The New MIT Museum: A Vision for the Future

John Durant

Why does MIT have a museum? What is it for? What is its mission? What audiences does it serve? And how should it go about serving them?

These are the sorts of questions I've been asking myself since I arrived as director of the MIT Museum in July 2005. With the help of a lot of other people – colleagues in the Museum, faculty across the Institute, and Advisory Board members – I've recently arrived at some clear answers to these questions; and in this short article, I'd like to share these answers with you and invite your support for the new MIT Museum we're setting out to create.

First, the big picture. Today, the United States confronts critically important issues relating to the place of science and technology in national life. International challenges – for example in relation to energy supply, global climate change, and health care – are being faced at a time of both increasing international competition and increasing public unease about the ethical and social implications of particular developments. In this context, there is widespread concern about the state of science and technology education in the schools, about the supply of scientists and engineers into the work force, and about the prospects for preserving a climate of public opinion that is conducive to pioneering research and innovation.

Arthur Ganson Kinetic Sculptures
(click on image to enlarge)

As a pre-eminent center of excellence in science and technology, MIT has a particular responsibility in relation to these challenges. Historically, MIT has always recognized an obligation to serve the nation. Today, such service needs to embrace deep commitment not only to research and innovation, but also to closer engagement with the wider communities that have a stake in the nation's future with science and technology. It would be idle, however, to pretend that MIT does not also face difficulties in this area. As President Susan Hockfield has observed on more than one occasion, MIT appears to be one of America's best-kept secrets. The greater part of the Institute's research is "invisible" to the general public; the campus itself is notoriously hard to navigate; and while there are a number of outreach initiatives, in the main these appear to be ill focused and uncoordinated.

A Proposed Initiative

What, then, is needed? MIT has a unique opportunity to take a lead – locally, regionally, nationally – in raising the public profile of the scientific and technological research conducted in the nation's great research universities. I propose an Institute-wide Initiative in Public Engagement with Science and Technology. This initiative will embrace: research and teaching in the public dimensions of science and technology and science communication; museum collecting and exhibiting in relation to current scientific and technological research across the campus; new educational, adult and community programs aimed at facilitating public engagement with the latest scientific and technological research; multi-media outreach to MIT's global community; and last, but not least, the creation of a new "Gateway" or portal to the MIT campus for visitors of all kinds.

Naturally, the New MIT Museum will be situated at the center of this Initiative. Strategically relocated within the new Gateway facility, the Museum will become a primary point of reference for visitors who wish to know more about science, technology, and other areas of scholarship at MIT. Through its extended presence across the campus, the Museum will engage visitors with the creative life of the Institute; through its traveling exhibitions and electronic outreach programs, it will connect audiences worldwide with the significance of MIT's work; and through its partnerships in research and teaching, it will be an international center of excellence in public engagement with scientific and technological research.

I see the New MIT Museum as a new kind of museum; not only a place for celebrating the achievements of the past (though of course we shall do that) but also a place for participating in the challenges of the present and the immediate future. To be sure, the New MIT Museum will have important historical collections and galleries; but it will also provide direct access to cutting-edge research and innovation. Virtual "port-holes" will allow visitors to see into labs across the campus; and even more radically, research and innovation projects will be conducted right inside the Museum, in purpose-built public laboratories where visitors will be able to interact directly with scientists and engineers as they go about their work.

Impractical, you think? Not at all. Some science museums in Europe and North America have already piloted research in the galleries; and a new science museum in Tokyo actually combines a visitor attraction and a research laboratory in one facility. We shall build on these pioneering initiatives and take them to the next stage by opening up the whole of MIT's research and innovation to various forms of public access. An initiative already in its early stages in the MIT Museum points the way. The Collaborative Mapping Project aims to re-invent the entire Institute as an extended electronic "museum without walls": visitors will use satellite navigation technologies combined with electronic hand-held devices to take "virtual tours," discovering the history and contemporary practice of science and technology at the Institute as they explore the campus.

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A Strategic Plan

The New MIT Museum won't be created overnight. Our new 5-Year Strategic Plan identifies a series of key steps that will steadily move the Museum closer to our long-term goal. Early steps involve radical new programs that will help open up MIT's research to the wider community in Cambridge and Boston. The first of these is Soap Box , a series of mid-week, early evening salon-style conversations about topical issues in science and technology. Organized in partnership with The Boston Globe , Soap Box events will comprise: a profile of a chosen researcher and research issue in the Health and Science section of the Globe on the Monday; a Soap Box event featuring the chosen researcher and issue in the MIT Museum on the Tuesday or Wednesday evening; and the posting of the event on-line via the MIT Website and Boston.com later that same week. The first Soap Box event took place at 6:00 pm on Tuesday 15 th November, when Broad Institute Professor David Altshuler discussed the ethical and social implications of the International HapMap Project.

A second, even bolder program initiative on which we're working is the creation of a Cambridge Science Festival. Imagine that MIT, Harvard, and other key players were to collaborate with the City of Cambridge in organizing a regular celebration of science and technology over a period of a few days or a week at a well-chosen time of year. The Festival program would include hundreds of different events – concerts, debates, demonstrations, exhibitions, lectures, plays, poetry readings, street theater, etc., etc. – and a smaller number of key city-wide events. Perhaps one such event could be an "Open House" day, on which every science and technology institution in the city (including every department and center at MIT) opened its doors to visitors. Cambridge is Science City; it deserves a Science Festival.

Artist's Rendering of Redesigned Street Level Entrance for Current MIT Museum
(click on image to enlarge)

A Higher Profile

We're working to give the MIT Museum a much higher profile in the community. One major problem is that we're currently tucked away on the second floor of our main building at 265 Massachusetts Avenue. Fortunately, an opportunity has arisen for us to occupy a key part of the ground floor of the building. If we secure this space we can bring a new, dynamic Museum presence – not just our entrance, but also fast-changing news & views exhibits, educational and adult programs, and a much-needed café – right onto Massachusetts Avenue. We're even talking with WGBH Boston about filming science and technology shows for broadcast in this new space! Radically improving our visibility as well as our offer to visitors, this move will increase visitation to the Museum by at least fifty percent. Without doubt, it's the single most important short-term initiative that we intend to undertake to move the Museum in the direction it needs to go.

I could go on. Following the expansion onto the ground floor of our present building, we plan a series of high-profile temporary and traveling exhibitions and a period when the MIT Museum will go "on the road" in the lead-up to the opening of the New MIT Museum in its brand new facility.

A Dream

Rather than continue to describe our plans, however, I'd like to close with a dream:

It's 2011, MIT's 150 th anniversary year, and one of East Cambridge's best-known and most distinctive historic buildings is opening to the public in a completely new guise. Situated at the heart of the MIT Campus, the Metropolitan Warehouse has been renovated and repurposed as a magnificent gateway to MIT.

The Main Entrance and Lobby of the Metropolitan Warehouse on Massachusetts Avenue welcome all of MIT's many different visitors. A Central Information Desk provides orientation and offers an electronic hand-held guide to the campus; surrounding exhibits tell the MIT story; an electronic bulletin board provides daily campus news and views; and a cafe and restaurant provide attractive places to pause and take everything in.

From the Main Entrance, visitors access all parts of the Metropolitan Warehouse, including: "gateway" functions (e.g., information center, student admissions, community relations); academic functions (e.g., Center for Public Engagement with Science); archival functions (e.g., the new Gehry Archive); and teaching facilities (e.g., 1000-seat auditorium).

The new MIT Museum is the centerpiece of the Metropolitan Warehouse. Accessed directly from the Main Entrance, the Museum introduces visitors to some of MIT's most important and intriguing work – past and present. In state-of-the-art galleries and program spaces, the Museum provides unique access to what MIT does best – innovative cutting-edge research applied to the solution of practical problems in the real world.

Some galleries display the Museum's historic collections; others are devoted to key scientific and technological subjects – brain and cognition, genetics and genomics, robotics and artificial intelligence, etc; and yet others feature fast-changing temporary exhibitions - on emerging technologies across the Institute; and on topical issues at the interface between science, technology, and society.

Linked to the main galleries is a suite of innovative hands-on facilities designed to support direct public engagement with the research process. Live webcam "port-holes" provide direct access to research sites and staff across the campus; and a "live science" laboratory supports research projects on the gallery floor. At the heart of the new Museum lies The Forum, a central theater in the round designed to facilitate a wide range of deliberative programs – Soap Box events, debates, town-hall meetings, etc.

The new MIT Museum is a test-bed for new communication techniques and technologies. Associated closely with it, the Center for Public Engagement in Science supports cutting edge research on public understanding of and engagement with science, serving as a bridge between the academic work of the Institute and the practical efforts of the Museum.

The Grand Opening Ceremony of the new MIT Museum @ The Metropolitan Warehouse is presided over by President Susan Hockfield and attended by past presidents, senior officers of the Institute, distinguished alumni, senior figures in the Cities of Cambridge and Boston, and representatives of the wider academic, commercial, educational and political communities.

The new MIT Museum @ the Metropolitan Warehouse goes on to attract 150,000 visitors in its first full year – the largest number ever by a factor of 3. For the first time in its history, MIT has a public place that lives and breathes its distinctive spirit of creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship; at last, MIT is truly "on the map" for the wider community.

This is, of course, a dream. But with the Institute's support, your help and lots of hard work, I believe it can be a reality.

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