Issue #5
January 2002
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Glitz Over Content by Sten Grynir The American Museum of Natural History, on New York's Central Park West, has undergone major renovations over the past decade. The dinosaur halls and the Hall of Mammals were completely redone, to both professional and public acclaim. The rebuilding of the Planetarium, however, was less than successful. Where does this enormously expensive replacement for the Hayden Planetarium fall short, and how did it happen that a jewel of science education and entertainment was replaced by paste?
The Hayden Planetarium had certainly become shabby when the decision was made to replace it by the Rose Center for Earth and Space. A renovation was certainly in order, though why the decision was made to tear down such a successful institution remains a mystery. Perhaps the big donors wouldn't give if it couldn't be renamed?
The glass-cube-enclosing-a-sphere-and-spiral that took the place of the old Hayden Planetarium was certainly an architectural statement, albeit impractical, wasteful and completely betraying what should have been the real purpose of the structure. A visit a month after opening was so disappointing that my son and I were in mourning for what had been lost. A visit a few weeks ago to see whether the glaring defects had been fixed in the intervening years was equally depressing.
The Hayden planetarium was a welcoming space full of fascinating objects and pictures, and adults knowledgeable about astronomy and geology who were willing to talk to children with like interests. It also had the best sign in the world: "To Solar System and Rest Rooms". The Rose Center's Hayden Planetarium is cold and lifeless, a vast echoing space full of incomprehensible, badly designed exhibits that often don't work. with inadequate explanatory material that leaves even the working exhibits unsatisfying.
To be fair, a number of things were done well in the new structure. The Hall of Planet Earth is full of informative, and mostly working, geology exhibits that explore topics such as sea-floor spreading and continental drift, mountain creation, the difference between igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rock, and is very well done. Even here, however, we have mostly simulations of the things discussed, rather than real examples of it. Another well done exhibit is the one on size scales of the universe, showing by comparison to the central sphere of the planetarium the relative sizes of objects in the universe, from the universe itself down to objects 10-18 meters small.
The Planetarium itself is the best example of what is wrong with the Rose Center. The dome of the new planetarium is somewhat smaller than the old one. The difference isn't great; just enough to show curvature when the room is darkened and the stars come out; just enough to spoil the illusion that you are under a real sky. The old Zeiss projector loomed like the a giant insect from another world. The new projector, rising from its pit with lights, smoke and loud music, resembles nothing so much as C3PO on steroids. The old Planetarium darkened slowly as if day was turning to evening, and showed the night sky as it would appear today above Central Park West, if it could be seen through the glare of city skyshine. The new planetarium darkens abruptly, and shows some kind of night sky - we are never told about it. The old Planetarium had a live, human astronomer narrating a show that changed monthly and, whatever the month's theme, always discussed the real night sky of the current date. Furthermore, he hung around afterwards to answer questions and stimulate the curiosity of kids who couldn't get enough of astronomy. (Thanks to the Museum, a huge number of New York kids went through high school thinking they wanted to be either a paleontologist or an astronomer.) The new planetarium shows a canned multimedia extravaganza narrated by Tom Cruise, which hasn't changed since the planetarium reopened, and has no relationship to time or place. At the end of the show, the audience is efficiently herded out the door, untouched by human hands. The fact that the sky show is well done and informative does not mitigate the faults: no contact with the current sky, no astronomer to talk to the kids, no changing program to tempt them back month after month, no arrow pointing out features in the sky!
The Rose Center, for all its glamor, is devoid of wonder. The old Planetarium had a collection of meteorites for kids to marvel at and touch. Here, there is a single meteorite, standing alone and out of context. The old Planetarium had a room full of old-fashioned industrial scales that kids could step on and see their weight on the moon, the sun and each of the planets. Here, there are a couple of round disks set apart from each other into the floor of the main level, which would show your weight on the moon and one of the planets if only you could read through the scratched glass of the floor-level display. Unlike the dinosaur halls and the Hall of Mammals, where the scientists were obviously in charge and the end result was marvelous, the showmen who designed the Rose Center traded substance for glitz, and shoddy glitz that broke down quickly at that. Didn't the designers know that when thousands of children walk on a glass plate set into the floor, the glass will become so scratched that it becomes opaque? Didn't they know how robust something must be to withstand being handled by these children day after day, year after year? Didn't they know that an illuminated plaque under a glass cover becomes unreadable when the sun shines through the glass cube that houses the Rose Center and hits the plaque full on? There was a willingness to spend money, all right, but not a willingness to really consider the audience the money was supposedly being spent for. Intelligence and forethought took second place to special effects and fashion.
On the other hand, there is one thing: a full globe of the moon showing all the craters, rills and marea. My son noticed that I was visibly moved when I saw it, and wanted to know why. I explained that this exhibit was impossible when I was a child: we didn't know what the back side of the moon looked like.
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