Although museums are no
longer cabinets of curiosity,
filled with rocks, relics, artifacts, and instruments, they continue to be
characterized by authentic objects and materials at all scales and
classifications and across museum types. Art, science, history, natural
history, and children’s museums are object and material-rich environments that are also distinguished by the opportunities for object-based learning that they
offer.
Everyday in large museums
and small, educators, exhibit techs, explainers, docents, playworkers, and
facilitators are at work checking, distributing, and replenishing materials in
galleries, exhibits, classrooms, and studios. They stock activity carts with
sketchbooks, pencils, viewfinders, and magnifiers and pack bins for outreach programs. They refill exhibit components with metal washers,
eyedroppers, and paper cups; reunite puppets that have migrated; and restock
the grocery bins. Someone checks for missing pieces, small objects, and
choke-hazards; another staffer checks the wire cutters. A group of staff
assemble to offload flattened cardboard boxes that have just arrived. Perhaps a
disbelieving colleague second-guesses the written directions as to whether 10,000 sticker dots to ‘dot the space’ are really intended.
Enthusiasm for found,
reclaimed, and re-purposed materials has been building in museums, assuming many
forms. Tinkering, maker spaces, and DIY initiatives are inspiring activities,
creating exhibit-program hybrids, and putting authentic materials and tools in the hands
of children and adults. My delight with the recent rise in material-rich
experiences and settings is probably no surprise considering my expressed
enthusiasm here for loose parts,
good messes,
and exploring materials.
Yet, as promising as these trends are for visitor engagement, creativity,
thinking, and learning, importing massive amounts of materials into museums
also exerts new pressures such as encroaching on limited space, adding new
tasks to full workloads, and affecting operations. Quantities of materials can
also dilute the quality of projects or just produce such a jumble to
make materials hard to find, use, or unappealing.
Judging from the
opportunities and challenges I see more of in museums and hear about at
conferences and also reflecting on my own experiences in this area, it’s clear
that managing– perhaps curating–materials sits at the heart of successful
tinkering, DIY and maker efforts in museums. Managing materials is a complex,
multi-part, and collective process, more like a set of systems. Tapping the
possibilities of materials requires extensive organization, system support, and
appreciation for the beauty of materials.
Layers of Material Management
In the early 80’s, I
worked at The Teachers’ Workshop, a teacher center for professional development
in Madison (WI) that included, along with other resources, a recycled materials
center. Housed in a double-classroom, it was filled with bins, barrels, and
shelves of discards and by-products from area businesses and industry as well
as teacher contributions. Displays by teachers and students using these
materials from math manipulatives, to games, to art projects, added to the material richness, intensity, and sometimes, scrappy
mess of the space. The push of gathering, sorting, storing, displaying, and
restocking materials was relentless, inspiring, and rewarding. Looking back, I
see that too often we were simply thrilled to get stuff, less driven to be
resourceful with storage, and only occasionally attuned to presentation.
At that time Boston Children’s Museum
had a recycle center store. On visits to Boston, we carefully noted the
museum’s inventive and practical solutions for storage, display, and
access to wooden game pieces, foam shapes, plastic caps, and many objects that
eluded labels. The museum’s ingenuity and design expertise helped broker the
competing demands of a recycle center. Storage solutions not only accommodated
bulky and unusual shapes of objects, but also allowed children and adults to
experience and explore materials, accentuated the delight of discovery, and
contained the chaos of abundant stuff.
Managing materials is also
part art. Along with quantity, variety, and smart storage, order and
beauty are necessary to convey the materiality and possibilities of materials.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the material rich ateliers, or studio
spaces of the Municipal Infant-Toddler Centers and Preschools in Reggio
Emilia (IT). A tightly connected,
coherent pedagogy rests solidly on a set of principles including the
environment as the third teacher, creativity and aesthetics, and an appreciation of
materials to engage children’s investigations of the sense and meaning of
things and explore their own creativity. Attention to detail, arrangement of objects on
shelves and tables, light from windows, mirrors that reflect children, small
surprises, and displays of children’s thinking in their work contribute to the
beauty of the spaces. Remida, the creative recycling center in Reggio, is a
joint project of the Centers and Schools and Iren Emilia, a multi-utility
working in neighboring provinces. When I visited in 2000, I
shouldn’t have been surprised to find that Remida also had an
artist-in-residence as one strategies for fostering new opportunities
for communication and creativity with materials. Had we only imagined that at The Teachers’
Workshop!
Curating Materials
Enthusiasm for massive
amounts of materials is not evenly distributed across a museum or even within a
department. Last year I overheard two people from science museums talk about
integrating loose parts into an exhibit on which their museums were collaborating.
Their conversation went: “Loose parts are not going to happen at our
museum; maintenance will see to that.” The other person replied, “They’ll just
have to get over it at our museum; loose parts are what we need.”
Amping up material use or
introducing loose parts requires building ownership, collegial consultation,
developing systems, anticipating others' concerns, and good manners.
There was much buzz and
enthusiasm from self-identified “material nerds” at the recent ASTC 2012 about
managing materials for maker spaces, tinkering studios, and take-apart labs.
Some suggestions were more obvious than others, but ingenuity and trial
and error with materials, storage, presentation, and collegiality had clearly
gone into clarifying relevant steps, managing stuff, and figuring out
solutions in the material stream. Steps, like sorting, happen
repeatedly: in gathering, as part of storing, preparing activities, and putting
materials out though the focus shifts. At every point, order, beauty, visibility, and
findability guide decision making. In the practices below that I found helpful, naming the steps is somewhat arbitrary.
Gather materials, re-used and upcycled, physical
resources and digital media resources, from multiple sources.
Post signs at work asking co-workers and repeat visitors to bring in materials.
Place a bin for drop-off, specifying requirements such as clean recyclables. Work with pre-school teachers. Take
things apart such as timepieces and toys. Check out on-line sources, find the local recycling center,
and locate scrap exchanges in the area.
Store materials based on clear, shared criteria.
Frequency of use is a basic one with two broad categories. Back-up storage holds large quantities of materials that are drawn
down to replenish at-hand
storage for easy access during activities. The next challenge is finding the
right containers within these two categories to hold objects and make them visible.
Smart solutions use a systems approach: containers fit within and next to
containers efficiently and can be prepped ahead of time. For instance, hotel steamer trays
hold materials on tables and carts, are easy for visitors to use at worktables,
and can be filled in the morning for quick resets. Milk crates hold smaller
containers like tennis ball tubes hold stacked portion cups–and are easy to carry.
Tracking materials, or monitoring the constantly fluctuating
quantities of materials that a museum has/doesn’t have/needs/the available
quantities is the trickiest part of the process. A binder can include things
that are needed and ordered. A dry erase board, used at ¡Explora!, can show when an item is “out”, but it doesn’t show what’s
available now. Development of a
searchable database is underway at the Exploratorium.
Preparing or gathering materials for a project is often
based on a list of materials required for the project that have been tried
ahead of time. The material nerds recommend that projects are framed and prototyped so that the materials and tools are scoped,
materials are collected, bagged, and organized to support and deepen the tinkerer's investigation. Estimating quantities and
planning for easy at-hand storage happens here. Set-up involves putting out materials
in ways that are visually inviting and recognizable, accessible, and suggest possible starting
points. A partially set up project can suggest where one
tinkerer went with the materials or encourage a newcomer to capitalize on it, repeat, or jump off in a
new direction.
Projects on display require plenty of forethought and preparation.
Encouraging tinkerers
to leave something behind that has value to them (and perhaps to the museum) can be difficult. Prompts may be required to suggest that visitors label
their project and leave it behind with, “This is my gizmo.” Visitors might scan their creations and publish them on the museum website.
Staff may also move around and photograph what’s happening and ask visitors to
comment on photos, and display images and comments. Notably, questions persist about how to encourage tinkerers to document their
own projects.
Return to the material
stream. The recycle life cycle of
yogurt containers, hanks of wire, paper, corks, and cardboard tubes is evolving. While initially extended by recycling for
tinkering, it can be further extended by dismantling reused materials and sending them back
to storage. Other materials will meet their end in the museum’s trash until someone finds better uses for them at the tinkerers' table.
More for Tinkering and Making
The enthusiasm of these tinkerers reflects
a love of materials, an appreciation for solutions that accomplish multiple
objectives, an interest in persistent challenges, and a generosity–including these tips.
•
Think through every step and what visitors need, how to keep a tinkerer
focused on the project and not distracted by string rolling away.
• Both variety and abundance of materials are needed to get the right “dooda”to deliver the best solution in an activity.
•
Look for inspiration in managing quantities of materials in settings that do it
well: Ikea, container stores, Remida, Reggio studios, and hardware stores.
• To find out more about the data base that Lianna Kali at the Exploratorium is developing, contact her at: lkali@exploratorium.edu
Also, check out Paul Orselli's recent blog, Good Bye Columbus, Hello Makers, on ExhibiTricks
Wire and
mechanics are plainly visible. Players sit at the keyboard of an old-fashioned
organ in a great pool of light in the dark cavernous space within viewing
distance of all the machines, pipes, and beams. Wires neatly exit the back of
the organ, sweep up into the great volume of space, and then split off to the
devices mounted on pipes, beams, conduit, and columns. Distributed around the
space, the mounted devices are spotlit and easy to locate. The experience with
sound is also direct. No amplification is used, no computer synthesis of sound,
and no speakers.
Inspiration
for sound exploration comes from the keys, the illuminated devices, possible
sounds, players’ imaginations and their experiments. While the installation’s
workings are straightforward and as they appear, they are not disclosed all at
once. Sound explorers reveal the workings, sounds, and possibilities through
their play. What sound does that clapper make? What does this key do? How can I
change it? Vary it? Can I make it sound like a bird? A plane? Like a song I
know? 
Playing
solo, duet, and in family groups, players shift easily between being the
keyboard player and joining the audience. In each role, they are curious and
alert about the effects the keys produce. Finding new sound combinations keep players
at the keyboard, trying to make a specific illuminated striker clap or a pipe
hum; making them sound off in succession. But movement and sharing is also part of
the play. Fingers pointing, eyes following the illuminated sound-making
devices, and sometimes running across the floor, children and adults move
freely around the large open space. They climb up and down the stairs at one
end of the space, stop on the landing for a closer view at a striker, and meet
up again with friends and family to share observations and discoveries about
how they play this building. 
