Designing Human Evolution Exhibitions. Insights from Exhibitions and Audiences

This article examines the direction of contemporary human evolution exhibitions in museums. We begin the discussion by considering common preconceptions visitors often bring to human origins exhibits, such as the notion that evolution is oriented from simple toward complex organisms, and humans are at the pinnacle of the evolutionary story. With such challenges in mind, the article focuses on the novel techniques museums use to address current topics in human evolutionary studies. We consider human evolution exhibitions at the American Museum of Natural History,the Yale Peabody Museum, the San Diego Museum of Man and the British Natural History Museum, as well as developing exhibitions at the Smithsonian Institution and the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. As these world-class museums illustrate, human evolution exhibitions today call upon innovative strategies to accommodate current evolutionary thinking (current theories, methodologies and the wealth of new evidence)as well as to create meaningful experiences for visitors.