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Education

Rebooting The National Air and Space Museum

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
April 6, 2018
Filed under ,
Rebooting The National Air and Space Museum

Former NASA scientist to lead National Air and Space Museum, Washington Post
“Ellen Stofan will become the John and Adrienne Mars Director of NASM starting April 30, the museum announced Thursday. She succeeds Gen. J.R. “Jack” Dailey, who retired in January after 18 years at the helm of one of the world’s most popular museums. After 25 years working in space-related organizations, Stofan said she is eager to shape the way the museum educates and engages the public about aviation and space. “One of my biggest passions is outreach and communication about science and technology,” Stofan, 57, said. “What better place than the Air and Space Museum to engage everyone in the excitement of aviation and exploration.”
Keith’s note: I have been visiting NASM since it opened. For more than 30 years it has been minutes from my home. I have also rented it for receptions, done interviews there, written for its magazine, and seen one of my books sold there. And now there’s an annex 11 miles from my house. I am a fan – for life. Alas, I have also seen how this organization fought back against innovation, ignored other people’s ideas, and seems oblivious to the changing nature of how people interact in the real and virtual world. Some of their exhibits (the solar system for example) have not changed in more than 30 years with only a new picture inserted now and then. The organization needs a kick in the butt. I am hoping Ellen can do that. NASM could be much more than it already is if only they considered input from people other than the usual suspects.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

15 responses to “Rebooting The National Air and Space Museum”

  1. Jeff Greason says:
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    At a time when aerospace is going through it’s most exciting phase since Apollo, the NASM (which I’ve probably visited 20 times and three for the Annex), hasn’t changed much. Now arguably, part of what a museum should do is conserve the past, but in the aerospace profession, museums are an ESSENTIAL part of professional education. You simply can’t learn how to design a vehicle without understanding what was done before and how it was done that way, and NASM was and is much more “hey, it’s a cool plane” and much less “how does *that* part work*.

    Learned much more from the X-15 in the Air Force Museum Annex where you can actually get up next to it and see the mechanisms than I ever did from the one in the NASM (though if you lean out over the top floor balcony, you can get close enough for some of the details….). Wish her every success!

    • Steve Pemberton says:
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      A couple of years ago they moved the X-15 and the other research and presidential aircraft into the new fourth building at the USAF museum. No more shuttle buses to the on-base annex. This allows all museum visitors to see these planes, not just the limited number per day that were allowed into the annex. Unfortunately that also means ropes around the planes now, no more up close access like we had at the annex.

      The X-15 actually was the first plane moved from the annex to the new building. They invited Joe Engle, the last surviving X-15 pilot to the rollover.

      • fcrary says:
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        I’m still happy they moved the YB-70 Valkyrie inside. Back around 1990, it was outside and slowly rusting away.

  2. Michael Spencer says:
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    I recently visited DC to see some of our great American monuments and museums. And I have to say that I was dissapointed by NASM.

    Sure it was cool to see a LEM, and other artifacts. But the place lacks a cohesion. At the very least, better signage.

    Still, it was packed with school kids. In fact, I felt the entire facility had been dumbed down to ‘kid level’. This isn’t a terrible thing, in itself; but NASM is a national treasure with a national audience. I felt the same way, though, in NYC viewing what had become of the American Museum of Natural History at the hands of Neil deGrasse Tyson.

    Maybe I’m over-estimating the average American audience?

    Or, maybe I’m getting old?

    Get off my lawn!

    • fcrary says:
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      If I had to guess, you are over-estimating people’s attention span, not their intelligence. But exhibits geared to that aren’t uncommon. The last time I visited the Exploratorium in San Francisco, I was a little disappointed. When they moved out of the Palace of Fine Arts, they made a bunch of changes and some of my favorite toys (er… exhibits) went away.

    • Synthguy says:
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      Same experience for me last year, visiting NASM whilst I was in DC visiting from Australia. Loads of kids, but they did not seem to be that interested in the exhibits, or spend much time trying to understand the significance of what they were seeing. The crowds and noise made NASM in the Mall less than enjoyable.

      The annexe out near Dulles is much better in my view as a place where you can go, spend a day looking at key artefacts from US air and space history, and have the time and peace and quiet to think about their significance. Be it Enola Gay, or the SR-71 or Space Shuttle Discovery.

  3. Bob Mahoney says:
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    Which specific museums today would you suggest as models for NASM (and the rest of the Smithsonian) to emulate? Engaging the visitors effectively must be balanced against crowd management, and the protection of the artifacts must obviously be of the highest priority.

    I wonder how much visitor volume affects their choices regarding the nature of their displays. The Smithsonian museums, especially NASM, see a LOT of people daily come through their doors, and interactive displays slow folks down.

    When the AMNH in NYC revamped the dinosaur halls they added state-of-the-art interactive elements for the visitors; personally, I just wanted to see the bones, etc and read the plaques. Scrolling through touch-screen menus was simply too much info to digest while walking about. A few dynamic explanatory non-interactive displays certainly added some interest, but at a later time I visited a number of these were not working any more. Something to think about.

    I hope to have a visit in a few weeks (to see the 2001 exhibit especially) and will give it all a deeper ponder while I’m there. Effective storytelling, I think, is still the key to engagement.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      I’ve been re-thinking my snarky comments above, and come to realize as you point out that museum design is not a simple puzzle.

      But I DO think that a clear information hierarchy would be helpful: simple, first-pass level stuff for those only marginally interested; flashy, interactive stuff for kiddies; more immersive and detailed for those of us interested in the nuts and bolts.

      Design at any level and of any material depends on a simple statement; a touchstone. When we encounter thoughtful design, that touchstone is immediately apparent. That’s not the case here.

      (I’ve not been to the annex yet).

      • fcrary says:
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        I hierarchy of exhibits, with different levels of detail, is an interesting idea. But I’m trying to see how you could lay it out. NASM, like most museums I’ve seen, is laid for visitors to follow more-or-less a single path thought the exhibit halls. The large galleries are more freeform with people wandering from one display to another, more or less at whim. I’m trying (and failing) to imagine how you could set up a smooth flow of visitors through an exhibit hall that had some exhibits for people who wanted to see the details and some who didn’t. I could imagine an “A” shape, with one path in, a branch between a right turn shorter path and a longer up-turn-back path, and then reconnecting before the exit (if my description makes any sense.) But how do you direct people one way or another? Posting signs saying “nerds go this way” or “people who don’t care about the details should turn left” would certainly offend someone.

        (The annex, by the way, is almost all a free wander from one exhibit to another. But don’t go there expecting to learn too much. It’s much more set up for people who already know about an aircraft like the Enola Gay or Langley’s Aerodrome No. 5, and want to see them with their own eyes.)

        • Michael Spencer says:
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          The fact that you don’t see the solution simply means that design is hard 🙂

          And adding to the difficulty is this: very often as professional designers we satisfy the needs of a client who is not the end-user, serving a sales-oriented developer, for instance, at the expense of the maintaining HOA.

          I won’t pretend to solve the problem here. I’d only note that once the functions are resolved, physical form becomes obvious. The phrase ‘form follows function’ is well-tested, and true, because it works.

          It means that the difficult part of this sort of exercise isn’t in imagining the form of a building; that’s the horse when we are back at the cart. It’s in the organization of data.

          • Bob Mahoney says:
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            Disney knows something about engaging people with educational programs and crowd flow (Consider EPCOT). An affiliate of theirs helped with the design of Space Center Houston. I was involved (quite peripherally) with one of the original displays there.

            It opened with high hopes and did a more-than-half-decent job originally of informing its audience of both the history of human spaceflight and space shuttle operations with some excitement woven in, but over the years it slowly accrued many ‘incidental’ displays and features that seemed geared mostly toward keeping children entertained (a large indoor playscape, for example) as space exploration became more of a backdrop to all the ‘engaging’ fun they seemed desperate to offer.

            Without the shuttle, SCH seems still to be struggling to find a cohesive theme for their ‘experience’. ISS is, after all, a research laboratory and not the story-material of epic adventure like ascent into space or re-entry back into the atmosphere to a pin-point touchdown. [Even our basic rendezvous interactive faded away after a few years; too cerebral I guess…]

            I agree that the solution is out there for NASM but it must begin with a better understanding of its mission combined with what realistically can be achieved in a large-crowd-flow-defined venue; I think the powers-that-be may have lost touch with that essential foundation.

            As I said, I’ll give this more thought next week when I hopefully squeeze a visit in after my blood draws…

      • Bob Mahoney says:
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        The Annex is more than anything else a Cathedral of Aerospace Technology.

  4. William Railton says:
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    For those interested here an article from last year about the renovations that will be going on at NASM. https://wtop.com/dc/2017/10

  5. Tally-ho says:
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    I was there last week with my wife and daughter. There definitely needs to be more interaction, and the exhibits that are interactive could be more engrossing and challenging. I think they underestimate kids’ interest in details. Something like a 3D explodable model of an aircraft and how it functions, maybe over with the actual aircraft with a pane of flass, would be more interesting than just a VR cockpit that they could see on YouTube. A couple of years ago planes like the X-15 and X-1 were on the ground for some curation. It would be nice if they were more accessible than just hanging from the ceiling. Also, it looks like one of the Enterprise’s engine spinning things has crapped out.

  6. Michael Spencer says:
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    OK. I’m gonna say it because I can’t hold back anymore.

    Folks, government-hating and tax-cutting have consequences. It’s more than roads, and bridges, and trains, though Lord knows there’s that.

    The teachers are *finally* fed up.

    Oh. And don’t start with ‘but we have to cut the waste!” Yes. There’s waste. There are also 30 year old text books. And national treasures, like this museum, that are falling apart. And for those who think that more money comes in when tax rates are lower, I have two words: Kansas. And Oklahoma.

    We are running this great country into the ground.