Glass-boxing Science
Laboratory Work on Display in Museums
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5337182 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Caitlin Wylie (0000-0002-0214-7837, University of Virginia, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 45 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 618-635 |
| Publication date | 2020-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Science Technology & Human Values (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0162-2439 • E-ISSN: 1552-8251 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0162243919871101 |
| OpenAlex | W2969704271 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 22 |
Museum displays tend to black-box science, by displaying scientific facts without explanations of how those facts were made. A recent trend in exhibit design upends this omission by putting scientists, technicians, and volunteers to work in glass-walled laboratories, just a window away from visitors. How is science conceived, portrayed, and performed in glass-walled laboratories? Interviews and participant observation in several "fishbowl" paleontology laboratories reveal that glass walls alter lab workers' typical tasks and behavior. However, despite glass-walled labs' incomplete and edited enactment of scientific work, displaying an active workplace valuably challenges visitors' assumptions that science is passive and that museums are home only to facts and dead things. Thus, glass-walled labs do not destroy the black box that obscures scientific practice for nonscientists. Instead, they exemplify a glass box, a kind of black box that contains a performance of scientific work. Glass-boxing describes a common way in which museums present scientific practice-that is, by making it observable but incompletely so-by inviting the public to construct a rich understanding of science as human work
Art · Engineering ethics · Mathematics education · Sociology · Stained glass · Visual arts · World Wide Web · Aesthetic Perception and Analysis · Computer Science · Conservation Techniques and Studies · Engineering · Museums and Cultural Heritage · Psychology · Mechanical Engineering
Science in action
Social organization of medical work
The Hawthorne effect
Open Science
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
Museum Storage and Meaning. Tales from the Crypt
Constructing nature behind the glass
The plurality of assumptions about fossils and time
The artist’s piece is already in the stone’
Repair work
Researchers on display
Trust in Technicians in Paleontology Laboratories
Thoughts in Things
Bringing Dinosaurs Back to Life
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2025 (3) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |