On Sat, 20 Aug 1994, Aaron Goldblatt wrote:
 
> . . . I take my daughter to the Wagner Free Institute periodically (A.
> Mintz refered to it recently).  You can't get more retro than that, in
> terms of exhibitry. It has not changed since the 19th century. It is
> among the most thrilling science museums I know, and my 9 year old
> agrees.  Case after case of cool things that constitute a powerful
> ideology about a person's place in the natural world . . .
 
 
Exhibition is very much like the basis of art:  relationships.  Taking
one item and finding its relationship to another can, many times, add up
to more than they can separately.  That takes a strong sense of
imagination and creativeness.  Too often our "McDonald's world-view" is
that newer is better, which does not always add up to being better.
 
> What it does have to do with is the way we, who put these exhibits
> together, position the "Institutional voice" in the mix. Does it work
> against someone's ability to truely play with the information (in the
> form of objects, animals, plants, virtual or otherwise)? . . . It is my
> experience that museums most often place that voice of author-ity
> . . . smack in the way of any genuine play. There is rarely
> room for us (as visitors) to take that piece of information and try it
> this way or that, whithout the background noise of "expertise" crowding
> out creative thought. It's as if we are collectively miserly with the
> creative process.  This is no call to fire all experts, just to widen
> the arena, share the blocks, if you will.
 
The creativeness and the "child within us" are resources and a means at
understanding and solving problems.  What we get in school are not only
the tools and sample problems but a lot of useless baggage about how we
are to submit or impose those academic models of knowledge.  Too much of
American education is aimed at control and submission, but neither of
those values have anything to do with creativty or brainstroming or
playing "what if."  By looking at institutions and individuals as
resources and knowledge as potential, one can begin to toy with
variations of a problem's solution.  When an exhibition is being thought
through there are many layers of possibilities to be sort through.  What
tools and what relational design and the "story" that comes from that
combining, is open for variation.  Within us all is the child who
delights in discovery.