There was a time when science museums, children’s museums, and the like were thought of as teaching tools, as a chance to impart important details about the workings of the world into the minds of visitors, especially children. But no more. “Museums aren’t there to teach a systemic body of information in some prescribed manner, the current ideology goes. Nor, as studies show, are they very good at it — people retain very little data from their visits. Instead, museums offer a kind of neutral platform where visitors explore the drift and dimension of their own curiosity as much as they do the accumulated knowledge about a particular subject or field.”