“When you're seven, it's all about the dinos, baby!”

There is something special about natural history museums.  They are sticky.  Really sticky.  As in children’s experiences in natural history museums are so memorable, the memories stick around for decades.  Vivid memories.  Detailed memories. 

As we have been sharing in recent posts, in our most recent national study of museum-goers, we asked our adult respondents to think back to their early childhood museum memories and share them with us.  Last week we explored how crucial objects were in memories, and noted that natural history museums were so sticky that we were going to post about them separately.

What makes a natural history museum so sticky?  Well, lots of reason.  First, the scale is impressive to children.  As one respondent succinctly put it, “Natural history BIGNESS!”

Additionally, they are a really compelling mixture of both creepy and cool.  They have “New, gross, amazing, weird, beautiful things.”

But ultimately, it is about their cool stuff.  Dinosaurs!  Dioramas! Rocks and minerals (really!)!   (Indeed, look at the comments to last week's post and you'll see many of these themes.)

Dinosaurs are no surprise, and showed up in so many memories that we coded for them specifically.  They are a perfect mix of the real and the fantastical - a potent combination for children.

• “The giant dinosaur when you first walk in.  I'll never forget the first time I saw it.  Awesome.”

Dioramas shows up in a particularly large number of memories as well, especially animal dioramas.  Turns out, dioramas are pretty important when it comes to imprinting memories on children:

• "Native American dioramas.  Very cool. I am still a sucker for a diorama."
• "They had big dioramas with taxidermied animals and I thought it was the coolest thing. I begged my dad to take me there every time we rented a cabin near there."
• "museum of natural history. intrigued by the dioramas. I could have spent hours there."
• "I remember the musty smell and kind of mangy old stuffed animals with funky dioramas.  it was great."

 A surprise was how many people remembered rocks and minerals.  One of our hypotheses?  That rocks are very accessible, and collectible, to kids.  Many rock memories also referred to purchasing or collecting rocks afterwards.  “Glow in the dark” rocks, or rocks under UV light, were also particularly memorable:

• "It was a trip to the museum of nature & science. I loved the glow in the dark rocks and they are still my favorite thing today."
• "I remember seeing beautiful rock formations and buying $20 worth of rocks from the shop - when I came home my mother looked not-so-pleased that I spent so much money on rocks."
• "Illinois State Museum in old building (1950s) Rock exhibit. I collected rocks, and Daddy wanted me to see the exhibit. Still have my collection and still enjoy the I.S.M. rocks!"

Of interest to museum shop managers, there was also something particularly memorable in museum shops, turning up in several memories:

• "I remember getting a cool pencil from the gift shop that had a bunch of tiny rocks/stones/gems enclosed in clear plastic under the eraser."

Overall, the memories of natural history museums range from the fantastical (dinosaurs) to the old-fashioned (dioramas) to the mundane (rocks), illustrating the variety of things that children find memorable at museums . . . and going to show that a museum doesn’t have to have dinos to be memorable.  Just cool stuff (and what museum doesn’t have at least one cool thing?).

Next week, we’ll examine interactives, and how they are becoming increasingly memorable to children.

What do you think?  What do you remember from your childhood museum experiences?  To share, simply click on "comments" below.  (If you are reading this from your e-mail subscription to the blog, please visit our blog to add a comment.)

Photos courtesy of Katie Clark, Dennis Murphy, and Gene Nopper, The Academy of Natural Sciences

Comments

[Paul Orselli]

Great series of posts!

Have you studied how the notion of actual "stuff" relates to the virtual world?

(Web-only Museums and cyber-outposts of physical museums?)

[Susie Wilkening, Reach Advisors]

Thanks, Paul.

Not yet. Since our questions were about early childhood, it is pretty much limited to the physical world. But good question to consider in future studies . . . .