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Good feedback. I wouldn't put "taking care" in quotes, however; my wife is a former museum worker and has graduate degrees in the field, and preservation is a key part of the role. Exhibits aren't just for the now, they're for the future. People would love to sit in the cockpit of the Bockscar bomber (little bit morbid, but true); allowing that would result in serious damage over time. This is less important for educational spaces like the one the OP describes -- strictly speaking, science museums often aren't museums in the classical sense. Preservation is less important there, although not unimportant.

> Personally I'm not interested in museums that are just glass cases with stuff without any explanation. I am not sure why you mentioned this, because it has nothing to do with the subject article. This was a very specific article about interactive, hands-on museums replacing their exhibits with touch screens. That being said, I have also been to countless museums of many kind and I have never once seen a museum that did not explain what the exhibits were. Have you actually seen this anywhere, or was this hyperbole?

i'm confused. in what way is this a response to the article? the article laments the sidelining of physical exhibits, in favor of software. you respond that the screens probably have an arduous and expensive procurement process. what's going on here?

> 2. Curators often see "taking care" of the exhibits as more important than actually exhibiting them. Not to mention they're often art/history majors with very little clue about anything digital. Museum curators used to be called keepers and this only changed in the mid-late twentieth century. The philosophy of preservation runs deep and you won't struggle to find curators whose favourite day of the week is when the museum is closed to the public. Curators tend to make exhibits and displays that appeal to their own scholarly reference points. You need a different role - interpretation - to literally interpret this scholarship into what the public might be interested in. Few museums can afford to apply the lens of interpretation, so for the most part we are stuck with what curators think and its limited crossover with what the public want.

> prefer a screen which offers more info yes, this is a good use of digital; it enhances the physical exhibit rather than replace it