Call for Abstracts: ESHS 2020 - Designing the Visitor Experience of Postwar Science Display
Designing the Visitor
Experience of Postwar
Science Display
The evolution of science
display in
museums, at (world’s) fairs, and accompanying new institutions
for involving
the society with science and technology – such as the science
centres – has
brought about a major transformation. There occurred a turn
away from the artefact,
or historical object, towards the edufact, or educational
object, which was
designed to convey a particular scientific insight or
phenomenon, rather than
documenting the scientific endeavour. At the same time, the
well-lit glass case
gave way to set-ups of sensory and immersive experience, while
the reach of the
scientists and curators shrank and the exhibit and exhibition
designers gained
in importance. This shift of actors and agency, however, has
not yet found its
adequate historiographical reflection.
Although the scholarship
on World’s Fairs
and science and technology museums has explored a good part of
this history
(cf. e.g. Canadelli et al. 2018 and Mollella/Knowles 2019) the
role of design
and designers has not yet been discussed more thoroughly for
the postwar
period, neither has museum history been connected to design
history. Some work
on select designers of the American pre-war World’s Fairs has
been done
(Marchand 1991, 1992) and exhibit design in science centres
has been reflected
upon by some of its protagonists (Oppenheimer 1986,
Humphrey/Gutwill 2005).
Museum and exhibition histories have occasionally touched upon
some
exhibit(ion) designers, ranging, e.g. for North America, from
somewhat
unbeknownst John Anglim (at the Smithsonian and its Exhibit
Modernization Program)
and Taizo Miake (for the Ontario Science Centre) to the
luminaries of Charles
and Ray Eames (of the Mathematica exhibit in Los Angeles and
the Science
Exhibit of the Seattle World’s Fair). In addition, media
history has provided
much insight in the use of media and immersion also for
museums (Griffiths
2008) without, however, dealing more closely with the Postwar
period. And also
for the largely unexplored field that pertains to the
historicity of exhibit
design, which may ask, e.g., How can a successful design of a
user experience
become outdated?, discussion
remains
sparse (e.g. Constantine et al. 2004), in particular
frameworks to capture this
historically are still outstanding.
The proposed symposium
attempts to explore
the history of exhibit(ion) design and visitor experience and
encourages
particularly the contribution of papers about specific case
studies from Europe
and all over the world along the following questions:
- When
did designers take over in science museums, and how was this
related to new
conceptional, medial, cinematographical, or architectural
representations of
science?
- How
have new media and immersive exhibits changed science display
in museums and at
World’s Fairs?
- How
were long-standing museum departments been transformed by a
new brand of
designers? (Including: How does the contemporary re-designing
of museum units
deal with its specific history of display?)
- How
did the shift from the rational and sublime to the sensory and
visceral affect
the (national) Postwar pictures of science?
Please send your abstracts
(300 words) with
a short CV (150 words) to Arne Schirrmacher by
December 10, 2019.
Mentioned Literature:
Canadelli, Elena et. al.
(ed.) 2018: Behind
the Exhibit. Displaying Science and Technology at World's
Fairs and Museums in
the Twentieth Century, Washington.
Constantine, Wendy et. al.
2004: Summative
Evaluation of "Mathematica: A World of Numbers", Boston Museum
of
Science (https://issuu.com/daniel_
Griffiths, Alison 2008:
Shivers Down Your Spine.
Cinema, Museums, and the Immersive View, New York.
Humphrey, Thomas and
Joshua Gutwill:
Fostering Active Prolonged Engagement, San Francisco 2005.
Marchand, Roland 1991: The
Designers Go to
the Fair: Walter Dorwin Teague and the Professionalization of
Corporate
Industrial Exhibits, 1933-1940, Design Issues, 8:1, 4-17.
Marchand, Roland 1992: The
Designers Go to
the Fair II: Norman Bel Geddes, The General Motors "Futurama,"
and
the Visit to the Factory Transformed, Design Issues, 8:2,
22-40.
Molella, Arthur P. and
Scott Knowles 2019:
World’s Fairs in the Cold War Science, Technology, and the
Culture of Progress,
Pittsburgh.
Oppenheimer, Frank 1986
[1980]: Working
Prototypes. Exhibit Design at the Exploratorium, San
Francisco.