THE LAY OF THE LAND—THE CURRENT CONTEXT FOR COMMUNICATING EVOLUTION IN NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUMS

Robert “Mac” West

[Editor’s Note: This is a written summary of the presentation given by West at the opening of the Florida Museum of Natural History’s conference “Enhancing Natural History Museum Visitor Understanding of Evolution,” Gainesville, FL, October 22, 2004.] See ILR#69, Page 22.

Visitor Expectations

Visitors to various kinds of natural history attractions arrive with certain expectations for what they will see and do. This is especially the case for “general visits,” e.g., those not driven by a special exhibition or event. People going to aquariums anticipate experiences with sharks, whales and porpoises (big oceanic things), colorful reef fishes, and maybe some really exoticlooking organisms such as seahorses or jellyfish. Zoo attendees are looking especially for the “charismatic megafauna,”—lions, tigers (and bears), elephants, kangaroos, gorillas, and such, as well as newborns, rarities (pandas), and novelties (e.g., burying beetles, bats, and / or capybaras). Visitors to natural history museums, in addition to dioramas filled with taxidermied large mammals and materials from exotic human cultures, fully expect to see an array of dinosaurs and other big extinct things.

Thus, it is expected that natural history museums present specimens and artifacts that deal with change over time, or evolution. As a consequence, natural history museum visitors accept evolution and chronology as the organizer for much of their visit, even if they personally don’t understand or even like the concept of evolution.

This expectation is not front-and-center at living collections institutions, which work in the present tense and worry more about the future (habitat destruction, impending extinctions) than the past. Therefore, they have to work harder to bring evolution into their programs. To their credit, a number of zoos and aquariums are addressing evolution and its importance in understanding the diversity of their collections. For example, the St. Louis Zoo has had an animatronic Charles Darwin addressing its visitors since 1989, and the Miami Metrozoo recently opened a bird exhibit which explicitly relates living birds to their dinosaurian ancestors. Over the last several years, many zoos have had temporary exhibitions of animatronic dinosaurs, thus introducing the concept of geologic time, ancient extinctions, and, by implication, the evolutionary process.

Science centers vary enormously in their programmatic capabilities and approaches. Some, which have evolved from natural history museums (e.g., the Science Center of Minnesota, the St. Louis Science Center, and the Museum of Science, Boston) historically have had paleontology, and thus evolution, as a program element. Others, such as the Maryland Science Center, recently have added paleontology to their array of offerings. Still others approach evolution through their contemporary science programming in genetics and the biomedical sciences. This is the case with the Genetics exhibition at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.

Overt Evolution in Natural History Museums

The word “evolution” does not occur all that frequently in natural history museums— which are firmly based on the concept. For instance, at the Milwaukee Public Museum, I was a curator of an exhibition about the evolution of Planet Earth, euphemistically called The Third Planet. “Life Over Time” and similar circumlocutions show up regularly, as do gallery titles such as “The Fossil Hall” and “The Dinosaur Exhibit.” On the plus side, the American Museum of Natural History has its Hall of Human Biology and Evolution, which complements its five “fossil halls.” The San Diego Museum of Man in 2002 opened a new permanent exhibition titled Footsteps Through Time: Four Million Years of Human Evolution. And the host for this conference, the Florida Museum of Natural History features the Hall of Florida Fossils: Evolution of Life and Land.

Dinosaur diorama in the Milwaukee Public Museum

The explicit use of the word “evolution” is much more common outside of the United States. Just as an example, the Polish Academy of Sciences operates the Museum of Evolution in Warsaw. The Evolution Gallery is in the Melbourne Museum, Australia, Russia has its State Darwin Museum, and the Royal Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, recently closed its Evolution Gallery for refurbishment. The Grande Galerie de l’Evolution is a unit of the Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris.

In May 1979, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History opened a gallery on its main floor called Dynamics of Evolution. Even before it opened a suit was filed in federal court asserting that the use of federal funds in NMNH exhibits on evolution was a violation of the separation of church and state. On October 30, 1980, the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that NMNH exhibitions “that focus on the scientific theory of evolution do not violate the First Amendment requirement of separation of church and state.” Even so, on July 22, 1981, Rep. William Dannemeyer (R-CA) introduced an amendment to H.R. 4035 to “prohibit the Smithsonian Institution to use funds for public exhibits and performances to present the theory of evolution as the sole explanation of life’s origins.” That amendment was defeated on a point of order the same day. Despite these actions, the gallery was closed and replaced after several years.

However, this kind of attention directed toward the E-word certainly caused U.S. institutions to be very cautious about how direct they were in their terminology.

A graphical way to see how terminology is applied to exhibitions dealing with evolution is to tabulate the keywords self-selected by traveling exhibition marketers. The following data, taken from ILE’s Traveling Exhibitions Database (October 2004), suggests that there is a preference for talking about the products of evolution—the actual fossils, rather than the process or dynamics.

Where is it?

Today, evolution appears in natural history museums in three exhibition and program locations—paleontology and the fossil record, biodiversity and systematics, and genetics. As indicated below, it usually is implied or ignored rather than explicit.

Paleontology/Fossil Record
Exhibitions of large and impressive fossils have been staples at natural history museums virtually as long as those institutions have existed. Elijah Mermin (2002) provides an excellent review of the development of these exhibitions. He documents, and I attest to from my own experience, a surge of interest in dinosaurs (in particular) but also other large and extinct exotic vertebrates starting in the 1980s and accelerating into the 1990s and 2000s. Exhibitions developed during that time emphasized ancient environments and the adaptations of animals to them, with some attention to the process of discovery and collection. At the same time, some recognizable personalities emerged as prominent spokespeople for fossils and their importance—the Leakey family, Bob Bakker and Jack Horner stand out as highly visible individuals at the turn of the century.

From a purely practical perspective, natural history museums highlight their dinosaur/paleontology exhibitions as important visitor attractors and revenue generators. They are prominent in logos, identification graphics, slogans (Home of the Dinosaurs), and often stand as physical elements such as the concrete Triceratops on the Mall in front of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, the Allosaurus cast in front of the University of Wyoming’s Geological Museum, and the bronze statue of Torosaurus which will be placed in front of the Yale Peabody Museum in fall 2005.

In addition to the Third Planet gallery in Milwaukee, which opened in 1983, others have opened in the last twenty years—California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco (closed during construction); American Museum of Natural History, New York; Denver Museum of Nature and Science; Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia; University of Nebraska State Museum, Lincoln; the Field Museum, Chicago (closed for renovation); Cincinnati Museum of Natural History; Museum of the Rockies, Bozeman, MT; Science Museum of Minnesota, St. Paul; Fernbank Museum of Natural History, Atlanta; North Carolina Museum of Natural Science, Raleigh; Texas Tech University Museum, Lubbock; New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, Albuquerque; Cranbrook Institute of Science, Bloomfield Hills, MI; Canadian Museum of Nature, Ottawa; The Children’s Museum in Indianapolis; Texas Tech University Museum, Lubbock; Sam Noble Museum of Natural History at the University of Oklahoma, Norman; Sternberg Museum, Hays, KS; Museum of the Earth, Ithaca, NY; Calvert Marine Museum, Calvert, MD; Yale Peabody Museum, New Haven, CT; Texas Memorial Museum, Austin; Field House of Natural History, Vernal, UT; Idaho Museum of Natural History, Pocatello; and others with which I am not familiar or simply have overlooked.

Others are on the way, at the San Diego Museum of Natural History; the Field Museum, Chicago; the Museum of the Rockies, Bozeman, MT; the Royal Ontario Museum, Ottawa; the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh; the National Museum of Natural History, Washington; the Dallas Museum of Natural History; the Utah Museum of Natural History, Salt Lake City; and the University of Nebraska State Museum, Lincoln; just to name a few.

In addition, the last twenty years have seen numerous traveling exhibitions of animatronic dinosaurs and other extinct beasts, plus casts of the celebrated Tyrannosaurs rex, Sue, from the Field Museum. Several organizations travel collections of both cast and real skeletons, generally highlighting dinosaurs.

An animatronic Tyrannosaur

The original Sue at The Field Museum

Biodiversity and Systematics
Virtually every natural history museum has galleries that are devoted either to the major groups of modern animals, the region’s or world’s biogeographic zones, or (much less common), to basic ecosystems and their inhabitants. While there are numerous Mammal, Bird, Fish, etc. halls, there are few exhibitions which attempt to integrate the major taxonomic categories and explore their interrelationships.

The American Museum of Natural History has entered this arena twice, once explicitly and once implicitly. The explicit case is the Hall of Biodiversity, which clearly talks about the great diversity of animal life and illustrates it through a visually stimulating wall of diverse specimens. The new Hall of Ocean Life (see ILR 61) implicitly celebrates the diversity of life, in its case with the ocean environment as the container of that diversity.

Hall of Biodiversity at the American Museum of Natural History

The Eastern Ontario Biodiversity Museum in Kempville, south of Ottawa, is the only institution I can find which identifies itself as such. But, as is the case with most natural history museums, it is primarily interested in the contemporary environments of the region, not the evolutionary mechanisms which generated them.

The World Wildlife Fund circulated a traveling exhibition, Biodiversity 911, for several years, and the Royal Ontario Museum operates the interactive “Hands-On Biodiversity” gallery. Both are prospective in nature, presenting ways to interpret current biodiversity and offering remedies for preventing biodiversity loss in the future.

The Dallas Museum of Natural History is planning a second facility with global biodiversity of a primary theme, the Texas Memorial Museum in Austin recently opened the Biodiversity Discovery Hall, and the Coastal Discovery Museum in Hilton Head, SC has its Biodiversity: A Sea Island Classroom.

While these galleries and programs are the life-blood of natural history museums, evolution is usually a minor thought in their presentation and programming. An exception is the new Kenneth E. Behring Family Hall of Mammals at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. In addition to showing mammalian diversity, it takes mammals back to their common Triassic ancestor in a “meet your relatives” format.

Model of the Triassic mammal Morganucadon in the Behring Hall of Mammals at the National Museum of Natural History

Genetics/Genomics
This topic is considered within the purview of many science museums, and exhibitions and programs about it are increasingly common, especially in science centers. This is clearly an area where museums are trying to present current science and research which is directly relevant to daily life and contemporary issues. Much exhibition and program activity was stimulated by the high public profile of the Human Genome Project as well as by increasing attention to controversies surrounding cloning, genetic profiling, genetically engineered food, and analyses of fetal genetic diseases.

A major permanent exhibition, Genetics: Decoding Life, opened at the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, in 2002, and the renovated Tech Museum of innovation includes Genetics: Technology with a Twist. The DNA Zone has been at the St. Louis Science Center for many years. Four substantial traveling exhibitions currently are available—Genomics from the American Museum of Natural History, Genome: The Secret of How Life Works from Clear Channel Exhibitions, and Genetics! from the Pacific Science Center, The GEEE! In GENOME from the Canadian Museum of Nature and Traits of Life from The Exploratorium. Three of the above were reviewed in ILR 56.

Activity station in Genome: The Secret of How Life Works

A new traveling exhibition Gregor Mendel: Genius of Genetics, created by the Vereinigung zur Förderung der Genomforschung (VFG), Vienna, Austria, is opening its North American tour at the Field Museum in Fall 2006.

Keyword searches for “evolution” in the descriptions of these genetics exhibitions found it in only two: it appears twice in Clear Channel’s Genome teacher guide (once in the WGBH Evolution TV program web address and once in a quotation from the National Academy of Science), and twice in the Mendel description (referring to Mendel’s successors who apply genetics to the study of evolution).

Other New Initiatives
The American Museum of Natural History is planning a traveling exhibition on Charles Darwin to open in Fall 2005. Darwin! will include personal effects, collections and books and manuscripts, and examine the modern status of Darwinian evolution.

The Houston Museum of Natural Science is finalizing arrangements with the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa to bring the 3.2.million-year-old australopithecine hominid skeleton known as Lucy and other Ethiopian fossils to the U.S. for an exhibition tour from 2006 to about 2009. This proposed exhibition has created a substantial controversy about the wisdom and safety of shipping such a precious and delicate specimen among museums primarily for exhibition, rather than research, purposes.

The University of Nebraska State Museum is spearheading the Explore Evolution Project, partnered with the Exhibits Museum of the University of Michigan, the Kansas Museum and Biodiversity Center at the University of Kansas, the Museum of the Rockies and Montana State University, the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History at the University of Oklahoma, the Texas Memorial Museum at the University of Texas, and the Science Museum of Minnesota. Exhibits will be prepared that focus on seven research projects that have made major contributions to our understanding of evolution; these will open at each participating museum in late 2005—early 2006.

Cladogram of dinosaur relationships at the American Museum of Natural History

Summary

The question driving this survey of the “lay of the land” in presenting evolution is: How well is evolution presented and used in these museum exhibitions?

The simple answer is “not very well.”

Evolution is implicit is virtually all the paleontology/fossil exhibitions, but evolutionary mechanisms and forces are not included. Concepts of time and extinction, as well as major adaptations, are generally presented through phylogenies and cladograms.

Evolution is implicit in biodiversity/systematics exhibitions, but mechanisms are ignored. There are efforts to investigate environmental pressure, but often they are couched in the form of deleterious impacts on the natural world by humans. Some exhibitions (e.g., NMNH) incorporate fossil ancestors and phylogenies.

Evolution is almost totally ignored in the genetics/genomics exhibitions. Even when the impact of genetic changes, mutations, chromosome reorganizations and other basic elements of gene function are discussed, their impact on phenotypes, relationship to the external environment, and heritability over time simply are not mentioned. Genomics exhibitions deal exclusively with the individual present and the future and do not engage in discussions of the even larger picture at the population level.

References

Bossert, Carol, and Robert “Mac” West.
"The Challenge of Exhibiting Contemporary Science".
The Informal Learning Review, no. 54, May-June 2002, pp. 18-21.

Mermin, Elijah,
Putting It On: Negotiating Decisions in the Development of Three Evolution Exhibitions at Natural History Museums.
M.A. Dissertation, John F. Kennedy University, San Francisco, CA. 160pp. 2002.

Robert “Mac” West is the Editor and Publisher of The Informal Learning Review. He may be reached at ile@informallearning.com.

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