1185 points by arch_deluxe 172 days ago | 392 comments on HN
| Moderate positive
Contested
Editorial · v3.7· 2026-02-28 08:14:31· from archive
Summary Education & Cultural Authenticity Advocates
Seth Purcell advocates for museums to prioritize authentic, hands-on scientific and cultural experiences over digital screen-based exhibits, arguing that tangible engagement better supports child development and learning. The article engages strongly with cultural participation and educational rights, framing museum experiences as essential to children's development and human flourishing.
One of my longstanding peeves is that art museums are treated as serious places for grown-ups but science museums and zoos are treated as places for kids.
> But these physical exhibits require maintenance, and I was dismayed to see that several are in bad repair; some of them weren’t even working anymore, some seemed worn out, or didn’t seem well-designed to begin with.
To be fair, that's what I remember children's museums being like in the 1980s as well. A significant number of exhibits would be temporarily out of order on any given day.
I don't think screens are responsible for that. Maintaining physical exhibits that can survive constant physical contact with kids is hard.
If you have a change to visit the Tokyo Science Museum, it's quite good in this respect - it has a lot of interactive displays, many of which are very hands on, and some are application based - focused on how the science concepts are used in industry (with some occasional corporate tie-ins, which weren't too over the top). It's fairly kid focused, as others have mentioned - most of your competition for seeing the exhibits will be school student groups.
Incidentally, the building is featured near the end of the Shin Godzilla movie.
I work in a museum, so I'll add in a couple of cents. Seth isn't entirely wrong here: museums are good opportunities for hands-on activities and to see things in a real sensory way that you can't in other places. "I believe museums exist to present the real thing for the visitor to experience with their own senses" rings really true to me.
That said: iPads and screens do have their place and it really depends on how well they're implemented.
First up: "But these physical exhibits require maintenance, and I was dismayed to see that several are in bad repair; some of them weren’t even working anymore, some seemed worn out, or didn’t seem well-designed to begin with."
This is probably the key reason why there are so many screens in this particular museum: he answers his own question. Physical items, especially things with motion, will degrade with time and use, and maintenance can get really expensive. Physical models like a human heart aren't something that you can generally buy off the rack: museums and similar institutions will work with a company to produce something like that (I'm guessing fiberglass?) These are things that can run thousands and thousands of dollars to repair or outright replace.
But here's the other thing with a physical static or interactive display: once they're in, they're in. You can't really update them without actually replacing the entire thing.
Here's an example: at the museum where I work, we have a section about the Civil War: it had some uniforms, weapons, and a whole bunch of other items that told the story as it related to our mission. The panel that outlined everything stretched across the room -- it was about 20 feet long. When we pulled everything out to update it, we had to replace that entire panel. It was a good fix, because the room hadn't been updated in like 15-20 years, but if we had wanted to pull out any one item, we'd still have to replace the entire panel. That sort of thing can be an impediment to updates, because it requires a lot of work. We ended up putting in three panels, which will allow us to switch out objects more easily.
We also put in an interactive with an iPad that allows visitors to explore a painting in the exhibit in a lot more depth.
We've done a handful of these sorts of interactives, and as I noted up above, the experience really depends on the audience and how well it's presented. In our case, we aim for ours to be usable for a wider range, which means that we have to keep things fairly simple, so adults and children can use them.
"My wife — a science writer who used to be the only staff writer covering space for New Scientist and before that, worked at NASA — poked at one of these with my son, added too many boosters to their launch vehicle, and were told it failed “for reasons” in a way she found totally unhelpful and pointless." That doesn't entirely surprise me, because she's an expert and is really knowledgeable in the field! But you have to make sure that you're calibrating for your audience: most of the people using that likely won't have her experience or knowledge, and digging deeper and deeper into detail might be lost on most of their audience. (Not having seen it, I can't tell for sure.) It is good to have that depth of knowledge be available, if you have audience members who do want to go further, but it could come down to limitations or be an exception that they didn't account for.
Digital interactives can also be swapped out quite a bit more quickly: if you have a new exhibit that you're putting in for a short amount of time, it might make more sense to have something that doesn't cost a lot if it's only going to run for months, rather than years. (Or if you find an error, there's new research, new updates, etc. -- a digital interface is easier to update than a static panel.)
On top of all that: cultural institutions are facing real crunches right now. There's a lot of uncertainty (and outright lack of support) from federal funding sources (which in turn impacts the willingness of private/state/NPO donors), and staff shortages that means everyone has fewer resources and fewer people to utilize them with. From where I sit, if we have to implement more digital content, we'll be able to repurpose the screens that we've already purchased to new exhibits and interactives.
Finally, there's nostalgia at play here: I have a ton of fond memories of visiting museums with interactives and huge displays, and I'm glad that I can take my kids to them as well. But I'm also happy to see that these museums aren't stuck in the past and the only thing that they're doing is rehabilitating old exhibits that are decades old or out of date: they still have some of those things, but they're also making sure to bring in new interactives, looking at new scholarship and best practices for museums (because museums aren't static organizations or fields!) to change as audiences change. Like it or not, there are a lot of people who use screens as a way to take in information: museums have to keep abreast of those trends, because if we don't deliver information to people in familiar and accessible ways, they probably won't come in.
I have personally made several interactive displays/exhibits for work. Yeah there are plenty of poorly made ones out there, but speaking from experience a good one truly does turns a museum into something a child is excited to visit. There is a reason why children's museums are made the way they are. Even children that are interested in learning, want to play. A great digital experience at a museum does wonders to bridge the gap between a regular museum and a children's museum. If a child has fun at a museum they are going to want to go back. If they keep having fun and keep wanting to go back, eventually they are going to start paying attention to substance of the museum. I agree great physical experiences are missing from many museums, but I'll happily continue to trick children into wanting to learn any way I can
My biggest gripe is that art museums, especially modern art museums, play documentary/clips from documentary that last anywhere from 2 minutes to 30 minutes. Those films are not accessible anywhere else.
I would be very willing to watch them in full, but like most other visitors, I have limited time, especially when visiting a new museum in a different city. If you say observing a painting/sculpture in person is different from looking at a picture, fine, whatever, but making these videos only available in museums is sad.
The rest of the stuff that is basically just a lame tablet app is a waste of my ( and my kids )time and, well, money.
That said, and I offer it merely as a defense, if the goal is to interest kids, you want to meet them where they are at. Apps is where they are at. Granted, thanks to parents, but still.
It's not a museum, unless there's a dark room with a bunch of mostly empty chairs lined up in front of a projection screen showing a slide show or documentary (or really both at the same time) with an overly enthusiastic narration covering the history of the subject.
Sometimes you can't even get to the displays, without first at least walking through the room.
Whenever I walk by the vaguely muffled sounds of someone watching a movie in another room, I get nostalgic for childhood visits to museums.
I had a (now defunct) startup in this space some years ago. Maybe I can help shed some light on why things are the way they are.
1. Money. Most museums have no money. They either run on donations, on subsidies, or at the whim of wealthy patrons. They are very costly to run, especially the big ones. They are often in prime real estate areas, many require tight climate control, many also require specialised lighting to protect art etc.
2. Curators often see "taking care" of the exhibits as more important than actually exhibiting them. Not to mention they're often art/history majors with very little clue about anything digital.
3. Because museums are often subsidised, many of them are required to go through public tender procedures to get anything done. Because this is a huge pain for everyone involved, the results are often shit, as it attracts a certain kind of company to do the work. One of the tenders my startup looked at involved not only supplying the hardware and software for an interactive exhibit, but also the lighting and reinforced glass casings for various items. This was not our cup of tea, and the tender would subtract points for using subcontractors...
Personally I'm not interested in museums that are just glass cases with stuff without any explanation. Maybe a little paper legend is sufficient, but I actually prefer a screen which offers more info in the form of adio or video in multiple languages.
Depending on the exhibit, 3D printed replicas can be great as well.
There is an incredible pressure on a lot of public facing endeavors to include digital, no matter whether it makes any sense at all or not. Take education, for instance - if it weren't such an important topic, it would be almost comical to observe how our schools are trying to jump through hoops to cram more IT into the classroom. (I wish the people responsible would take a look at Scandinavia though, where they are years ahead in that respect and have already begun taking digital devices out of the classrooms again.)
But it's not about what makes sense. It's about prestige, and about the ability to tell everyone "look at us, how forward we are!". This seems very clear to me, for instance, by the fact that the year 7 comp sci classes they teach in our local high school have what on their curriculum? Yep, that's right, you guessed it: AI. Because that's apparently the absolute basic CS that every student should start with these days.
Education is only one example, of course. But it's really creeping into everything. That museums have screen everywhere is no surprise. After all, flashing screen surely release more endorphins than non-interactive physical exhibits, so if you want to attract young folks, the pressure is on.
I totally agree with the authors point. The Franklin Institute at its core is a place that teaches science through tactile experience and the special exhibits don’t reflect that.
Some context as a local though, the Franklin Institute’s special exhibit space rotates every couple of months and I imagine they’re put on by outside vendors who move the exhibit from venue to venue. The special exhibits for better or for worse more akin to Disney World or the pop culture museum in Seattle. I’ve been to a bunch of them and they’re usually quite good, but they don’t represent that tactile learning experience at all.
Many of us Philadelphians really lament that the place isn’t as well maintained as it should be. It was the field trip destination for so many kids and I’m sorry OP wasn’t able to recreate that same level of magic for their kids.
My favourite museums are those that are a huge pile of old shit with some labels telling you what you are looking at. This whole "hundreds of screens with some odd artifact inbetween" style is just boring.
I was an exhibit designer there in the early 2010s (the last exhibit I worked on was "Your Brain"); we had an incredible in-house design team that did all of the design and interactive prototyping, but unfortunately everyone was let go in ~2016 in favor of outsourcing much of the design work.
The truth is that the traveling exhibits (Body Worlds, Harry Potter, etc.) make a lot more money for them and do not require the ongoing maintenance burden. They have a reduced ability to design the exhibits as precisely as they used to and the physical stuff takes a tremendous amount of work and expertise to do well.
That said, the museum is run by people who care deeply about science education and the proliferation of touch screens is something they are sensitive to. The type of content has a lot to do with it (a physics exhibit has no excuse not to be 99% physical interactives), as does the fact that they tailor exhibits to many different styles of learning so that there's something for everyone.
Absolute irony: Pittsburgh has a privately-owned museum of computers (actually in New Kensington, a suburb). A HUGE amount of big old boxes. PDPs, Cray, some early home computers and printers. Some have been actively used by the owner/maintainer, so we know they work.
But there's no digital displays. There are screens - that are off.
The owner can barely make rent, even in that desolated section of real estate, so there's not going to be any snappy big screens or interactive software. But it's literally a museum of computers where no computers are computing.
> And where it looks like the budget has been going are the screen rooms. They occupy the huge central spaces on the main floor of the museum, and I’m sure a lot of time, money, and passion went into these things. But it’s misguided.
It reminds me of a Reddit thread about if someone should divorce their spouse because they significantly overdid it with smarthome tech. They (the other spouse) insisted that controlling everything with phones was "the future" and did things like drill out locks so they could only get in with a smartphone, and update the toilets so they would only flush from a smartphone.
As a parent, I agree 100% with the sentiments expressed by the author.
But even judging digital exhibits on their own merits, I have yet to see one in a museum (or similar location) that was actually "wow" or that really captured my kids' attention or sparked any discussion (like other "real" stuff we saw). Most were, as my 9 year old would say, "mid" (==crappy in genAlpha speak). Very blah. Very low effort, and sometimes didn't even work properly. Think of your typical crappy software experience that just barely works.
The places that do have physical hands-on exhibits do catch my kids' attention, and we return multiple times. For example, one has a lab where you can do chemistry experiments (which they rotate) -- 100x better than doing some digital simulation (which 1) is very quickly boring, and 2) I'll just do it at home and we can close the museum (sad).
Vindication! I’ve spent over a decade of my life putting physical interactives into museums. I have preached (sold) many museums on the stance that they should put unique experiences into museums that can’t happen on an iPad at home, to varying degrees of success. The museums that have listened are the ones that continue to be wildly successful to this day.
They are hard to do right though. I used to compete in combat robotics and the stresses put on museum exhibits is higher. I tell my new engineers that if their exhibit can be dropped into a gorilla enclosure and survive, they are about half way strong enough. Little makes up for raw experience in the art of building bomb proof exhibits, and many companies have failed before getting good. The amateur hour exhibits from the low bid newcomers that inevitably fail and/or need a lot of expensive maintenance has left a sour taste in a lot of museum’s mouths. A lot of those museums have knee jerk reactioned the opposite direction to touchscreen exhibits, only to see their ticket sales slowly drop. Thankfully, i’m seeing the pendulum of the industry swinging back towards physical interactives again.
I try to limit my kids exposure to electronic devices while they are small.
I can't avoid it, but I try.
I consider blacklisting YouTube at our house. The withdrawal symptoms look like people having tried drugs. This is scary.
I noticed that playing with phones for shorter amounts of time is ok and the kids get creative as soon as they don't have access to electronic entertainment.
Currently I play chess with them and do reading. My kids are 4 and 7.
This was a bit off topic, but I think that parents should stop exposing their kids to electronic entertainment.. its worse than drugs.
My favorite museum experience ever was at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry in the early 00's where they had this whole room that was just wood blocks, a little plastic tub running like a creek, a few little water-directing mechanisms and a couple water guns. No goal, I dont think it was even teaching anything, it was just me and 8 other kids. When I first got there some kid was telling everybody how to use everything and what little project he was working on and how they could help, basically like a little foreman. I helped and had fun with everybody for maybe 15 minutes until he had to leave and by then I had been there longest and just naturally ended up taking over as "foreman" until it was my turn to go and I told another kid everything that was left to do. It's a very important dynamic you experience a lot in life, and that exhibit taught me it naturally in half an hour.
It's such a shame to see how many of these learning museums are now basically having these kids just walk from point to point and read and maybe play something that would have been bad as a flash game. The Seattle one (forget the name) I went to last year had a decent number of physical exhibits (which I still enjoyed as an adult) but none of them had any social element. Ironically, the screen games were all very poorly maintained.
I'm not sure which way you're going with this, but the Philadelphia Museum of Art, down the street from the Franklin Institute, isn't specifically geared towards adults and has lots of programming specifically for kids. Seeing Rubens' Prometheus Bound there as a child as part of such a program left me in awe. I remember the feeling to this day. Every time I go, I see families with young children or even just groups of teens there.
The Philadelphia Zoo also has events planned specifically for adults. My girlfriend and I went to one a few months ago. I'm not sure what specifically about the Philadelphia zoo, the Bronx zoo, the Shedd aquarium, etc. is for specifically geared towards kids, though.
Largely agreed, with one exception. If you're ever in Boston/Cambridge MA, check out the MIT museum. I've always told people that its a science museum but for adults. The Harvard museums are worth visiting as well, but the MIT museum really impressed me with their content.
Yup. Tim Hunkin went for a last look around his Secret Life of the Home exhibition¹ at the London Science Museum and quite a few things were out of order; this may be because the exhibit was imminently closing, but my impression is that that's just the deal with mechanical exhibits - they break more often than the digital ones. Very likely it's one reason the screens are at the forefront.
It drives me absolutely bananas that the "interpretation" (fancy museum word for "signs") at science museums is so parsimonious. Some fascinating device vital to the history of an important branch of science will have a brief paragraph about the person who invented it, nothing about what it's for, and then just a date and the device name.
Often there's little or nothing further even in the museum shop. It's a crying shame.
I think that science museums being places for kids is a good thing. The are the ones who benefit the most. If you want science for grownups, you have conferences. Also, that it is for kids doesn't make it impossible to enjoy as an adult, especially if it is about things you are unfamiliar with.
Now, if you go to a science museum and think "only a kid can enjoy that". Then the problem is not that it is a place for kids, it is that it is just bad. It is a thing Disney understood very well, its classics may look like they are for kids, but they are actually enjoyable by everyone, and it is a big reason for their success.
As for art museums, the problem is that they are usually just exhibitions, and to be honest, that's boring, especially if you are a kid. That's unlike a science museum where they actually try to teach you science. It is only interesting if you are already well into that kind of art, and most kids aren't (yet?).
History museums are kind of a middle ground as they can do the double duty of teaching history (mostly for kids) and showing off artefacts to people who are already into that (mostly for grownups).
I don't remember the big Kensington museums being like that when I was a kid. There was a kids' section or two, but the rest was clearly for adults (and has stuck in my memory just as much, if not more than, the kids' sections).
Seeing the real Apollo 10 (I don't remember which module) sticks very clearly in my memory.
I also rode on a "heritage" train recently, and what struck me the most was that the interior decor of the passenger cars looked as though it had been designed for and by grown-ups.
It's not just museum exhibits and kids, it's everything. I have some maintenance roles in my background and the rate at which things like paper towel dispensers get worn down and completely destroyed when interacted with by hundreds or thousands of people a day is eye opening.
> But you have to make sure that you're calibrating for your audience: most of the people using that likely won't have her experience or knowledge, and digging deeper and deeper into detail might be lost on most of their audience.
I think this is a really key point; I've definitely felt slightly disappointed at certain exhibits, and had to remind myself that these things are designed for everyone. It would be lovely if every exhibit was pitched at exactly your own level, but as an adult, there are definitely areas where you are more knowledgeable than the general public, and so that's not possible.
My father worked on a Natural Gas exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry in Los Angeles as an emergency substitute when a contractor flaked. There was an oven that had a handle, when you opened it the narration said "don't open the oven during cooking" to save energy. Kids hung off this and immediately broke it, they replaced it with steel and it was broken the next day, then ended up having to put a Triangular metal piece that couldn't be hung off of because children are wild animals.
This museum prior to the rebuild into the California Science Center (which I love but is just different) and the Exploratorium were amazing experiences for this as a kid.
I miss the big kinetic scuplture of rolling wood balls through the electricity exhibit, the plotter that would draw out your bicycle design, the next door room full of electronic interactives of the kind that he's complaining about but early 90s style. The weird chrome McDonalds left over from the 84 Olympics. The giant ceiling mounted helmet VR exhibit (crt, no doubt)
I wish I could find better photos, there's so few.
A little too cold. Stimulating but also lulling you to sleep with it's proto ASMR. Your parents slightly frustrated that this is the point your choose to have an attention span.
A bit of a tangent, but has modern maker culture made it easier to make and maintain exhibits? Things like 3D printing, version control, Arduinos, etc.
Are you talking about the one in Kitanomaru park, or the Miraikan, on Daiba?
The Miraikan, in particular, is a fantastic science museum. I think it suffers a bit from what the OP is describing -- and also, a lack of English -- but for the most part it's interactive and uses technology in a really innovative way that goes beyond iPad fluff (an interactive seismograph room comes to mind, where you could move around and see the systems detect your movements in real time).
> I don't think screens are responsible for that. Maintaining physical exhibits that can survive constant physical contact with kids is hard.
That reminds me of something I’d love to learn a bit more about: the Strong Museum of Play. It appears the Wegmans’ supermarket exhibit where kids are able to work with real point-of-sale equipment has actually gotten equipment refreshes over the years itself, and I was really amused to see how far they went to have a “fully working” setup in the exhibits for kids to play with.
The checkout counters are actual IBM/Toshiba SurePOS lanes, with actual current Datalogic scanner scales, and they’ve got a OS4690/TCxSky install and SurePOS ACE running on every single lane. (Or, at least, one of those registers has to be a controller+terminal, the other 5 lanes have to bootstrap off at least one lane, so they’re all networked, too!) They’ve also maintained enough of the store configuration so receipts look just like a store receipt and all (of course, with the Strong Museum as the “store”). And yes, you’re told to only push certain buttons and only scan stuff that’s inside the environment… ;)
Over the years they’ve swapped out the lanes from the old white to the modern Slate Grey, upgraded the scanner-scales, but the UX is still the same as it always was.
I was a tour guide at the National Air and Space Museum for a dozen years. I still remember seeing the exhibit plans the curators had, which called for a then 90-year old airplane (a Curtiss JN-4) to be mounted such that people could look down over it from the balcony. All of us docents who saw that immediately said "what about the kids who will drop pennies onto that precious canvas and wood thing to break it?"
Six months after the exhibit opening the Jenny was removed from that location, never to be returned to that exhibit. Because sometimes museum guests aren't just pushing things too hard, they are actively taking steps to destroy things, just to see if they can get away with it.
Author here, thanks for your comment. I'm really sad to hear that everyone was let go; as I said, I loved TFI like nothing else when I was a kid.
I completely understand the incentives re: Body Worlds, Harry Potter (I've even seen an Angry Birds exhibit). But there's a fine line between a non-profit doing what it must to survive, and drifting so far from its mission that it no longer deserves to survive. TFI is still far from that point, but the trajectory is worrisome to me, so I called it out.
Good feedback. I wouldn't put "taking care" in quotes, however; my wife is a former museum worker and has graduate degrees in the field, and preservation is a key part of the role. Exhibits aren't just for the now, they're for the future. People would love to sit in the cockpit of the Bockscar bomber (little bit morbid, but true); allowing that would result in serious damage over time.
This is less important for educational spaces like the one the OP describes -- strictly speaking, science museums often aren't museums in the classical sense. Preservation is less important there, although not unimportant.
My wife and I toured our neighborhood public elementary school a couple years ago. Almost every classroom we passed the kids were staring at their chromebooks, even in the art room—digital art, I guess [1]. In the music room the kids were sitting at rows of desks with electronic keyboards and headphones while the teacher sat at the front of the class and gave them instructions through a microphone (to be heard through the headphones, I guess).
It was incredibly depressing. We decided to send our kids elsewhere.
[1] Nothing against digital art, but I strongly feel young kids should be working with actual physical materials.
> Personally I'm not interested in museums that are just glass cases with stuff without any explanation.
I am not sure why you mentioned this, because it has nothing to do with the subject article. This was a very specific article about interactive, hands-on museums replacing their exhibits with touch screens.
That being said, I have also been to countless museums of many kind and I have never once seen a museum that did not explain what the exhibits were. Have you actually seen this anywhere, or was this hyperbole?
i'm confused. in what way is this a response to the article?
the article laments the sidelining of physical exhibits, in favor of software. you respond that the screens probably have an arduous and expensive procurement process.
> 2. Curators often see "taking care" of the exhibits as more important than actually exhibiting them. Not to mention they're often art/history majors with very little clue about anything digital.
Museum curators used to be called keepers and this only changed in the mid-late twentieth century. The philosophy of preservation runs deep and you won't struggle to find curators whose favourite day of the week is when the museum is closed to the public.
Curators tend to make exhibits and displays that appeal to their own scholarly reference points. You need a different role - interpretation - to literally interpret this scholarship into what the public might be interested in. Few museums can afford to apply the lens of interpretation, so for the most part we are stuck with what curators think and its limited crossover with what the public want.
> the year 7 comp sci classes they teach in our local high school have what on their curriculum? Yep, that's right, you guessed it: AI. Because that's apparently the absolute basic CS that every student should start with these days.
I think, if you went back to the origin of the term "AI" and tried to teach an introduction to the very fundamentals, this could actually be a fun and inspiring class - one that might not even need a lot of computer knowledge.
There are a number of board games with "self-playing" antagonists that are governed through clever sets of game rules.
There is also the historical predecessor of computer science, cybernetics, that dealt with self-governing analogous control systems, like thermostats.
Finally, there are the classical pathfinding algorithms (Depth-First/Breadth-First, Dijkstra, A*) which I still think are some of the most "bang for the buck" algorithms in terms of "intelligent-looking" behavior vs simplicity of the algorithm.
All that stuff could be engaging for high school students in the author's "hands-on" way.
All that of course if the "AI" class is really about giving a broad introduction to the field, and not just "we have to put ChatGPT into the curriculum somehow".
> After all, flashing screen surely release more endorphins than non-interactive physical exhibits
The irony is that this might not even be true. In the article, the author observed that the physical exhibits were much more interesting to the kids than the screens.
I feel like half the products the tech industry comes out with aren't really useful, but they exist because of this performative trend-following. Competitor has a mobile app, we have to have a mobile app. Harvard business review says blockchain is big, we need to have blockchain. Our CEO's investor buddy said AI is the next big thing, we need to jam AI in or product.
I think "physical exhibits are awkward and expensive so we use screens instead" is kind of a cop-out. Yes they are more expensive and difficult, but they're what you're supposed to have!
Imagine if you went to a zoo and they just had photos of animals. "But it's so much cheaper and easier!"
Author here. Thank you for this comment, you make so many great points. I'd like to respond to some of them.
> First up: "But these physical exhibits require maintenance, and I was dismayed to see that several are in bad repair; some of them weren’t even working anymore, some seemed worn out, or didn’t seem well-designed to begin with."
> This is probably the key reason why there are so many screens in this particular museum: he answers his own question. Physical items, especially things with motion, will degrade with time and use, and maintenance can get really expensive. Physical models like a human heart aren't something that you can generally buy off the rack: museums and similar institutions will work with a company to produce something like that (I'm guessing fiberglass?) These are things that can run thousands and thousands of dollars to repair or outright replace.
You may be right that this is the answer to my unstated question of "Why are these exhibits not in perfect working order?" However, I reject it as an excuse, because, for instance, the building also requires maintenance, and this maintenance is apparently kept up with: it was clean, the doors opened and closed without squeaking, the elevators function.
Both the building and the exhibits are required to serve TFI's mission and need maintenance to perform their functions. If an exhibit is worth conceiving, building, and housing in the museum, it deserves maintenance, just as the museum building does. So I'm inferring that adequate exhibit maintenance is just not being prioritized either in the cash budget or the "volunteer effort budget". Emotionally, it feels terrible to walk my son over to a thing and be excited to show it to him, and have it not work. I'd rather the thing not be there.
> We also put in an interactive with an iPad that allows visitors to explore a painting in the exhibit in a lot more depth.
I have no problem with that because it's adding something to the experience of the artifacts on display. My problem is with the exhibit itself being a touchscreen. I would say there is very little point to visiting a museum in this case, because the web can distribute software more cheaply. My complaint is that a touchscreen does not count as being "hands-on", and TFI is all about being hands-on; that's what makes it so special, and to me, wonderful and worth fighting for.
> Finally, there's nostalgia at play here: I have a ton of fond memories of visiting museums with interactives and huge displays, and I'm glad that I can take my kids to them as well. But I'm also happy to see that these museums aren't stuck in the past and the only thing that they're doing is rehabilitating old exhibits that are decades old or out of date: they still have some of those things, but they're also making sure to bring in new interactives, looking at new scholarship and best practices for museums (because museums aren't static organizations or fields!) to change as audiences change. Like it or not, there are a lot of people who use screens as a way to take in information: museums have to keep abreast of those trends, because if we don't deliver information to people in familiar and accessible ways, they probably won't come in.
This, right here, is the rub. Because to my mind there is a fine line between meeting people where they are, and pandering to perceived preferences or limitations of our audience, and in the process, losing sight of the mission.
If we know kids are on screens a lot, or worse, believe that kids "need screens to be engaged", and thus proceed to skew our museum exhibits toward screens, are we doing right by them? I would argue, vociferously, that we are not. When we try to serve everyone, even those with little interest in our mission, by diluting our fidelity to our mission, then we end up serving poorly those who really are interested in our mission. There's probably a term for this phenomenon, but I don't know it.
There's also a fine line between doing what must be done to survive, and bending the mission in the interest of cashflows to the degree the organization is no longer serving its mission. TFI needs cashflow to survive and there are doubtless many ways for it to boost revenue and reduce costs that I would argue go against its mission. I'm arguing that the touchscreen-based exhibits are so far outside its mission that they need to go. The Kinect exhibits are on the edge for me, but I think those can stay.
THANK YOU for fighting this fight. I hope the responses here might add some empirical weight to your arguments — some people apparently do care about this.
And I believe you on how hard the reliability/durability challenges must be in engineering these things — I've seen what the kids do to them.
BTW, I think the mechanisms themselves are no small part of the interest; kids don't just get to see whatever phenomenon is being demonstrated by the device, they get to poke at the thing that does it and try to figure out how it works, and that's a lot of fun for a curious kid; there are layers there.
I think up until about 15 years ago, there was no such negativity against "screens", so it was genuinely seen as something modern to add them. With the added benefit of being more robust (no moving parts) and cheaper to change the content to keep it fresh.
Now that both adults and kids spend their days on screens, and are looking to limit their exposure, it suddenly makes less sense to have them in museums.
I always just skip video installations in modern art museums. Because these are usually a bit meh and dated technologically, and you always walk in mid way through some screening of some random thing.
Somehow it never occurs to them to just put that stuff on Youtube or one of the other streaming platforms. I guess that would be a bit too modern. It always annoys me when they have a lot of this going on; especially when the ticket price is high. Usually a sign of a weak curator and exposition. If filling the space with interesting art is a challenge, that's what you do. And the art is why I go there.
Central and explicit advocacy for authentic cultural/scientific participation. Frames museums as 'temples of curiosity and fascination' and advocates strongly for preserving direct engagement with real scientific/cultural objects. Criticizes reduction of cultural experience to digital simulation.
FW Ratio: 60%
Observable Facts
The author describes the Franklin Institute as a 'monumental marble temple of curiosity and fascination' and emphasizes the value of 'wandering in amazement through enormous spaces playing with amazing and interesting things.'
The article advocates: 'I believe museums exist to present the real thing for the visitor to experience with their own senses' and calls for elimination of screens in favor of 'real, tangible, interactive science exhibits.'
The piece states: 'Now is the time for TFI — and all museums — to take a stand against the tidal wave of digital garbage' and emphasizes that 'now more than ever in history, kids need a break from screens.'
Inferences
The author's framing of authentic sensory engagement with real scientific/cultural objects as morally and developmentally superior advocates for the right to meaningful participation in scientific and cultural life.
The emphasis on wonder, discovery, and direct experience with real phenomena advocates for preserving human access to authentic cultural and scientific advancement.
Core argument advocates for superior hands-on educational approaches over screen-based simulations. Redefines 'hands-on' to require genuine physical engagement. Explicitly critiques current museum educational practices and prescribes solutions.
FW Ratio: 60%
Observable Facts
The article argues that 'hands-on exhibits require genuine physical interaction and that 'touchscreens are not actually hands-on.'
The author states: 'museums exist to present the real thing for the visitor to experience with their own senses' and criticizes educational exhibits that rely on digital simulation.
The piece contrasts physical exhibits 'you don't even need to read anything to enjoy' (e.g., pulling ropes, spinning wheels) with screen-based experiences requiring software-mediated feedback.
Inferences
The detailed advocacy for tangible, sensory-based learning aligned with educational research reflects support for children's right to quality education.
The argument that museums should prioritize real objects over digital representations advocates for pedagogical approaches that better serve the right to education.
Article critiques inadequate maintenance and resource allocation for child development, implicitly advocating for better conditions supporting children's health and educational wellbeing.
FW Ratio: 50%
Observable Facts
The author criticizes the museum's resource allocation, noting that several physical exhibits are in poor repair or non-functional.
The article expresses concern about children's developmental needs, stating 'kids need a break from the screens' and discussing impacts on 'a kid's brain.'
Inferences
The critique of institutional resource misallocation toward screens rather than functioning hands-on exhibits reflects advocacy for adequate conditions supporting child development.
The emphasis on child health implications suggests alignment with the right to education and welfare supporting children's adequate standard of living.
Describes screens as 'lame video game,' 'digital garbage,' and characterizes screen-based learning as an 'experiential race to the bottom.'
appeal to fear
'Now more than ever in history, kids need a break from the screens that all too many of them are sadly often plugged into by default' and 'tidal wave of digital garbage that is consuming humanity, especially kids.'
appeal to authority
Mentions wife's credentials as 'science writer who used to be the only staff writer covering space for New Scientist and before that, worked at NASA' to lend credibility to critique of rocket design simulation.
build 1ad9551+j7zs · deployed 2026-03-02 09:09 UTC · evaluated 2026-03-02 10:41:39 UTC
Support HN HRCB
Each evaluation uses real API credits. HN HRCB runs on donations — no ads, no paywalls.
If you find it useful, please consider helping keep it running.