Aula, Museos y Colecciones

Este trabajo aborda el desarrollo inicial del Nuevo Programa de Exposiciones (NPE) en el Museo de Historia Natural (MHN) de Londres iniciado en la década de 1970. En concreto explora la forma en que se fue perfilando la necesidad de cubrir nuevos objetivos educativos en los museos y cómo los directivos del MHN cambiaron la imagen de éste y de sus exposiciones para presentarlo como una institución capaz de atraer y educar a un público más amplio.

Dicho modelo educativo construía una narrativa interpretada de antemano mediante diversas tecnologías educativas y estrategias comunicativas para explicar los principios actuales de la ciencia, mediante una presentación didáctica simplificada. Para ello el NPE incorporó nuevos profesionales y se alejó del proceso de producción expositiva tradicional en el que el principal responsable era uno de los investigadores del Museo.

Por último, el trabajo muestra la complejidad de la producción expositiva e ilustra la relación que existe entre los intereses particulares de los creadores de una exposición y el resultado final en la galería.

This paper addresses the initial development of the New Exhibition Scheme (NES) in the Natural History Museum (NHM) in London during the 1970s. In particular it explores how the need to cover new educational objectives in museums was shaped and how managers of NHM changed the image of the museum and its exhibitions to present it as an institution able to attract and educate a wider audience.

As discussed here, this educational model built a narrative interpreted in advance by various educational and communication technologies to explain the current principles of science, making a simplified didactic presentation. New professionals joined the NES to carry out the interpretation work of the exhibits and moved away from the traditional production process of exhibition, mainly in charge of curators.

These professionals included the transformers, responsible for translating the content to different visual strategies that would be familiar to all visitors. But there were also other experts working in the planning and development of these new educational aims and who were equally decisive: educators, who produced educational materials and psychologists studying the reception of exhibits and evaluating their educational effectiveness.

Finally, the study shows the complexity of exhibitionary production and illustrates the relationship between the private interests of the creators of an exhibition and the final result in the gallery.