San Francisco’s Exploratorium
A Worldwide Revolution in Museums and Learning
The First Forty Years 1969-2009

“A wonderful place to be at play in the gravitational fields of the Lord.”
– Robin Williams, actor and comedian

It was in 1968, that the San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts, the last remnant of the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition, was restored. Noted physicist and educator Frank Oppenheimer, brother of J. Robert (father of the atom bomb), proposed that this cavernous structure house a science museum, or rather, an “Exploratorium.” In 1969, with no publicity or fanfare, the Exploratorium opened its doors to display a few exhibits. Today, the Exploratorium is considered the prototype for hands-on museums around the world, and a leader in the movement for museums as educational centers. To date, the Exploratorium boasts over 700 hands-on exhibits designed by artists and scientists, and constructed on site in public view, with 400 on view at any one time. It was the first independent museum on the Web and has won four Webby awards for bringing science to the public.

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Over a half million visitors enjoy the Exploratorium in person each year. But 28 million know it through its 25,000-page award-winning Web site. There are hundreds and hundreds of museums in the world that trace themselves to the Exploratorium. Exposure to its exhibits reaches 20 million a year. Many may not realize that this high-vaulted, girder-spanned museum, located in San Francisco’s Marina District, in view of the Golden Gate Bridge, has changed the notion of what a museum can be. The concepts of hands-on and interactive, the watchwords today for everything from DIY, to social media to toys, springs from the same conceptual breakthrough that is the Exploratorium’s innovation in exhibition design. Or that the Exploratorium is dedicated to the training of teachers in the teaching and science. And to educational reform.

Exploratorium Exhibits
The Exploratorium was first known for its exhibits. Characteristically intriguing, stimulating, playful, sometimes whimsical, they present natural phenomena. They are not rigged to fool the visitor or to improve on nature. They present a new way of looking at things, a respect for
invention and play, and a lack of pretentiousness. The museum’s central theme began with human perception, a category comprising both art and science. The exhibits can be found all over the US and the world, as can Exploratorium-developed shows on major topics, such as Bubbles or Memory, the Mind or Turbulent Landscapes (Chaotic Systems).

“What I like to see is the Exploratorium’s impact on these younger people who in many cases are sensing the excitement of science and the discovery of science here for the first time.”
– Dr. Francis Crick, Nobel laureate, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA

Revolution in Museums
The Exploratorium has revolutionized the museum field. Before the Exploratorium, science museums were viewed as dusty repositories for the artifacts of natural history and technology. Then the Exploratorium’s echoing space filled with blinking and beckoning lights, movement,
and the laughter and enjoyment of its visitors engaged in the satisfaction of self-discovery. The Exploratorium has since given rise to hundreds of similarly conceived science centers around the world. In 1980, only eleven years after the founding of the Exploratorium, Frank Oppenheimer received the American Association of Museums’ Award for Distinguished Service: “No one in recent years has had a greater impact upon museums.”

Oppenheimer died in 1985. Dr. Goéry Delacôte, French scientist and educator, guided the museum from 1991- 2005. Dr. Delacôte instituted thematic changes – exploring breakthroughs in biological science – pushing the museum to stay current. He leveraged breakthroughs in technology, springboarding the Exploratorium’s award-winning Web site, the first independent museum on the web , into one of the most visited of all science Web sites; he launched a Center for Learning and Teaching, the only non-university based national center for training teachers; and introduced an assessment and evaluation process to study how visitors get the science message in exhibits. The Exploratorium has continued to thrive. Age forty and already long recognized as the “grandfather” of hands-on science museums, the Exploratorium is poised for reinventing itself in the twenty-first century.

Beginning in 2006, under the new leadership of Dr. Dennis Bartels, a nationally known science education and policy expert, the Exploratorium’s reinvention has been inside and potentially, soon moving out. It has added the subject of neuroscience through the launch of the new Mind collection, and most notably, the Exploratorium has pursued its possible relocation to San Francisco’s northern waterfront on the Embarcadero. Such a move would open the Exploratorium thematically to exploring the natural environment, the ways in which the city and the manmade meets the Bay. Educationally, the Exploratorium’s proposed new location better serves a local audience with public transit and better public access. Most importantly, such a new educational campus on Piers 15/17 on the Embarcadero would provide the infrastructure to support the Exploratorium’s international educational reach.

Just in time for its 40th anniversary, President Obama’s science team announced on July 24th, 2009, that it is partnering with the Exploratorium to beam the latest scientific discoveries from seagoing expeditions to map the ocean’s floor directly to the renowned museum in a renewable five-year partnership. The instant high-definition streaming of ongoing explorations and every new discovery to the Exploratorium and its many audiences is only one aspect of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s new collaboration. It will also include current research in climate science and atmospheric research.

Education
“Science at school is sometimes boring, but coming here gives me more willingness to understand what’s going on. When you get to come and try to do gravity yourself, it makes it funner. That’s the way I see it.”
– Student, age 14

When people think of the Exploratorium, they think of its startling interactive exhibits. In addition to motivating the general public’s interest in science, however, the Exploratorium has been dedicated to training science and mathematics students and teachers at the elementary, middle and high school level for over 35 years. The Exploratorium is at the forefront of a national trend to utilize resources and staffs of science museums to support innovative and interactive science instruction in the schools. It is the largest non-university trainer of science teachers in Northern California.

The Exploratorium first organized itself as an innovative resource in formal science education with the creation of The School in the Exploratorium in 1972; the Teacher Institute, for middle and high school teachers followed in 1983. In 1984, the state of California designated the Exploratorium as the first Regional Science Resource Center. Through its Institute for Inquiry, established in 1995, the Exploratorium now influences science education nationally. Since 2002, The Center for Informal Learning and Schools, a collaboration between the Exploratorium and two major universities, integrates the best of informal science learning with the formal learning of schools, through advance degree study and research. Together, all the programs comprise an active force addressing the crisis in science education. This also includes the Explainer Program, in which over 3500 high school students in 40 years have been trained to act as “science” guides to the museum. The Exploratorium works broadly with teachers throughout the Bay Area, the region and the nation, enabling the Exploratorium to collaborate with others toward systemic changes in the ways that science is taught.

The Exploratorium is one of only four sites, and the only museum in the country, selected by the National Science Foundation in 1995 to develop teachers’ science skill-set. Within the educational community, the Exploratorium is known for its vital role in teacher training.

“This place is an eclectic mixture, hands-on, totally un-slick. And it works just beautifully. As a teacher, I find it just so inviting that I can’t help but get engaged.”
– Tayeko Kaufman, middle school teacher & Teacher Institute alumnus

“As an Explainer, ‘I have learned so many things I don’t think I would have learned in school the way the school system is going. It’s good exercise for my mind because when I first started I never cared for science as much as now. I am getting A’s in my environmental science. So that was the greatest push for me.”
– 17-year-old Explainer

Online
The Exploratorium took its interactivity online in 1993. The Exploratorium was the first independent museum in the world to build a site on the World Wide Web. For the general public, this opportunity has translated into 28 million people annually accessing the Exploratorium’s award-winning www.exploratorium.edu Web site. The Web site is an extension of the experiences on the museum floor: real things for people to interact with and explore. The Exploratorium received the Webby Award for the “Best Science Web site” in 1997, 1998 and 1999 and for education in 2004. The Exploratorium both translates its interactive exhibits onto the web and debuts Webcast special events in which the whole world serves as the subject matter – as with a recent live special Webcast of the solar eclipse, live from remote China or previously in webcasts from the Arctic and Antarctic for the International Polar Year, and the upcoming collaboration with the scientists and research data as it happens at NOAA.

“I wanted to tell you how much the students in my school are enjoying and benefiting from your exciting hands-on Science of Baseball interactive Web site. I built a science unit around your web site and invited teachers and students to take a swing at a major league baseball, find the sweet spot of a bat, and consider temperature and humidity when predicting the flight of a ball.”
– recent e-mail

Check out http://www.exploratorium.edu/40th/