Andrew Furgeson in the Weekly Standard wrote a piece on the brand new "Newseum" that just opened this April in Washington D. C. He describes the new style of museums and I couldn't but think how that relates to how many "do church" on Sunday morning with the "primary goal of seizing and holding the attention of a slightly hyperactive male adolescent, that cheerful, vacant fellow who has just clambered down from the school bus and has detached himself from the ear buds of his iPod and is in danger of growing fidgety from the sudden lack of stimulation."
Heres is the quote:
The wow experience has now become mandatory in the design of modern museums. A museum visitor no longer just visits a museum and sees stuff: He is given a visitor experience--a sequence of sensations that can be packaged, advertised, and controlled by the curators. If the visitor experience is interactive, that's terrific; if it's immersive--well, you're going to have one wowed visitor on your hands. For the great enemy of the museum designer today is not ignorance but boredom. Like most public institutions in American life, from movies to libraries to baseball parks, museums are designed with the primary goal of seizing and holding the attention of a slightly hyperactive male adolescent, that cheerful, vacant fellow who has just clambered down from the school bus and has detached himself from the ear buds of his iPod and is in danger of growing fidgety from the sudden lack of stimulation. His discomfort must be avoided at all costs. Sometimes I picture the entire educo-entertainment industry as one of those villagers in the old horror movie Children of the Damned, utterly terrified of offending the alien children lest they turn their scary X-ray eyes on them and . . . poof! Displease the kids and your museum (movie, theme park, retail store, school) is a goner.
If you click here, you can read the entire article online.
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