mit musuem

The MIT museum was originally named "MIT historical collections", created with the intention of preserving the artifacts in documents scattered throughout MIT. Through this nature, it served as a passive archive until 1980 when it was renamed to what we know it as today, the MIT Museum. At this time, the museum began to shift it's focus from preserving artifacts to curating exhibits and developing workshops to engage MIT and the community surrounding it. In 2005, the mission of the museum became "to engage the wider community with MIT’s science, technology and other areas of scholarship in ways that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century". The MIT museum now acts as a sort of colloquial liaison between MIT, it's alumni, and the community around it as it continues to celebrate the work (both historical and current) done at MIT through community engagement and exhibits.
Meet Jake. Jake is a third year, math graduate student who is going to the MIT museum because
1.it was close and he wanted to get out of his office
2.there's boba nearby
3.he's never been there and people are really stunned when they ask him if he's been there and he says no beacuse he goes to MIT
4.his mom and his sister once went there and his sister sent him some cool videos of kinetic sculptures.


So, we braved the stormy weather and took a the walk over from campus to MIT Museum. For students and those by MIT, the location is fairly straightforward to get to as it's right off massachusetts avenue. However, there is little to no parking there so for visitors driving around boston they would need to park by Star Market and walk over. As far as expectations went he said, "I don't know what's on exhibition now but given that last time it was so cool I'm hoping for something that's visually cute." When asked if he would pay the $10 fee charged to MIT community members, he heeded that he would if there was more advertising but because he really had no idea what was currently in the museum it would have taken him more. So to the museum we went.
We were greeted at the front desk and told to take the stairs upward, which lead us to musical stairs that played notes as we bounded upwards. Jake's face was of delight as he stepped up and down the stairs with growing intention. After reaching the top, we found ourselves in an open space with three possible exhibits. They weren't particularly labeled so we continued on our current trajectory into the big data exhibit. We meandered through the exhibit, stopping and reading, stopping and watching, stopping and touching. The whole experience was true to it's yelp reviews -- approximately an hour to an hour and a half. As we stood on the top of the stairs I asked him about his experience -- "it was better than I anticipated. I do feel inspired."

While many of the visitors are MIT students (in fact, more often alums), I spoke to two visitors at the museum at the time, neither of which were MIT affiliated. The first was a visitor who preferred to remained anonymous. He came to the museum because
1. he's a big nerd (quote)
2. he didn't know that there was a museum and he was visiting a friend up the street and google told him that the museum was nearby
3. he asked his next door neighbor who went to mit if it was worth going and was told to see the kinetic sculptures.
When asked about how the museum compared to his expectations, he noted that, "I thought it would be one big things with a ton of mass and balls moving around but these are all very clever, almost witty... I thought it would be interesting and it's MIT so I thought it would be well done but these are more artsy than I thought. I thought it would be a good execution of studying mathematics or engineering ... normally you wouldn't visit a college museum, I wouldn't visit the BU museum, but I figured that MIT might be worth going to...this is more fun but it's not necessarily educational".

Another visitor was an industrial designer who had just moved to the area, told me that she found the museum "more than learning, it was inspirational" and that she "really liked the machine parts." Ultimately, she came to the museum because
1. she was seeing friends and decided why not go ?
2. one of her dreams is to teach at MIT




The MIT museum seeks to "to engage the wider community with MIT’s science, technology and other areas of scholarship in ways that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century". More colloquially, from wandering through it's website it seems that the MIT museum is attempting to engage the community through sharing of research and work to inspire and educate the wider community. From speaking with various visitors they were across the board inspired so good job, MIT Museum with engaging the wider community with inspiration.

However, what is intentioned by "wider community" remains up for dispute. It seems that many (the three that I interviewed) of the visitors are either MIT students or alums or people who simply have happened to be in the area. In otherwise, the MIT community and passerbyers. This could be due to (but not limited to) a number of factors:
1. absence of parking for those who live in the wider community to get to MIT
2. a dearth of knowledge about the museum itself
It's also interesting to note that there was a reiterated notion that the exhibit was "inspirational" albeit lacking in "educational department". However, the MIT Musuem also puts on a series of workshops every week to month to which high schoolers can come in and create and learn which is where I would imagine the "educational" aspect to play in.
I spoke to the woman at the front desk about traffic through the museum and she mentioned how it's often correlated with the weather. Given the absence of parking, this correlation is intutive as one does not want to trek from the Kendall T stop 1.2 miles to the museum. However, there is space in front of the museum, it's simply often occupied. Zoning off the parking to musueum visitors only would help alleviate the issue of parking as well as incetive people to come to the museum, even on a rainy day.

One visitors make it to the museum, they are greeted by a front desk, yet it is a bit confusing where and what the actual museum is. After purchasing a ticket, visitors are directed upstairs (away from the desk and towards the entrance again) with a crusty reciept shoved in their pocket.

Many museums offer mementos to it's visitors, whether it's the physical one receives when purchasing a ticket or a memento picked up from the giftshop. These mementos not only offer tangible personations of one's experience but also work as a subtle marking ploy as one may see the ticket from someone else's experience and from there learn and go to the MIT Museum and receive a ticket and so on. Currently, when one purchases a "ticket", they are a given a receipt of the transaction on the thin, sad, receipt paper. Creating a ticket to hand to visitors offers them a memento, a branding identity for MIT museum and a way for the museum to spread word about it's existence.

Furthermore, in many standard museums, there's a notion of 'exit through the gift shop'. This isn't a nuance of museums, rather it's quite intentional as having visitors exit through the gift shop encourages them to purchase a memento for themselves or those around them associated with the museum whether it be a pin or a large DIY kinetic sculpture kit. Currently the gift shop is a separate entity from the entrance to the exhibits which making passing through this world of wonderful objects an explicit decision.


Rather, if the space was coordinated differently, visitors would not only enter and exit through through the gift shop but the extra wall space would allow for a "transition" -- similar to what 5Wits has -- between the spaces. This transition could be used to place educational information about workshops or the exhibits, or, as there would be windows looking through this hallway, it the hallway allows the museum to offer passerbyers a "teaser" of the exhibits.

This teaser or information display could include banners featuring information about the exhibits or research at mit or even be miniaturized elements of the exhibits. Visitors would both enter through this space -- so they would known what they were in for -- and exit through this space through the gift shop. The hallway would serve as a "bookend" to one's experience at the MIT museum and lastly, the gift shop would offer the opportunities to purchase mementos in addition to the ticket given upon purchase. After all, its one things to be inspired, it's another to stay inspired.
wikipedia, website