FOSSIL LABORATORY EXHIBITIONS IN NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUMS: COMMUNICATING THE HUMAN DIMENSION OF FOSSIL RESEARCH WITH VISITORS
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Authors
Gavigan, Annette Marie
Issue Date
2007
Type
Capstone
Language
en
Keywords
Alternative Title
Abstract
Natural history museums throughout the United States incorporate working laboratory exhibitions—fossil laboratories in particular—into their exhibition menus. Through working fossil laboratories, visitors can observe paleontologists or volunteers preparing, cleaning, and identifying real fossils in an authentic laboratory setting. At some fossil laboratories, visitors can not only observe paleontologists engaged in preparation work but also can converse with them about their work.
For this project, I investigated how natural history museums in the United States can develop and design working fossil laboratory exhibitions to communicate their missions to visitors. My purpose was to understand working fossil laboratories as exhibits within the context of the history of fossil displays in natural history museums and the two hundred-year long debate in these museums over how to balance their core functions of research and public education. I interviewed 21 museum professionals—namely fossil preparators, curators of paleontology, exhibit developers, and directors—involved in developing or working in KI fossil laboratories at eight natural history museums in the United States. To understand visitors' experiences at fossil laboratories that provide opportunities to talk with paleontologists, I conducted an in-depth visitor study at the Fossil Prep Lab at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, which utilized and expanded on a visitor studies instrument developed by researchers at the Smithsonian. My visitor study examined the relationships between the messages visitors take away, the impact of talking with an expert, the experiences visitors find satisfying, and visitors' experience ratings. Based on the results from professional interviews and visitor studies, I determined the opportunities and addressed the challenges of operating working fossil laboratories as public exhibitions. See footnote