The other day I was wondering about the significance of this project. I probably return too often to the "So what?" question, but it's productive as long as I remember to turn into it and not away from it. This particular time I went back to an early exhibit from last year's visit to New York. Race to the South Pole was a traveling, non-photographable, blockbuster exhibit at the American Natural History Museum. It traced the competition between the two teams -- Amundsen's from Norway and Scott's from Britain -- who vied to be first to the South Pole.
I loved the shape of this exhibit. It coiled you from the ocean, through the expedition prep, into the hardships of the journey, and, after arriving at the south pole and discovering who won, it uncoiled you back out. This was a controlled route, but the narrative was dramatic and visitors were given cards at the start so they could follow one team or another. This added a competitive spirit to the exhibit. Kids raced ahead to see if they'd "won" or not.
The relevant historyis that Amundsen won handily. His fleeter, simpler team outpaced Scott by a month, and the Norwegians made it out alive while Scott's entire team perished in the Antarctic winter.
But the insight isn't that this exhibit does a fantastic job telling this story. The insight has to be bigger, better. So what's curious is that this isn't a celebration of Amundsen's victory. It's really a celebration of science and technology. And in that "race," Amundsen wasn't the winner. Even though the research station in Antarctica is named after both explorers, the real leagacy is Scott's.
Amundsen went to Antarctica to win the race; Scott wanted to win, too, of course, but he also had another purpose: to do science. It's this legacy that the BBC reported on.
Amundsen's team didn't do this. They got in and got out. They brought traditional gear and animals that worked better. Scott, on the other hand, innovated. He tried out new things -- snow machines and horses, both of which weighed him down and slowed his progress. So the final lesson of the race isn't how traditional methods can sometimes serve our ends better than new technologies (a lesson I'd love to see a museum tell).
The real lesson is how Scott's mission established scientific exploration on Antarcitca. And the exhibit ends with this legacy by displaying the scientists who are currently researching and studying there and some of the advanced technologies they're using. The celebration, then, it's epideictic function, is only partly about about the journey. It's more accurately a celebration of science and technology. Amundsen and Scott are just the means to get us to this bigger point.
Now we must ask, so what? Isn't this what we'd expect to find? Does it surprise that the exhibit uses the pretext of the race to inculcate values about science and technology? It doesn't seem so surprising to me. What do you think? Useful? Or do I return and find a better point?
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