reflections
Conviviality
A good society needs places where our common humanity comes first and where trust can take root and grow. Museums should be among these places. Over the years, in our work with museum exhibitions, my ...
The shadow side of traveling exhibitions
If you were around 45 years ago, you too may have memories of The Treasures of Tutankhamun. Mine include a train ride from Philadelphia and a shivering line outside the National Gallery of Art. Tut wa...
Slow science
Like Slow Food, the science center movement grew out of a radical and restorative view of the human relationship with the world. Its defining values also have to do with leisure in its best and classi...
Vox populi
It seems like a distant dream sometimes, as Fox News stirs up dark passions and Sunday pundits trade blows, to consider a public space where all ideas are welcome. That’s what Kathy McLean and I had...
A lifetime of curiosity
Although science centers and museums nearly all have missions that embrace the whole community (“from 1 to 101” or “kids of all ages,” as they sometimes say), in reality their audiences tend t...