Museums Mount High-Tech Exhibits
Lincoln's Library and Washington's Mount Vernon Blazing Trails
Two new collections in Springfield, Illinois and Mount Vernon, Virginia include interactivity to help make history come alive.
Two relatively new presidential museums have turned the concept of interactive exhibits upside down: Lincoln’s in Springfield, Illinois, and the new Donald W. Reynolds Museum and Education Center at Mount Vernon, Virginia. These two museums are getting kids excited about history. "It was cool! … It didn’t look fake!" and "I felt like I was really seeing Lincoln" were some of the comments children made to Weekly Reader after visiting the museums. Apparently others are getting interested, too. The Lincoln Museum and Library greets 12,000 visitors per week, while over 90,000 visitors have journeyed to Mount Vernon’s new museum in the four months since its’ opening. So, what are all of these people coming to see?
History, LIVE!
These museums are doing a new kind of living history, one that engages the visitors’ mind and heart. And, they are doing it with glitzy technology and theatrics that have more in common with a Disney theme park than a dusty old history museum.
The most intriguing area at the Lincoln Museum is the "ghost library," where a "combination … live host and state of the art special effects" present the business of a great presidential library. A curator/historian guides visitors through the investigative work behind such a vast collection in a traditional living history format. The program becomes futuristic with the use of Holavision, a visual effect that creates characters that fade in and out of view. Together, the presenter and audience engage with "real" people from the past. The effect on visitors is dramatic. Lincoln Museum staff report visitors telling them, "This is the first museum where I actually felt something." (Kansas City Star April 2, 2006)
Wave of the Future
The Lincoln Museum is considered the wave of the future for museums. It inspired the new museums at Mount Vernon, George Washington’s estate home. Although organized traditionally--thematic exhibits with rich artifact displays—the Mount Vernon museum incorporated some of the theatrical elements of the Lincoln Museum. For example, during the introductory videos on George Washington’s life, the floors move during battle scenes and snow falls from the ceiling during the trek through Valley Forge.
Back to the Future
The Mount Vernon Museum relies heavily on video footage to introduce the various themes, which can be tiresome, especially when it’s primarily scholars speaking on a topic. Other interactive components include:
- lift-the-panel type exercises to answer general questions,
- a light-up battlefield map,
- and a wartime diorama.
One particularly compelling interactive, however, shows how to conduct a land survey, accompanied by some of Washington’s tools from this era of his life. Clearly, the Mount Vernon exhibits are more traditional, but they do effectively use the collections to interpret Washington’s life beyond the plantation featured at this site.
These elements from the Lincoln Museum’s mission are at the crux of the dilemma facing today’s museums. Is technology the best way to showcase a museum’s collections? At first glance, it’s easy to say technological exhibits are vital to reach young audiences. However, the reactions to the new displays at these two presidential museums suggest otherwise. Used properly -- that is to support the exhibit’s message(s) -- technology can make history exhibits highly appealing to audiences of all ages.
"Scholarship vs. Showmanship"
Collections must remain at the core of any museum’s mission and certainly drive the exhibits, but if technology and even theatre can engage visitors on a deeper, personal level, then how can we afford to ignore the possibilities of the high-tech age?
To see and learn more about these exhibits, visit their websites at: www.alplm.org (Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum) and www.mountvernon.org (George Washington's Mount Vernon).
