What is a museum?
This is a question that visitors never ask. To most visitors it seems self-evident. A museum--any museum—is a building or gallery of exhibits in glass cases. Perhaps it is also an opportunity for informal science education experiences. To those who have dipped a little deeper in pool, the answer may be that a museum has a 3-part mission of research, education, and exhibits. This certainly gets us closer to a kernal of truth, but it still seems simplistic for all of the activities that are undertaken under the umbrella of a museum of the course of a single year, and it doesn’t really quite capture the museum’s role as a partner in long term stewardship of specimens, samples, art, instruments, and artifacts.
After two decades of service in a variety of museums of all shapes, sizes, and missions—I too, sometimes struggle to put into words the impact of a museum to the community it serves over years, decades…sometimes centuries. Recently, I’ve begun to think of museums, including the EMS Museum & Art Gallery as a ‘framework’ or a system whose primary goal is to steward the things that a community values across multiple generations. Certainly, this emphasizes the preservation and stewardship aspects of a museum. However, if we follow this train of thought we also very quickly arrive at a museum’s role in serving a community. This role can be to craft exhibits that question, engage, and explain. It may be to provide resources for K-12 educator or training the next generation of scientists, engineers, scholars, and artists.
But is this where a museum’s impact ends? I don’t think so. The EMS Museum & Art Gallery also has responsibilities to the commonwealth as part of the university’s land grant mission. This means we are part of a large, loosely-formed network of educational institutions, professional and avocational societies--and yes, other museums--to ensure that the important stuff is not only preserved for future generations, but to make sure that it can be used for emerging societal needs and new research questions.
These ‘extended’ roles are what make the museum ‘framework’ agile. We are good at gauging and responding to the needs of the communities we serve, whether those needs are to facilitate new analyses of old ore samples from long-ago reclaimed mines that may hold rare earth treasures, to provide snapshots of historic soil microbiomes critical for understanding recent changes in climate and fertility, or changing cultural perspectives on gender and labor in the earth industries. Increasingly, responding to the needs of our local communities through digitization and the creation of online resources have created opportunities for global impact. Online and networked collections mean that small museums can have an outsized impact on communities who have never walked through the door.
A hub for experiential learning
In addition to the 4800 gallery visitors and 2500 people we reached through outreach activities last year, we also mentored internship projects for XX students across EMS disciplines, as well as art and history. These interns learned valuable research and analytical skills, often translating this new knowledge into public-facing exhibits. XX student curation assistants and volunteers spent XXXX hours in our collections engaged in hands-on, experiential learning through doing. Some of these students have career goals that involve museums—and these experiences, no doubt, have been critical to their Penn State training. However, more of these students will go on to become artists, engineers, and scientists. Their museum experiences in mineral identification, artifact conservation, data analysis, and science communication are also key to growth and development in their chosen fields.
We’re proud of what we’ve accomplished over the last year and we’re very thankful to the dozens of students, volunteers, faculty and researchers…and the thousands of visitors, educators, and school-children that have made this year a success.
The mission of the Earth and Mineral Sciences Museum & Art Gallery is to serve the college, University, and broader community as an informed educational and technical resource for science, art, and history of the earth and mineral sciences through the preservation, utilization, and promotion of our diverse collections.
