How should our aviation and science museums look in the future

Re. P and P’s bit about the VR augmentation – it would be a superb thing to do. In fact no goggles are needed. I have already used a smartphone app with the kids on a Gruffalo hunt through the woods, with animated snakes appearing on logpiles and owls in trees etc. All you need to do is point your phone in the right direction, in camera mode, and the images are overlayed onto the live background. The effect is totally absorbing. Seeing the crew at stations, for example, flak bursts, damage, with sound… it could be very effective indeed. Or imagine watching a gaggle of Heinkels intercepted over DX. The possibilities are endless.

It would be great if a former WW2 aerodrome could be preserved including blast pens, hangars, ops blocks, MT section etc but don’t know if there are many left in that good of condition? We are slowly loosing WW2 infrastructure to development. We almost need Duxford as it was when the IWM first acquired it. I would love to see museums have roll out days where the aircraft were brought out into the open a couple of weekend a year. No need for any flying, in fact close the airport and let people experience air side at the likes of Duxford and Shuttleworth and pull everything that can move out of the hangars. I think the days of a few dusty exhibits in a dark hangar need to change but we need to shape that change no end up with aircraft being neglected for some sort of light show. Make the aircraft, and those that flew them come alive again.

Guns80, yes to see a period and accurate presentation is a nice thing. I do think with the Duxford Masterplan, it’ll return more to how it was during the war period. The small but significant repainting of the lamp standards along the road behind the hangars is the start of it.

John, I live 5 miles away from OW, it’s a unique and special place.

For aviation only, my choice would be that they all copy Old Warden.

Is there a link to the Duxford survey? As for the future of museums I’d be fascinated to see a living museum based around a WW2 airfield similar to Beamish with the staff all dressed in period costumes playing roles and frequent demonstrations and flights.

Google has come up with a set of ‘transparent’ googles that allow the display of computer generated simulations next to real life objects. So you GPS locate your bomber on the museum floor and have a GPS tracker on the goggles the punter is wearing. You then film a real life actor against a blue screen, say man-handling a .50 cal. You then ‘place’ that ‘virtual’ actor in the crew station of the bomber, so as the punter walks around to the crew station, they see the 3D ‘actor’ shooting out the door of the bomber or turret. GPS location as well as other sensors allow you to view the virtual image as a ‘real life’ image, without bumping into the bollards, which you can still see. The punter then turns around and sees a fighter plane swooping down on the bomber, while the googles provide sound affects. Far less complex would be to walk around the bomber and see the crew strapping on chutes at the base of the crew ladder, ribbing each other, and for effect, making the virtual crew semi transparent, ghost like. So you would be able to see how young the crew were, and connect with their story, rather than seeing antiquated,cold machinery. As the crew get ready, a ‘plane’ or screen could hover in the air over them, showing black and white footage, or you might actually climb into a crew station and ‘look down’, 25,000 feet below.

These goggles and technology already exist, so it is entirely possible. It would require compelling direction and story telling, so talented, creative people would be required to make the technology sing. You could do this with only one aircraft, because the possibilities to weave magic and changing content around the one object are almost limitless. I would like to walk into such a Museum one day, soon.

I am also a fan of mini Museums, as much as Grand Museums. Grand Museums are of course mandatory, but mini Museums often result in the richest, most delightful experience. By this I mean the private, small collection of some eccentric, in a hidden pocket of the world. A John Smith of Mapua or a Lincoln Nitschke of the Barossa. Because it is small and because it is curated by a selfless eccentric, you are often allowed to sit in the cockpit, and get one on one explanations, while in the Grand Museum you must stand bowed at a distance, glared at by guards who might know very little about the topic. The tendency of the Grand Museum is to dismiss the mini Museum as ‘unprofessional’, and, on the wings of institutional arrogance, expect to absorb the contents of the mini Museum into the black hole of its stores.

I would like to see a different model, where the contents of the mini Museums are aggregated only onto a website, so you can plan a Noddy trip in your Noddy car across strange landscapes, to see extraordinary things in extraordinary places curated by selfless eccentrics. The objects stay scattered, but are made more accessible in the virtual sense. In return some of the budget of the Grand Museum is dissipated to the mini Museum network, where one dollar does the work of four, to ensure roofs do not leak. The Grand Museum will resist this, of course. But I would like to walk into one Grand Museum, one day, driven by a management alive to the possibility of networking with the surrounding geography of mini Museums, so that it becomes not one site, but many. In the end, as the selfless eccentrics die out, their precious objects may flow into the Grand Museum, because it is an empathetic space, but this is not mistaken for ONE SITE. In other words a precious Spitfire can pass into public ownership when an original custodian dies, get a grease and oil change in the Grand Museum, then get passed onto a mini Museum within a network. So an energetic, reaching, friendly octopus Museum, with a Grand Head, and many tentacles, with maybe a single Spitfire placed for a few years in a country town with a long dead pilot son’s name inscribed on a memorial in the town square.

Also the self same wonderful Grand Museum working with the taxation authorities to generate a tax effective Gifting Program, so asset rich, cashflow poor eccentrics who saved scrap a lifetime ago have a financially attractive exit option that also delivers public ownership. Even a Grand Museum might not have millions available to transfer a private asset into public ownership, and a man with not much time left might not be able to find a ready and generous buyer to perform this function. So you find a big Corporate who must pay tax and under the Gifting Program the Corporate is able to purchase the asset and Gift it to the Grand Museum in a tax effective way. In other words, they were due to pay $1 of tax, but they instead pay the $1 to the old eccentric (tax free income to him) and are able to claim a tax deduction of $2. It is a no brainer for the Corporate and would make for positive press. This is a rort, but a rort that delivers unique, historical artifacts into public ownership. The rort can be controlled by limiting the amount that can be Gifted/claimed, say $10 million. It would not be used that often, as the combination of rare aircraft, exiting eccentrics and Corporates with tax obligations and community or historical mindedness would not occur often enough to seriously hurt the public purse. So what I am after is a Museum sensitive to the inter generational transfer of unique, historical objects, that doesn’t put all the acid on the selfless eccentric to be guilted into donating his assets for free and burning his childrens’ inheritance.

Also one that is not a black hole, an aggregator and storehouse, that seeks to create relationships and a national network of displays, that might put a Spitfire in a shopping centre with a table of Google 3D glasses around it, and see the chewing gum filled jaws of some hitherto ignorant teenager slow down and go slack as they watch a Messerschmitt dive on them from the sky…

Most aviation “museums” are collections…long on cobserving/restoring and displaying and short on education/communication/interaction.
You can make a case for the larger “general interest” and national collections having a duty to excell at education/entertainment.
The others are doing a great service on preserving bits of history.

A non-enthusiast may not get a great deal from those collections, but that’s okay, we (enthusiasts/historians, etc) need places to preserve and house all types of aircraft, not just the history makers.

Not every museum need to be all things to all people.

They need to look seriously at their core values and aims, kicking the immaculate Catalina outside at Cosford and the likes of the Jetstream to make way for a corporate fund raising area and interactive toys are not preserving the heritage they are there to protect, Hendon is going down that route too.
Fundraising areas at Cosford are laudable, but if you end up having to spend those raised funds on restoring aircraft you have dumped outside into the elements to provide it, a self sucking lollipop comes to mind.

You wouldn’t hang the Mona Lisa outside in the garden would you.

I’m interested as to why you say the IWM Duxford survey is worrying?