Museum of Natural Sciences

This week we visited the Museum of Natural Sciences as part of our last museum visit for this class. I think it was one of the more interesting museums but we did not really get to see any of it. We spent a total of ten minutes in the last exhibit and were toured around the rest of the time to be shown museum setup logistics. Normally operations and logistics of any company is interesting to me but they just had to make this down right boring. Our very nice tour guides were great and I thanked them for their time, but I do not need know what type of glass they use for the eyes or what types of fake and real materials they use in the exhibit. And that was pretty much 90% of the tour. I did benefit from the new found knowledge of museums sub contracting out exhibits to firms, that is not only efficient for museums but better for the economy, allowing for profit companies to produce rather than government subsidized non-profit companies producing less efficiently for themselves. I really liked that aspect of their operations. But it's a shame that was only a 5 minute conversation in the 2 hour presentation about how dioramas are made which does not benefit anyone in the room unless you are looking to make dioramas one day.  I also really wish I could of read and looked at the exhibits rather than getting whisked to the basement dungeon to look at how to assemble these exhibits. I thought we were going to be taking in nature and science, not taxidermy and boredom. But I still think it was nice that they gave their time to give us a tour and they seemed happy about it.   I will say this, at the end of the day that place is run pretty efficiently I love the idea of all the sub contracted exhibits and the PT consultants. Here is where they lacked. Too much collaborative-ism. If everyone has a say production is always going to be inefficient. They needed more focus and a division of labor. I am not sure who there manager is but they could use a more hands on manager to focus their team and divide up their time. Collaborative-ism is not always good, and when the goal at hand is straight forward (i.e. designing a diorama that has accurate scenery) being collaborative is no good. The diorama has to be accurate, not creative and new age so all this time spent being collaborative on creativity is a waste of time.  And I'm sure none of these people think that way. Which I am slowly learning is.......ok.