Exhibition Review: Making the Modern World- Science Museum

Rating: ****

Science Museum, Ground Floor

Exhibition Road, London SW 72

Hours: 10:00 AM- 6:00 PM Daily 

Price: Free

A large gallery nestled towards the back of the Science Museum, “Making the Modern World” offers viewers insight into an eclectic collection of ‘firsts’ that represent the most important steps in science and invention.  The gallery follows the cultural history of industrialization from 1750, allowing viewers to discover remarkable artifacts that have contributed greatly to our contemporary way of living.

In this permanent exhibition various objects are laid out in a chronological fashion. This allows the chronology to be debased because it means one can anticipate what is to come and in retrospect where you have just come from. This forms an immediate integration of the physical space where form and function work together really well, allowing the visitor to be spatially aware of the objects around them as well as the objects in focus.

The objects on view suggest that more than simply placing them anywhere, it is a process and plays a creative role in framing its processes and machinations. The Lockhead Electra Airliner of mid-1930s soars in the centre of the room representing the birth of the modern aircraft. The puffing Billy locomotive is situated at the entrance and the Apollo 10 command module, which travelled the Moon in 1969 to the right. It awes and inspires the viewers. 

The visual and social dialogue it creates are asserting to the experience, which enriches the gallery as a whole. Although highly informative and well presented, the lack of interaction and imagination in the gallery are contributing factors to the hollowness of the experience.  

The desire to maintain a factual narrative thrust across space and time engages a didacticism of information rather than a smooth didacticism of perspective in which we can scrutinize and undress these objects in front of us for a more hands-on dynamic learning experience.

The space and layout are superlative outside of the fact it is quite difficult to navigate through the crowds, which can cause you to skip ahead or move back in time. However, squaring the timeline of these objects with the demands of a meaningful curatorial practice is not an easy task. The curator, David Rooney, should be commended for his meticulous attention to detail and careful display.

At the end of the exhibition, we reach no conclusion just a continuation of what is to come in the future of science and technology. Hopefully, “Making the Modern World” will prompt further reflection on present-day technology, whose global force demands a close scrutiny, and whose innovative reasoning requires a critical and rigorous response.

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