Sunday, January 29, 2012

To Bomb or Not To Bomb: The Online Museum of the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History

It's interesting that I stumbled across the online portion of the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History recently.  I just got done reading an article in today's New York Times magazine about Iran's nuclear ambitions and the many problems that's spawned for the wider world.  Even more than two decades out from the end of the Cold War, nuclear weapons are a serious matter in international politics - which is why I'm disappointed in the way these online exhibits choose to present nuclear history.

The National Museum of Nuclear Science and History was chartered by an act of Congress and is a Smithsonian Institute affiliate.  With these credentials I would expect the museum to be an unbiased source of information - which is what they claim to be in their mission - and to have a decent online presence.  Alas, this is not the case.  In terms of layout, the online exhibits range from boring to frustrating.  The History section is nothing but text accompanied by tiny, un-enlargeable pictures.  The narrative veers all over the place, jumping to ancient history mid-paragraph or inserting addresses of publications into the body of a passage.  Some of the pages look like drafts that accidentally got published.

And that's the best section.  You can also choose to learn about Today, Future, and Other Resources, but the Today section is totally blank, and the Future section contains only a link to a campaign for the physical museum.  There are only two websites suggested in the Other Resources section, so if you really want to know more you're going to have to search on your own.

But what really bothered me about these online exhibits was that there is no real voice of dissent.  The opening image to the exhibits shows a woman holding a sign reading "War Ends", which tells you how the museum feels about nuclear weapons.  Throughout the History section there is really no information on anyone who believed nuclear buildup wasn't such a good idea.  For example, in the section The Decision to Drop, we hear only from the pilot of the Enola Gay, who was convinced that the United States made the right decision in bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Nowhere do we hear from anyone who opposed these strikes, or from the thousands of Japanese civilians who suffered.  Curious too is the fact that in a long account of Einstein's contribution to the nuclear effort, we never hear about his regrets in contributing to the atomic bomb.

It can be easy to forget that nuclear weaponry was once feared by citizens across the globe.  I'll never grasp what it must have felt like to know that world leaders considered unleashing nuclear arsenals to be a viable option in world affairs, but it's wise not to forget the troubling realities of past generations.  So I'm not sure why the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History has chosen to sweep all this under the rug and package it in such an unappealing presentation.  Perhaps the physical museum is a more nuanced and informative place, but based on their online presence they've got a lot of work to do.


National Museum of Nuclear Science and History
Mission:  To bring an informational, objective history of nuclear science to life - for everyone, everywhere.
Website:  www.nuclearmuseum.org/online-museum

Sunday, January 22, 2012

China on My Mind: The China Online Museum

I know that I sometimes criticize virtual museums that don't have enough pop to them.  It's fun and engaging when you can do cool things in an online museum and feel at least somewhat like you're traveling through an exhibit.  But once in a while, it's nice just to be able to look at things and learn about their history.  That's the strength of the China Online Museum - although it's mainly a collection of images with information, the way it's organized and laid out makes it a valuable resource.

The China Online Museum lets you explore five different types of Chinese art:  bronzes, calligraphy, painting, ceramics and carving.  The history presented for these art forms goes back over 2,000 years, and in many cases Chinese characters are included alongside English spellings.  For each genre of art, you can learn about different artists, subjects, time periods or mediums.  Pages are set up with information at the top and images below - and in some cases, you can choose the amount of information you want to view (which is great for people who are easily overwhelmed).

The images themselves are very high-quality, and so even though there aren't many pictures to illustrate each style of art, the ones that are available serve the museum's content well.  I would rather have a limited number of good pictures than a smorgasbord of whatever a curator can scour from across the web.  I also like that images pop up on the screen when you click them, so that you can view them undistracted by other content.

The only thing I don't like about the China Online Museum is that there's not specific information for every image.  Only some of the pieces are identified with their time period and provenance, and very few have explanations of what is represented in the art.  Many of the images contain a source link, but these aren't always helpful either.

But other than this problem, the China Online Museum is wonderful.  I can't imagine that there are many other places online that have collected so many examples of Chinese art in one place and organized them into a coherent narrative.  Even if you're not an art fanatic, I would recommend at least browsing.  The images are beautiful, the information is plentiful, and the dedication behind this museum is inspiring.


Chine Online Museum
Mission:  To provide a general introduction to China and Chinese culture, with a strong emphasis on Chinese art.
Website:  www.chinaonlinemuseum.com

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Jumping Across the Pond: The British Museum Online Tours

Someday, hopefully soon, I'll be able to visit the U.K.  I'd like to be able to visit Scotland and Ireland and see the English countryside, and of course I want to visit London.  I'm especially interested in seeing the British Museum and I imagine I'll be one of those people who spends a whole day just wandering through the galleries.  Until that day, though, I can satisfy my curiosity with the British Museum Online Tours.

I haven't seen another virtual museum or virtual collection from a physical museum that bills itself as a tour.  Usually these entities like to refer to their online portions as exhibits, probably because they're hoping a web-based platform can provide an interactive experience that at least partially simulates a real, self-guided visit.  That's not what the British Museum aims to do here - there are no 3D renderings, animations or audio accompaniments.  The Online Tours are simply collections of objects with accompanying text.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, because the wealth of images and information available online is astounding.  You can view hundreds of objects from civilizations across the globe, and also nose through the images from several exhibits that deal with the modern world.  The images are high quality and many include notes about whether they can be used in the public domain.  I imagine that these online tours are quite like what you might encounter if you took a docent's tour at the British Museum:  a lot of looking and listening, with a heaping dose of expert opinion.

But if you're looking for something extra - a chance to explore the objects on your own terms or question the curatorial viewpoint - you're not going to find that here.  There is much more that the British Museum could do with their online collections that they have chosen not to pursue.  Multi-angle viewing would be nice, as would a chance to ask questions or add comments.  Perhaps a more unified online presence would allow visitors to connect these cultures and their objects to understand our present-day interdependencies and understand just how the British Museum ended up holding onto a headdress from the Marquesas Islands.

Still, the fact that these objects are even available for me to view at home, 3,500 miles from London, is amazing.  Even if I never do get a chance to visit the U.K., I can see at least some of their collections in vivid detail.  For that I'm grateful, as are many others who only want to know what the curator thinks.  I just wonder what else the British Museum could do with their online tours if they cared to try.



The British Museum Online Tours
Website:  www.britishmuseum.org/explore/online_tours.aspx

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Colonists Online: Colonial Williamsburg Online Museum

I've been to Colonial Williamsburg twice in my life.  I don't remember the first time, because I was a little over a year old and I napped through the whole experience.  The second time was in the 8th grade, when I went as part of a school field trip, and I accidentally poked someone in the face with a stick that was supposed to be a musket.  I don't think I gathered too much knowledge during either trip (except for now understanding that muskets were sharp), but thanks to the exhibits Colonial Williamsburg has put online I can learn in the comfort of my own home.

Right now Colonial Williamsburg has four exhibits up online:  Historic Threads, Conserving the Murray Sisters, Coins and Currency in Colonial America, and Mapping Colonial America.  I was really excited about Historic Threads, because I love historical fashion, but this was the most disappointing of the exhibits.  Not because of the content - the images of gowns, suits and accessories are wonderful and are accompanied by great information about materials and time periods.  What was frustrating about Historic Threads was that it didn't work very well.  It's next to impossible to navigate between images - I would click the forward button and the previous image would stay on the screen, or the text would load but not its accompanying picture, or I would be left hanging in some kind of black limbo.  I found that the only way to get a screen to load properly was to refresh each page, which was so annoying that I gave up and moved on before I had seen half the exhibit.

Conserving the Murray Sisters takes on an interesting subject matter:  the scientific process of conserving artifacts.  Colonial Williamsburg was given a painting of these sisters dating from 1794, but it was too wrecked to display in its initial condition.  A series of images in this exhibit show the different steps conservationists took to restore the painting, including viewing it under different types of light.

Coins and Currency in Colonial America tries very hard to make a dull subject interesting by adding in a lot of features.  The coins are sorted by time period, from Columbus's travels to the end of the American Revolution, and are accompanied by notes on their history and metallurgy.  There are plenty of opportunities to seek out extra information and compare coins from the era, and you can even see a scale of each coin relative to a quarter.

Mapping Colonial America is probably the best online exhibit.  It's set up a lot like Coins and Currency, with maps arranged historically and information gathered in text boxes.  There's also a timeline running along the bottom that automatically sets itself to point at the time when each map was created.  The images of the maps have a great resolution - you can zoom in on each one and see a lot of detail.  On one map I was able to pinpoint the location of my hometown and still read the names of the surrounding villages and rivers.

Colonial Williamsburg's online exhibits are a great supplement to a visit and or an introduction for those who haven't been before.  Though some of the subject matter is a little dry, I would encourage you to check out all the functioning exhibits to see what you can glean from each.  As for Historic Threads, I really hope someone can get it to function better, because I need some sartorial escapism.

Colonial Williamsburg Online Museum Exhibits
Website:  www.history.org/history/museums/online_exhibits.cfm

Sunday, January 1, 2012

Your Insides Out: The History of Visualization of Biological Macromolecules On-line Museum

Look at the title above.  Does it make any sense to you?  Probably not, unless you've got some college-level biology classes under your belt.  I had to read the opening page of this museum - and then re-read it to make sure I caught all the salient points, and then look at some of the images - before I understood what this museum is about.  This is kind of how the museum operates:  slightly confusing for the layman but full of pretty pictures.

Biological macromolecules are the larger molecules in our bodies, like proteins and the nucleic acids in our DNA.  Collected here are images and movies scientists in earlier generations produced in order to bring these macromolecules to a human scale.  The earliest images come from 1946 and were created in MIT laboratories.  There is also a 3D model of a protein, some pictures of crystals, and the cover of a 1966 molecule catalog (unfortunately, the link to flip through the catalog is no longer working).

The coolest section is the Early Molecular Graphics Movie Gallery, which shows films of protein and insulin molecules from 1966 and 1971.  They're on the primitive side, but it's interesting to see just what these structures look like.

Each section is accompanied by plenty of footnoted text, but it's not too user-friendly.  I suspect this was written with fellow scientists, not the general public, in mind.  That makes this museum frustrating, because with a more explanatory tone these images could provide a truly enlightening look inside our bodies.

So stop by and take a look, and try to glean what you can, but don't feel bad if it doesn't make sense to you.


History of Visualization of Biological Macromolecules On-line Museum
Mission:  This site is an on-line archive dedicated to the various tools and techniques that have been used by molecular scientists to visualize and study the structure of biological macromolecules.
Website:  www.umass.edu/molvis/francoeur/index.html