I've noticed in the past decade or so that the museums I visit are way more accessible to families and children than they were when I was a kid. As an example off the top of my head, the history museum where I live used to be dusty and sort of intimidating. Now they have a huge plastic cow that kids can 'milk,' friendly music playing, and interactive quizzes.
Obviously some of this change is just due to technology (We have touch screens now! Let's make touch screen quizzes!) but is there anything else I am missing about this change from authoritative, esoteric knowledge to really interactive exhibits? What was the timeline for this? Does this change have a name?
The name you’re looking for is the “New Museology.” This is a movement that began in the 70s and 80s and which was proclaimed in the 1984 Declaration of Quebec which reoriented museums away from the old conception of a museum—a storehouse of cultural treasures oriented around research and preservation of objects—toward a new, public-focused purpose. Another indicator of the changing times was Museums for a New Century, produced by the American Association of Museums, which said much the same thing.^1 This change has been characterized by Stephen Weil of the Smithsonian as going “from being about something to being for somebody.”^2
The shift has been brought about by the acknowledgement of late twentieth-century theory which holds that any communication is inherently ideological. The works of those like Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault have been taken to heart by the museum field and it has been recognized that the previous way of communicating information tended to privilege elites—those who already had a strong working knowledge of history, art, or other museum topics—and exclude the underprivileged.^3
There is also an economic imperative to the change, connected to shakeups in the way museums were funded. Although they had been previously dependent upon government funding, budget crises in the 70s and Reaganomic cuts to social services in the 80s reduced this dramatically. This forced museums to embrace the public as a source of funding and consequently they began to try to be more appealing to the average visitor.
Although these changes that you highlight date back to the seventies, conceptually, it’s not surprising you’ve only begun to notice them recently. Museums are very traditional organizations, often with low budgets and low staff turnover. While they are taking these ideas up, it can be a slow process.
^1 American Association of Museums, Museums for a New Century, (Washington, D.C.: American Association of Museums, 1984).
^2 Stephen E. Weil, ‘From Being about Something to Being for Somebody: The Ongoing Transformation of the American Museum’, in Museum Management and Marketing, ed. by Richard Sandell and Robert R. Janes (Oxford: Routledge, 2007), pp. 30–48.
^3 Mark O'Neill, ‘The Good Enough Visitor’, in Museums, Society, Inequality, ed. by Richard Sandell (Oxford: Routledge, 2002), pp. 24-40.
hi! just a recommendation that it would be worth x-posting this question to /r/MuseumPros