On Rocks and the Museum Visitor Experience

So I finished the Falk book. And hoooooo boy those last few chapters were doom and gloom. Don't get me wrong; when it comes to addressing the types of people that visit a museum, everything seems sound enough. (I talked about that yesterday.) But the book was written during the 2008 recession and talk about pessimism for museums in general! Resources from 2012, 2013 are much more positive, so I'm inclined to somewhat discount those predictions. Except possibly if certain sweet-potato-coloured candidates take office...but that's neither here nor there.

Seriously, though. All museum-related books, being written by educators, contain a metric ton of rhetorical or semi rhetorical questions. I've posted many of them. This book's questions, taken directly:

• Do you really know why people come to your museum and what it takes people to visit?

• Do you know how to attract new and different audiences to your museum?

• Do you know what your visitors actually do in your museum and why they do these things?

• What is the one thing that you are not providing your various publics today that they are secretly longing for? 

• Do you know what IMPACT your museum has on the public, in particular what meanings visitors derive from their experience?

• Do you know what would make a visitor come again and again to your museum?

• Do you know how a new, or existing, competitor could take away your audience? 

Emphasis added to illustrate how some made me roll my eyes a little. Especially the "secret longing" one and the "audience theft" one.

What are people secretly longing for? HELL IF I KNOW. Hell if anyone knows! If they're coming here, there's a real chance they want to know about the underground cults and secret Men In Black base apparently housed at PARI. There's also a chance they were in Brevard and wanted the area science center, like space and noticed that there are basically no space museums in NC (at least, that I've noticed), wondered what the mysterious facility they drove by when they were kids has turned into (back when it DID have armed guards), or got lost in the mountains and are making the best of their situation.

On a lighter note--sort of literally--I learned what might be coming soon to the rocks part of the museum! (It actually has a dedicated curator, which shows.) Anyone ever tried shining a black light at a Sharpie Highlighter and noticed that it basically glows? That's the fluorescein contained in said highlighters, and as you might imagine, it fluoresces.

Some rocks and radioactive rocks will do this under a black light as well, and the curator recently had a chance to visit a mine that let him mine for some of their fluorescent zinc ore. (Yes. That is a thing. Zinc. Like the stuff that coats metal trash cans to keep them from rusting.) He thought I might like to see them, as well as the other fluorescent rocks he's collected--it's turned into a recent area of focus, and I agree that it might very well make for an exciting exhibit. Because it's really freaking awesome to see glowing rocks. One of the rocks even holds the energy imparted to it by the black light for a few seconds after the light is turned off, like a glow-in-the-dark star, so that's potential for an interactive exhibit...hurrah! 

Seriously, the rocks look like this. Only about the size of a pencil box and I think the glow is more uniform.

Then, because I was there and I like rocks as much as the next person-who-lived-in-a-house-where-we-collected-fun-rocks-and-fossils (which might be a bit unusual), he decided to show me some other cool stuff. Since he also hunts meteors, and I'm wearing a sliver of one on a necklace, he let me attempt to pick up a particularly large one (50lbs, size of a football) that isn't currently on display. Dense space rock. Dense.

Also not yet on display is a gorgeous cut amethyst and the larger, slightly gnarly looking crystal from whence it came. Seriously...I've seen pretty cut gems. This one is clear, pale lavender and whoever cut it did a stunning job. If there's some way of drawing attention to it, the (forgive me) crystal gem might very well interest people who came to Pari for the experience seeking. 

Also in terms of productivity--whenever I get bored stiff with my prescribed reading, which is...as often as one might imagine after several days of fairly dry how-to-museum books, I switch to something else--I got a very basic sketch for an idea that's been in my head down on paper. Will this ever find itself actually fabricated? I doubt it. I have more reading to do. (Excuse my eye roll.) 

Very rough idea for an exhibit on satellites, space communication antennae, The Satellite, etc.

The idea is to group all of the things to do with space communications together. That was Rosman's focus back when it was Rosman, and we have a helluva lot of artefacts related to it now. People know what telephones and radios are, and I don't think it's too big of a stretch to expand on that. Potential for an interactive could come if we can find any recordings of satellites, or NASA archive audio--give it a tagline like, "Listen to a Satellite!" or "Listen to Space!"

Finally, on yet *another* completely different note, WE FINALLY HAVE CLEAR SKIES!!!!!

This is a picture from 5:30 or so yesterday, when I climbed up to the optical ridge to do some painting of one of the telescope barns and surrounding mountains:

Resulting painting, photo taken in golden hour lighting a little while later

See those little clouds? They were gone by sunset. We had a gorgeous view of the night sky, which I can't photograph because, ahem, dark sky, cameras need light. I did, however, photograph the crescent moon through a little backpack telescope, which is perfect for looking at really spread out globular clusters, double stars, and the moon.

a few craters along the terminator came out nicely.

The moon set pretty early and we headed up to the star party barn, where they keep the luggable 12" 'scopes. (Everything is up at PARI.) Got a lovely look at Saturn's rings, saw some surface detail on Mars (which is apparently fairly rare. Woo!), saw a few bands on Jupiter and several of the Jovian moons. If anyone is free on Friday, and the sky holds clear, come up to our Star Party!