It was fitting that on our last full day in Tokyo we visited the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation. That’s it’s full name, but it’s so long the Japanese call it Muraikan for short, which means ‘future.” Given its focus, it’s most appropriate. We were hosted by their international outreach team and their director, Dr. Mamoru Mohri, who did two missions on the space shuttle.
The museum opened in 2000 in a classy contemporary building and is full of light with an energetic vibe and crowds of people. This is spring break week, and there was a long line at the ticket booth outside and masses of young children in the special exhibit on the first floor which was all about co-creation and the linkages and connections between technology and art.
Children drew something on paper and then it was projected on this wall.
Video panel–historic painting animated–part of special exhibit
In the entrance lobby (this area only is free admission), you can sit on a bench or a lounger and gaze upon a large replica of planet Earth that is suspended from the ceiling, changes frequently, and is made up of LED panels. You can also walk the spiral ramp that takes you closer to it. It is amazing and brings home the interconnectedness of all of us.
Other floors included a relatively new space for very young children, a cafe with tables of three different heights and sizes (little ones for kids), and such exhibits as how the brain works, life in 2050 in a model city, a deep sea submersible that you can climb into, and a big attraction, a female android, and the robot ASIMO created by Honda. ASIMO gives performances three times a day that include it moving in a variety of ways, jumping, talking (Japanese and English transcriptions are on a wall screen), and even singing. ASIMO was quite something to watch and hear and the area was packed with visitors.
As we toured the museum, we encountered a volunteer (in an orange vest) and later a science communicator (white vest). Muraikan has 600 volunteers and 50 science communicators in addition to other staff. About 1.4 million people visit each year, and the museum offers a full range of science workshops and other activities. They also provide lab space for researchers from other institutions for several years at a time. The labs are open to the public at set times, and Dr. Mohri commented that not only were visitors impacted by seeing “real” scientists up close; the scientists themselves were changed.
To round out our day, we strolled in the lovely Japanese garden behind the New Otani Hotel. This is an extremely old and historic garden and when Mr. Otani was building the hotel on the adjacent land, he directed that the garden be retained and maintained. It rambles up and down along stone steps with a pond, benches and a bright red lattice bridge, an oasis midst the city’s bustle.
Now, time to say, “sayonara, Tokyo.” It’s been great!
Yesterday we visited the Vietnam National Museum of Nature (VNMN) and met with the director, assistant director, and head of the specimen collection department. VNMN is a new museum, having only been founded in 2006. They are state-owned and under the aegis of the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology. Within Vietnam, they are one of twelve like institutions and VNMN is considered the leading one. Their scientists spend time in the field and have discovered some new species, mainly frogs. Their collection is modest at 40,000 specimens, but their dreams and plans are big ones. And they have the requisite dinosaur outside in front!
Their current exhibition space is 300 square meters (or about 3200 square feet) in size. The exhibit here, Organism Evolution, focuses on the origins of life and the history of life with specimens from the collection highlighting biodiversity. It just opened in May 2014. The space is very well lighted and I found it to be warm and welcoming. They have managed to fit in a lot of materials and content in a way that is attractive without feeling cluttered. Also included is a very large interactive map on the floor that shows over time Vietnam’s coastline and oceans, earthquake events in the region, oil deposits, and the like.
The primary audience is school children from kindergarten through elementary and secondary school with about 15 percent of their overall total being non-school visitors. Admission is free and attendance is running at 4,000 visitors per month.
For the future, the museum is doing long range planning for a new home in a district on the outskirts of Hanoi. The site is large, 32 hectares or not quite 80 acres, and the proposed new museum building will be about a hundred times larger than the current exhibition room. Over the next two years, work will be done on the master site plan with the goal of having the new building open and staff all trained by 2025. This is a tall order as the economy is not as strong as it could be and resources will need to be found to make this a reality. I’d be curious to come back in ten years to see the results!
One of the primary purposes of this trip is to visit natural history and science museums to see what they are doing that is innovative and fresh and to spread the word about the California Academy of Sciences. Our first two visits were to the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum and the Science Centre Singapore.
The sign on the Science Library building at the National University of Singapore (NUS) is small and discreet and reads, Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research. I’d call this a very contemporary name, but it’s the old name. This museum was named for Stamford Raffles, the founder of modern Singapore, whose idea it was and himself an avid naturalist. It was founded in 1849 and later became the National Museum of Singapore. In the late 1960’s when the government decided to give greater priority to history and art museums, the Raffles collection, primarily zoological specimens, was about to be discarded when NUS agreed to take it.
The Raffles name was retired in 2014 and Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum (as part pf NUS) was born. And soon it will have a new home. Very soon. The current museum space in the science building is closed and the re-named new museum will open on April 18, 2015 in a brand new building in another part of town.
Midst stacked boxes and evidence of a move in progress, we met with the museum director, Peter Ng, an affable and direct man who was most welcoming and happy to share the museum’s story and his insights. In 2005, he and several colleagues did a tour of natural history museums in the U.S. and visited not only the California Academy of Sciences, but also the Field Museum in Chicago, the Smithsonian, the American Museum of Natural History, and a museum in Kansas. There they learned about how American museums are financed and about fundraising.
What Peter and his colleagues have done in Singapore is unprecedented. University scientists in Singapore are not accustomed to American style fundraising and yet, with the designation of a parcel of land from the university, they raised the remaining tens of millions within the stipulated 6 month deadline for keeping the land. And they raised additional money to create an endowment. They are also approaching the operations of the museum with an eye to what Peter called financial economy; they have a corporate board, are doing marketing for event rentals, etc. and will charge admission. Peter is also keen to do more community outreach.
Everyone also told them they needed dinosaurs so they acquired three dinosaurs at a reasonable price , a “family” that the seller wanted to keep together. Dinosaurs aside, the new museum will have a Southeast Asia focus and will play an important role in the region given that Singapore is more prosperous and advanced than some of its neighbors. We encouraged Peter to return to San Francisco and see the “new” Academy and he expressed great interest in collaborating with our research colleagues, several of whom he knows well. We would love to come back in about 9 months to see the new museum in action!
The Science Centre Singapore (SCS) was closed for its regular monthly maintenance day, but we were able to check out the entrance way and the Kinetic Garden before meeting with three of the leadership team: TM Lim, chief executive; Clarence Sirisena, deputy chief executive; and Daniel Tan, acting senior director in the Projects and Exhibition Division. Their building is old by Singapore standards, 38 years, and some of it is a bit tired and cluttered. The leadership, however, is engaging and energetic and described some wonderful programs already underway as well as future initiatives.
The government is planning to build a new science centre close by on the other side of a small lake which might be ready by 2020. This is a high visibility national project as the government wants to make that lake district a destination and the centre has a track record for delivering on programs and being willing to take risks.
We talked about sustainability and how Singapore is addressing that; they have no natural resources and still rely on fossil fuels, but there are early efforts in the area of solar power and several new hotels are very green. The centre itself is collaborating with a French university on an exhibit about sustainable cities, what does it take for urban areas to be sustainable.
SCS belongs to or is part of the Ministry of Education which funds it and sees 150,000 students a year, so lots of interactions with that audience. They have worked to augment their government funding by developing partnerships with corporations and even some government agencies, primarily for exhibits, with one example being a government agency providing support for their climate change exhibit. Imagine that happening in the U.S.
Science without walls is one of their aims and they have a very successful and robust science busker program which they began in 2007. (Buskers, for those who haven’t been in London Tube Stations or on Stroget in Copenhagen, are street performers who play or sing for donations.) Applicants for SCS’s program had to audition, those selected participated in a workshop, and then uploaded videos of their performances to You Tube where they were subject to voting. Ultimately, the winners got to do a whole day of busking at the centre, were professionally evaluated, and finalists were given a contract for future performances on site and elsewhere, including occasionally in other countries.
The science centre also holds a 3-week long annual science festival which takes place in shopping malls, parks, and even attractions like Universal Studios, as well as on site. Last year they created and opened KidsSTOP, a separate place for children ages 18 months to 8 years old. As TM said, “children are born scientists.” They work closely too with school teachers and have developed a series of ten very popular science learning kits for use in the classroom. A current new project is reaching out to preschools and childcare centers and providing materials for an electricity corner and a kitchen science corner, both hands-on science learning opportunities for young children.
We spent the better part of the day in the London Bridge area of the city and learned about Science Gallery London from Daniel Glaser (pictured above.) It is part of the Global Science Gallery Network begun in Dublin in 2008 to engage 15-25 year olds with science. More specifically to engage them “where art and science collide” through a variety of media—film, theater, immersive and online experiences, art of all types, and the like. London is the second location for Science Gallery and it will officially open in 2016. In the meantime, it is in pre-season mode, as it were, before its new home is created. Set in the shadow of the Shard and just steps from the London Bridge Tube and rail stations, Science Gallery is at a busy crossroads and the ideal spot for attracting an audience. It is affiliated with King’s College and all of the future Science Gallery locations (goal is to have a global presence of eight of them by 2020) will be based at universities. But part of their mission is to engage with the entire community and to be a bridge between academe and the city. Future sites include New York, Bangalore, and Melbourne. Why not San Francisco, I say?
King’s College Guy’s Campus
According to Dan, their enthusiastic and well-qualified director, the plan is to have 3-4 seasons each year around a common theme. This fall (September and October 2014) is a time of experimentation and a prototype of what is to come. The SG folks worked with youth in the community as well as with staff and researchers at King’s College to find out what topics and concepts interested them and then have commissioned professional artists and producers to create works. This is a facilitated approach to content development, but one that gets at what the young people want to know about, not what the adults or program staff think they should. Dan and his staff did six months of engagement work ahead of any programming. One novel aspect is that the media team is comprised entirely of youth and led by two sisters, aged 17 and 19, who have 16,000 You Tube subscribers.
Theme for the fall is FREQUENCIES: Tune into Lifeand it relates to the sounds of life, to the rhythms and cycles of our body. Involvement in FREQUENCIES includes: a juggler interacting with children, a cellist at the cancer center, a DJ with a market trader, looking at the physiology of sleep, and the participation of a hospital porter and a lung pollution expert. The emphasis in program development is on rapid prototyping with nine collaborators having just one week in which to create a new sound, and a sound that would be open source!
Science Gallery will have no permanent collections and will focus to some extent, but not exclusively, on issues of health and medicine, given its location on the Guy’s campus. This campus is home to the medical school and Guy’s Hospital. There will be several pre-seasons prior to the official opening of Science Gallery in 2016. Future themes are likely to be: “Spare Parts” (transplantation), “Teeth,” and in 2016, “Addictive.” For this last theme, they will do engagement work with addicts, pushers, specialists, and others in order to generate ideas for the works themselves.
Beginning in 2015, the building they are now in will be renovated to include a theater, a wide open gallery-like space, production facilities, and a cafe. Project cost is 12 million pounds which is a combination of funds from the university, from individual donors, and the Guy’s Hospital charity. Ongoing operating costs will come from the university budget.
Current home of Science Gallery to be renovated in 2015
Students involved in the project were recruited through the Youth Media Agency and are paid for their time. For those familiar with the California Academy of Sciences, Science Gallery has elements of NightLife, Brilliant!Science, Careers in Science, and Teen Advocates for Science Communication (TASC) with its flash mobs. One significant difference is that all events are free; some revenue will be realized from the cafe and a shop. The current staff is quite small, around a dozen individuals, plus three working on commission for this season, and the students. Attendance goal for the first year is 350,000.
We had the privilege of attending one of the FREQUENCIES events, a performance by Bishi, a Bengali British musician and singer based in London, which featured images from a lab recording of her sleep patterns juxtaposed with haunting music and singing. It was different and certainly combined science with art. It will be informative to watch how Science Gallery London evolves, how they define success and what outcomes they achieve. And it would be fun to return in 2016 when they are up and fully operational in their new space.
