The Exploratorium

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 653 this volume, but also contributions from others such as exhibition designers and psychologists, whose professional skills are essential to developing successful programs of historical interpretation. Harold K. Skramstad, Jr. Dr. Skramstad is president of Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village. He previously served as chief of exhibition programs at the National Museum of History and Technology of the Smithsonian Institution and director of the Chicago Historical Society. The Exploratorium: The Museum as Laboratory. By Hilde Hein. Washing­ ton, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990. Pp. xxii + 256; illustrations, notes, appendixes, index. $35.00 (cloth); $14.95 (pa­ per). For a book intended to tell the story of a museum whose very name exudes energy and daring, Hilde Hein’s The Exploratorium: The Museum as Laboratory is a pale reflection of its subject. Hein’s admira­ tion for the undeniably admirable Frank Oppenheimer, founder of the museum, inhibits application of the critical analysis that the subject deserves and of which she is clearly capable. Although the book’s presentation implies that it is a biography of the controversial physicist, The Exploratorium aims for institutional history; there are detailed accounts of Oppenheimer’s campaign to win political support, acquire financial backing, design and build a new type of science museum, evangelize its message, and control all parts of the process. The essence of Oppenheimer, however, stays hidden—his character and even his physical presence remain without flesh. There is little analysis of what drove Oppenheimer and even less insight on the role played by a crucial partner in the enterprise, his wife Jacqueline (“Jackie”). When McCarthy-era hysteria over their past Communist party affiliations drove the Oppenheimers from the University of Minne­ sota, they retreated (from 1949 to 1959) to a ranch they owned in Colorado. The pain of these years seems self-evident, but Hein gives little indication of what really led Frank to reenter academe and then leave it in the late 1960s to make a dramatic leap to found a new museum in San Francisco. Was this part of some grand plan, discussed by the Oppenheimers over the years? Was it a lack of enthusiasm for university life? Or just the impulse of middle age? The Oppenheimers exercised near-dictatorial control over every aspect of the Exploratorium’s design and operation. It was their museum, steeped in their personalities, brilliance, tastes, and biases. Perhaps it represented an effort to seize control of their world, to construct an environment in which they could prevent (or, at least, 654 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE forestall) any replaying of the past. The respect with which San Francisco and the world eventually treated them was a far cry from the attitudes that had earlier forced them into exile. The Exploratorium is now a universally acclaimed institution, its goals of enlighten­ ment and education endorsed by a wide political spectrum; but our applause for the result should not prevent honest analysis of its founders. Did Oppenheimer set out to build a monument to himself? In the last pages, Hein says no, but the text between the lines suggests otherwise: Oppenheimer’s lasting monument is not the building or organization but an idea. The notion of “hands-on” science museums, accessible and exciting, is now gleefully pushed by hoards of educa­ tional psychologists employed by the same staid institutions the Exploratorium’s early success challenged. Even Oppenheimer’s rivals have been transformed—a victory of sorts that he must have relished. Hein spends too many pages in repetitive descriptions of particular exhibit constructions. These cookbooks, useful for museum design­ ers, should have appeared in an appendix. Most such discussion is static; there is insufficient analysis of how various exhibit philosophies evolved over the years. Historians will find the accounts of fund-raising more useful. Hein states that the book “shows the elasticity of a cultural and bureaucratic system that resists innovation and is capable of absorbing it” (p. xiv), but she does not really discuss how the exhibit philosophy of “interactivity” has influenced conventional science-and-technology museum techniques. What the book does show is how a radical innovator can conform to bureaucratic environments to fund his innovation. Oppenheimer

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