This is an extended discussion of the question that appeared in the Viewpoints department of the September/October 2012 issue of Dimensions magazine.

The central focus for science centers is serving the communities in their region. Many of the science festivals popping up in the United States are led by museums, reflecting the responsibility that science centers have to reach out to audiences that do not normally attend exhibitions. Science festivals enable this by hosting events and programs in places where the people in their communities naturally live, work, and play.
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IN THIS ISSUE
July/August 2012

As a key part of our commitment to our members, ASTC is dedicated to providing vision and direction by anticipating trends and helping our member institutions to prepare for new opportunities and challenges. In this issue, we look at a selection of current and future trends that shape and influence the science center and museum field. This brief, and by no means exhaustive, survey of trends includes new exhibit innovations, the Maker Movement, crowdsourcing, informal science learning outside the classroom, and crowdfunding. Have thoughts on these or other important trends on the horizon? Send us a letter to the editor.

Contents

• The Future of Exhibits: Where Are We Headed?, by Julie Bowen
• Museums and the Maker Movement, by Eric Siegel
• Harnessing the Crowd, by Elizabeth E. Merritt and Philip M. Katz
• STEM Learning in Afterschool: Ready to Soar, by Anita Krishnamurthi and Ramya Sankar
• Crowdfunding: Money from the Masses?, by Larry H. Hoffer

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By Julie Bowen
From Dimensions
July/August 2012

I have been wondering for a while why recent ASTC annual conferences have had fewer sessions about exhibits than they did five or 10 years ago. Have exhibits reached a point of perfection and become a craft needing only minor tweaking around the edges? Have museums run out of new things to talk about in exhibits? Are exhibit developers too busy or too few, or is exhibit development being outsourced? Is our modality of interactive, hands-on physical exhibits at the end of the evolutionary road? Or, is there an inflection point where exhibits transform into something new? I was caught musing out loud about these questions and asked if I would speculate on the future direction of exhibits.
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I would like to take this opportunity to comment on something both personal and professional. We recently lost a champion of scientific research, and for me a good friend, in F. Sherwood Rowland, Nobel Laureate, who, along with his colleagues Mario Molina and Paul Crutzen, showed us how chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, damage the Earth’s protective ozone layer. This is not a commentary, however, on the magnitude of Sherry Rowland’s work (though monumental it was, indeed). Rather, I reflect on the courage of those scientists who are prepared to jettison conventional wisdom, swim upstream, challenge notions—and bear the scars of that effort wherever it may lead.

Sherry once said that, for nearly a decade after undertaking his groundbreaking research, he could not get invited into a college classroom to lecture, much less excel among his peers. He was challenged at every turn. And yet, through scientific rigor and sheer perseverance, his work was translated from the laboratory into policy in one of the most progressive international measures ever envisioned: the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer.
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Interviewed by Joelle Seligson

This interview appeared in the July/August 2012 issue of Dimensions magazine.

The child running around your exhibit floor may someday become a driving force for forward-thinking. That was the course for Brian David Johnson, futurist at Intel, whose job entails envisioning what’s next for science and technology. To gear up for the near future—when he will deliver the opening keynote address at the 2012 ASTC Annual Conference in Columbus, Ohio, in October—Johnson talked with Dimensions about getting rid of technological “boogeymen” and how our imaginations are the most critical tools of all.

Read the full transcript, or listen to the podcast.