War in the Persian Gulf had a special effect on Dr. James S. Kahn and his staff at the Museum of Science and Industry. Long before hostilities began, Kahn knew that the museum`s sprawling exhibit on naval technology was hopelessly outdated, with models of Polaris missiles and 20-year-old submarines. Now, in the wake of the United States` high-tech military triumph over Iraq, the public knows it too.
This rankles but also ignites Jack Kahn, who became the museum`s president in 1987. A scientist himself, he worked actively in defense research during a long career at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California. He`s also a patient administrator, and he knows that the best way to run a large institution is to raise expectations of people around him.
So Kahn lined up the Navy to help fund a new exhibit. He sent exhibit designers to cruise on warships. The result is several years away, but it should impress even the most devoted viewer of televised war coverage.
”We want an exhibit that shows what it`s really like to be in a command communications center in today`s Navy, not something 50 years ago,” Kahn says.
If the Museum of Science and Industry still seems rife with technological dinosaurs, Jack Kahn is promising a museum that will be on the leading edge of science: Instead of corporate-sponsored exhibitions that resemble a trade show, the museum should address critical issues such as nuclear energy, waste disposal and biogenetics. He`s aware that it is a huge job. He doesn`t see an alternative.
”This should be a place where people really become informed,” Kahn says, ”and not just about a great big train we have out there.”
To achieve this goal, Kahn is about to raise expectations again-this time with a $5 admission charge, which will start June 10. (Thursdays will remain free.) As a free museum, the Museum of Science and Industry has grown to be the second most popular museum in the country, after the National Air and Space Museum in Washington. Now Kahn and his staff must watch nervously to see if the new ticket price clashes with admittedly old exhibits.
”They said we should fasten our seat belts if we hired Jack,” says James Bere, former chairman of the museum board, and chief executive officer of Borg-Warner Corp. Yet despite the difficulties inherent in Kahn`s revolutionary vision, the board of trustees seems to be enjoying the ride.
Re-evaluating the museum has been ”a massive job,” says current board chairman William L. Weiss, chief executive officer of Ameritech. But trustees have been pleased with Kahn`s leadership. ”Historically, this museum has dealt with what has been accomplished in the past,” Weiss says. ”With Kahn we will begin to look at the future of technology more aggressively.”
”He has brought a level of enthusiasm that trustees as well as staff find catching,” says Gene Brandt, the museum`s vice president of external affairs.
”I`d say he`s been like a breath of fresh air,” says Edward Schwinn, chief executive officer of Schwinn Bicycle Co., and, at 42, one of the younger trustees on the board.
The Disney touch
How fresh the air? For one thing, Kahn had no museum experience before joining Science and Industry. Two of his three vice presidents came from outside the museum world as well. Seasoned exhibits professionals are in key positions. But the power structure suggests that innovation won`t be held back by worn customs in the museum world.
Designs for future exhibits specify ”motion simulators” and ”startling experiences,” the sort of popular appeal that people pay for at places like Disneyland and Epcot Center. They also raise inevitable questions about how kinetic a cultural institution should be.
But among people close to the museum, doubters are hard to find. There an unshakable seriousness to the Museum of Science and Industry of the future, and no one has accused the president of becoming a ringmaster or impresario.
Kahn, in fact, is a true scientist, and one with a conventionally successful career already behind him. A native of Brooklyn, and graduate of the College of the City of New York, he earned his Ph.D. in geophysical sciences from the University of Chicago in 1956. He then taught for four years at the University of Rhode Island, after which he began a long tenure at Lawrence Livermore. In California, he embarked on something duly arcane: high- temperature ceramics to be used in the core of nuclear reactors.
In time, he was given administrative duties and eventually became principal deputy director of the laboratory, in charge of scientific and technical operations at a facility of 10,000 people. Kahn was closely involved in underground nuclear testing for a portion of his career. The testing wasn`t public, but the outcome was, and helped sparked endless debate on the subject of nuclear weapons.
Debate, in Kahn`s experience, leads to light as well as heat. So the museum`s new, comprehensive plan, called ”MSI 2000,” is also the result of extensive testing. New ideas for the place have been bounced off trustees, staff, consultants and even public pollsters working Michigan Avenue. The plans call for extensive new halls and a re-evaluation of all exhibits. Corporate sponsors still will donate money and expertise, but new exhibits may not bear their logos and will look critically at issues such as nuclear energy, waste disposal and biogenetics.
Exhibiting scrutiny
Since its opening in 1933, the museum has served major industries as a corporate showcase. Few people deny that the ”trade show” formula was successful in decades past. But technology has become a different animal today. ”There are issues,” Kahn says, ”that people need to understand before there`s a bill in Congress that says we`re going to spend $100 billion to improve the rail system or the highways or something else in the United States.”
”Things are already changing,” says David Hennage, the museum`s new vice president for administration. ”We don`t just accept exhibitions as they come in. Now we have a hand in designing them. Right now we have several sponsors interested in major exhibit upgrades, and they know there`s a higher standard in terms of educational content.” Another part of the new Museum of Science and Industry will be forums and debates on ecology, medicine and other serious topics.
Despite promising plans, just how to educate people in science remains debatable, not only at the museum but in schools everywhere. Kahn does not claim to have all the answers, but he insists that museums have an important role. His own childhood experiences may not be typical, but they illustrate his point.
Kahn grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., in the 1930s and `40s, and museums played a large part in his education. ”Every Saturday for a number of years, I packed a lunch and went down to the Museum of Natural History,” he says.
”Between that and Ebbetts Field, that was where I spent almost all my free time.” He remembers, more than anything, the mastodons, huge ancient creatures that dominated great spaces in the museum. He also remembers ”a superb collection of cephalopods, all cross-sectioned and polished,” as well as wonderful dioramas with mammals. ”Is that what made me a scientist? I don`t know,” he says. ”What I do know is that the atmosphere was right.”
Making the atmosphere right at the Museum of Science and Industry is his current challenge. ”There has to be a sense of awe or splendor when you come into this facility,” he says. While intent on change, he also is certain that exhibits like the coal mine, the U-505 submarine and the giant heart model are remembered by children their whole lives. He calls these exhibits ”icons”
and promises to keep them.
Newer exhibits are designed to make equally indelible impressions. The giant domed Omnimax theater provides a sensational experience for children, and carries educational messages about the human body and the environment. A recent exhibit titled ”Explorations of the Human Brain” uses colorful push- buttons and videos to illustrate the complex functions of thought and perception.
To pique the interest of visitors, and hold on to their fragile attention, plans are to divide the entire museum into a new set of ”thematic zones.” They won`t be physics, chemistry, biology and astronomy, the traditional academic formula. They`ll be ”Science and Discovery,” ”City and Farm” and ”The Environment,” among others. ”Referring to things people understand is a very healthy way to get them started,” Kahn says. ”The abstract model doesn`t have to present itself to them right away.”
There`s nothing abstract, to be sure, about ideas for a zone on the environment, completion of which may be five years away. This section will include a ”ride” that whisks visitors through simulated tropics and polar regions. ”It will explain how degradation of the rain forests has an impact on Antarctica, and how that has an impact on other environments,” says Marvin Pinkert, the museum`s director of projects and planning.
”Entertainment Technology” is the name of another thematic zone, which will cover everything from the science of television to techniques in special effects (the subject of a popular exhibition two years ago). ”We want to take people in at their own level of interest,” Pinkert says. ”In this way we can use the entertainment industry to teach science and technology before anybody notices it.”
This, of course, leads to the larger question of entertainment in museums. In a place of learning, how much flash and dash is permissible? As more bells, whistles and ”interactive” devices are installed, how much is too much?
Pushing the buttons
”We have never been a formal teaching or research center, so the boundaries on us are less restrictive than on other museums,” Kahn says. Experiences like a ride on the bridge of an aircraft carrier, or a trip through the coal mine, will remain the museum`s stock in trade. Nevertheless, as new exhibits come on line in the next few years, Kahn wants visitors to constantly ask, ”What`s the educational value in that?”
Many American museums have been criticized recently for being too much like Disneyland. Others have been lambasted for educational messages that are contaminated by commercial sponsors. Whether this museum finds the proper balance, of course, remains to be seen.
For the time being, Kahn`s attitude is that nothing teaches people about technology better than technology itself. So the Museum of Science and Industry will remain a place of push-buttons, videos and ever-more-spectacular ways of making people amazed by the lessons of science and industry.
For this we will get no apologies from the president: ”Listen, museums are moving toward entertainment. Disney is moving much more into the technical world. They probably will never meet. But both of us are in the business of attracting people to their facilities. We believe that having fun while you`re learning is OK.”
