Instructor: Nancy Hechinger
Course Description:  If you were inventing a museum today, what would it look like? Who would be there? What would its main purpose be? Before you answer that question, let's take a look back. The first museums were called Cabinets of Wonder. Usually, a viewer with a guide, often the collector, would open doors and drawers to see what was inside--amazing things from different parts of the world, different times.

They were windows on the world to places the visitors would probably never be able to go. The public was very limited; children were usually not allowed in. They were elitist institutions whose mission was archiving the past. Today, although most museums seek to educate and to include more and more diverse visitors, there are fundamental ways attitudes, techniques, structural issues that are still lodged in the 19th century. Now, because of a very different kind of Cabinet of Wonder, i.e. the computer and other IT technologies, museums are able to display collections, demonstrate concepts, and reach their audiences in new ways. Most have not taken full advantage of these new tools or had the time to explore how they might change the nature of a museum visit... but we will in this course.