract people of any age and level of knowledge. But it may be a challenge to "entertain" the youngest if the parents (or grandparents) want to look at the systematic or educational displays. In the museum at Setesdalen Mineral Park in Norway they have small stone dinosaures hidden in the different cabinets and every child is offered a map of all the displays and a pencil to mark where they discovered the dinosaures. They receieve a prize (a colorfull mineral specimen i.e. a pyrite crystal) when they have located all of them. In my experience this made it possible for generations with different attention spans to enjoy the cabinets at the same pace. It also opened up for discussions like: "maybe you will find it behind that large, blue fluorite - or maybe close to another fluorite specimen" - do you see any specimen with a quartz crystal here - maybe the dinosaur is there ? etc.
In general people are very interested in where the minerals come from and what they are used for (as stated by Paul). At Terra Mineralia they have a projection on the wall of a rotating globe and it is possible to select from a list a famous mineral locality and push a button. With Google Earth you zoom down on that locality and switches to a film showing the mine entrance, the journey down in the dark, how the mining is perfomed and how cavities with minerals are exposed. Exceptional specimens from some of these localities where displayed in cabinets close by.
At a Canadian museum I visited many years ago they had a large, old carriage from a mine lift where 8 or 10 visitors at a time had to put on helmets, enter the carriage, push putton - and then experiences noises and movement as if they travelled far down into a mine. Opening a second door they entered a poorly lit mine tunnel with cavities showing minerals, pictures or short films showing the mining operation and then entering a mine assayers office showing examples of ores, test equipment etc. If there should be room for such an installation somewhere at the Tasmanian museum, parts of your proud mining heritage could be visualized in this way.
I think the main challenge for museums wanting to display minerals in the 21st century is how to capture, entertain and educate different generations and people with different backgrounds and limited interests in minerals as objects or in systematic mineralogy. In general the role of museums have changed dramatically following the general access to the web. In this century probably the hundreds of thousands of objects preserved in museum collection (of all kinds) could be made available to any virtual visitor with a rotating 3-D image and any set of information about the specimen, its origin and with links to scientific papers, locality information, historic information etc. - surpassing what the viewer can obtain from even the best lit and labelled display cabinet in todays museums. With such resources in place, you could tour any museum from your own computer displaying any item on the large, high-resolution flatscreen in your living room or study. In the modern age of information there is less need for the 19th century style assemblages of "curiosity cabinets" with strange natural objects behind glass for people to admire. But there will still be a huge need to educate people, to make them curious and to give them the necessary background and understanding how to use such web-resources. This will require more interactive museums with more focus on contexts and perspectives than on single objects.
But of course there will allways be freaks like ourselves who will claim that nothing can compare to seeing minerals "in person". We can only hope that museums will feel an obligation to cater also for the needs of such an odd minority.
Knut
15th Apr 2012 10:23 UTCRalph S Bottrill 🌟 Manager
15th Apr 2012 15:06 UTCCarl (Bob) Carnein 🌟
Another approach (perhaps more for adults, who seem to be ignored in most museum planning nowadays) could be to look at map/photo/satellite images of an area to see how each is used to locate a mineral deposit. Start out with a satellite image taken in "normal" spectrum; then have images of the same area in false-color spectra, radar images, etc. that are computer enhanced and designed to bring out particular kinds of mineralization. Let the visitor choose suspicious areas that could then be tied into assays/chemical analyses that highlight which methods are most useful to the mining industry for exploring new areas (and maybe the mining industry could help to finance such a display). Integrate this with something about how plants and topography also give us clues to mineralization. Perhaps this could be tied into which minerals were used by the native peoples of the area, and how.
What I remember from the museums I have visited are usually the truly magnificent specimens. It's difficult to attain a balance between "too much" and "not enough", and that balance is different for each visitor. If I were designing a museum, I'd make sure there was a small area with a changing systematic collection for the serious collector/visitor, highlighting the museum's strengths and recognizing those who donated top-notch material.
15th Apr 2012 16:08 UTCjacques jedwab
People were most interested. I think this idea could also be very appealing if applied to Tasmanian mineralogy.
J.J.
15th Apr 2012 20:47 UTCD Mike Reinke
Possibly a specific gravity display, a comparison of chunks of minerals w/ equal amounts of water by weight.
Just some rudimentary visuals...
17th Apr 2012 12:35 UTCKelly Nash 🌟 Expert
17th Apr 2012 19:53 UTCDean Allum Expert
Here is a website with a lot of mineral education resources, including posters. These people maintain a booth at the Denver Mineral Show which is very popular with the kids.
http://www.mii.org/
http://www.mii.org/pdfs/demonstrations.pdf
At least 3 museums in Colorado have simulated mine tunnels displays with rich matrix rock containing in-situ specimens.
Regards, Dean Allum
17th Apr 2012 22:06 UTCRalph S Bottrill 🌟 Manager
25th Apr 2012 00:53 UTCRalph S Bottrill 🌟 Manager
25th Apr 2012 09:43 UTCPaul De Bondt Manager
I hope you will be able to pull an " interesting for everybody " exhibit ashore.
Take care and best regards.
Paul.
25th Apr 2012 12:34 UTCBob Harman
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Privacy Policy - Terms & Conditions - Contact Us / DMCA issues - Report a bug/vulnerability Current server date and time: April 25, 2024 12:06:08