ABSTRACT
As I step back and review our work at the Ontario Science Centre, I am struck by how difficult it is for museums to touch the hearts of the women, men, and children who come to visit every day. The facade is there. The children play happily on the rocket chair and briefly experience the heat and humidity of the miniaturized living rainforest, while their parents look on and smile approval. In the art gallery downtown, I watch as people shuffle from painting to painting, engrossed in meaningful murmurings with one another. And in the local museum that specializes in natural history, archeology, and anthropology, there are delighted expressions as a small family comes into a room filled with Egyptian antiquities or hovers excitedly over a display case of raw emeralds.
