Museums, Science, and Technology
Spring 2019
This class is intended for students who want to know more about the challenges and opportunities of interpreting science and technology in museums in the 2020s, and who have a genuine interest in helping to shape plans for the new MIT Museum in Kendall Square, which will open to the public in the fall of 2021.
We will chart together the rise of specialist museums of science and technology in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and the emergence of the international science center movement over the past half century; and we will review contrasting approaches to public engagement with science and technology in museums and galleries internationally today.
Students will undertake individual research projects on the specific aspects of the new MIT Museum, for presentation to museum staff at the end of the semester.