The Science Museum’s new Atmosphere gallery advertises itself as a fresh and exciting way to explore climate science.
Billed as an interactive and immersive experience, it offers visitors the chance to step into a self-contained world with its own land, oceans and icecaps. In this brave new Earth, visitors are invited to explore the science of our changing climate.
The gallery is organised in five zones: the climate system – how the climate works and what causes it to change; earth’s energy balance – how greenhouse gases work and why they really matter; the carbon cycle – carbon’s global pathways and how we’re causing them to change; what might happen – science can track what’s already happening and help us imagine the future; and our future choices – science and technology are already helping... what are our options for tomorrow?
The displays combine interactives, objects from the Science Museum’s collections, and international loans, with content developed through extensive research and engagement with scientists and experts, including the Met Office. The museum plans a wider three-year programme of events, exhibitions and installations on the changing climate.
The gallery has been beautifully designed and lit, creating a soothing blue subaqueous environment in which visitors swim in and out of pools of light like languid fish. Above their heads, the atmosphere twinkles and flows.
No expense has been spared on the interactives, which include computer games, manual interactives, e-labels and other state-of-the-art aids to communication.
They explain various aspects of climate change and how science and technology can combat it. The benign design includes frequent benches, onto which this reviewer sank gratefully, if not gracefully, at regular intervals.
I found it hard to identify the target audience for this gallery. The museum’s website says the gallery is suitable for educational visits by 11-16-year olds and above.
On the afternoon I visited, most of the visitors seemed to be 20- to 30-somethings, although it was hard to tell in the crepuscular gloom – the term “immersive” is now apparently synonymous with “dimly-lit”.
The games I tried, such as the one offering the chance to combat rising sea level in different parts of the world, seemed to be aimed at a much younger audience, uncontaminated by computer games such as Assassin’s Creed.
Conversely, other parts of the display assumed a high level of prior knowledge. The captions tended to be very long, detailed, and rather earnest in tone. Some interactives felt like lectures by another name.
Perhaps because of the gloom, I failed to notice the signage identifying the five zones until I was leaving, having mistaken the circular labels for amusingly quirky outgrowths of the display system. I was therefore uncertain how to navigate the space.
The scholarship underlying the gallery is unmistakable, but as a layperson I struggled to piece together a narrative that would explain how the climate works, how we have changed it, or how our knowledge of climate change has developed.
The most engaging parts of the display were the areas that used real collection items. These brought the scientists and others involved in early exploration to life, informing the visitors, among other things, that the early thrill of seabed exploration soon wore off, to be replaced by numbing boredom. Just like the rest of life, then.
I also enjoyed the House of Cards by the witty David Shrigley. Apart from these areas, however, the gallery was curiously impersonal. I have been interested in environmental issues and climate change for more than 40 years – so long, in fact, that I can remember when the great fear was not global warming but a new ice age.
I approached Atmosphere with an appetite for learning, but left feeling unsatisfied. I did learn something, although it felt like hard work.
As I left the Science Museum I passed such treasures as a silver-plated model of the Forth Rail Bridge and Stephenson’s Rocket.
With a more traditional curatorial deployment of the museum’s fabulous collections, and a lighter touch with the design and technology, what a memorable experience Atmosphere could have been.
Ellen McAdam is head of museums at Glasgow Life
Billed as an interactive and immersive experience, it offers visitors the chance to step into a self-contained world with its own land, oceans and icecaps. In this brave new Earth, visitors are invited to explore the science of our changing climate.
The gallery is organised in five zones: the climate system – how the climate works and what causes it to change; earth’s energy balance – how greenhouse gases work and why they really matter; the carbon cycle – carbon’s global pathways and how we’re causing them to change; what might happen – science can track what’s already happening and help us imagine the future; and our future choices – science and technology are already helping... what are our options for tomorrow?
The displays combine interactives, objects from the Science Museum’s collections, and international loans, with content developed through extensive research and engagement with scientists and experts, including the Met Office. The museum plans a wider three-year programme of events, exhibitions and installations on the changing climate.
The gallery has been beautifully designed and lit, creating a soothing blue subaqueous environment in which visitors swim in and out of pools of light like languid fish. Above their heads, the atmosphere twinkles and flows.
No expense has been spared on the interactives, which include computer games, manual interactives, e-labels and other state-of-the-art aids to communication.
They explain various aspects of climate change and how science and technology can combat it. The benign design includes frequent benches, onto which this reviewer sank gratefully, if not gracefully, at regular intervals.
I found it hard to identify the target audience for this gallery. The museum’s website says the gallery is suitable for educational visits by 11-16-year olds and above.
On the afternoon I visited, most of the visitors seemed to be 20- to 30-somethings, although it was hard to tell in the crepuscular gloom – the term “immersive” is now apparently synonymous with “dimly-lit”.
The games I tried, such as the one offering the chance to combat rising sea level in different parts of the world, seemed to be aimed at a much younger audience, uncontaminated by computer games such as Assassin’s Creed.
Conversely, other parts of the display assumed a high level of prior knowledge. The captions tended to be very long, detailed, and rather earnest in tone. Some interactives felt like lectures by another name.
Perhaps because of the gloom, I failed to notice the signage identifying the five zones until I was leaving, having mistaken the circular labels for amusingly quirky outgrowths of the display system. I was therefore uncertain how to navigate the space.
The scholarship underlying the gallery is unmistakable, but as a layperson I struggled to piece together a narrative that would explain how the climate works, how we have changed it, or how our knowledge of climate change has developed.
The most engaging parts of the display were the areas that used real collection items. These brought the scientists and others involved in early exploration to life, informing the visitors, among other things, that the early thrill of seabed exploration soon wore off, to be replaced by numbing boredom. Just like the rest of life, then.
I also enjoyed the House of Cards by the witty David Shrigley. Apart from these areas, however, the gallery was curiously impersonal. I have been interested in environmental issues and climate change for more than 40 years – so long, in fact, that I can remember when the great fear was not global warming but a new ice age.
I approached Atmosphere with an appetite for learning, but left feeling unsatisfied. I did learn something, although it felt like hard work.
As I left the Science Museum I passed such treasures as a silver-plated model of the Forth Rail Bridge and Stephenson’s Rocket.
With a more traditional curatorial deployment of the museum’s fabulous collections, and a lighter touch with the design and technology, what a memorable experience Atmosphere could have been.
Ellen McAdam is head of museums at Glasgow Life
Project data
- Cost undisclosed
- Main funders Garfield Weston Foundation, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Patrons of the Science Museum
- Sponsors Shell, Siemens
- Exhibition design Casson Mann
- Graphic design Nick Bell Design
- Interactive exhibit strategy AllofUs
- Interactives ICO Design
- Lighting design DHA Design
