To Touch or Not to Touch: That is the Question

People attend museums to see artifacts and learn from them! Ideally, they want to see them, touch them, and learn the story about them. Artifacts have an uncanny ability to mute the passage of time, and unite young and old on common ground. During its sixty-plus-years in existence, the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History has displayed artifacts in a setting where children and adults can interact with them and in many cases handle them. As such, the museum's collection has evolved along two lines: 1) Permanent (non-touchable) Collection; 2) Teaching (touchable) Collection. Both parts of the collection have intrinsic value to the museum's mission of educating visitors.