If you visit the museum in person or online, you only see part of who we are. Here are some things you might not know about us.

We Broke the Science Museum Mold

The Exploratorium was the brainchild of Frank Oppenheimer. At various times, Frank was a professor, a high school teacher, a cattle rancher, and an experimental physicist.

While teaching at a university, Frank developed a “library of experiments” that enabled his students to explore scientific phenomena at their own pace, following their own curiosity. Alarmed by the public’s lack of understanding of science and technology, Frank used this model to create the Exploratorium, believing that visitors could learn about natural phenomena and also gain confidence in their ability to understand science, and the world. This was a groundbreaking idea for a science museum in 1969 when the Exploratorium opened. And the rest is history.

We Intertwine Art and Science

Frank Oppenheimer viewed art and science as complementary ways of exploring the world, and incorporated both into the Exploratorium from its earliest days—a pioneering idea at the time that’s been woven into the fabric of the institution. Today, artists and scientists continue to work alongside each other in envisioning new ideas and directions for the museum and its programs. Their common goal: to support a culture of experimentation and collaboration, inspire curiosity and understanding, and stimulate fresh ideas and directions.

We Have Explainers, Who Are a Lot Different than Docents

Some museums have docents, tour guides who give lectures. We have young, orange-vested High School and Field Trip Explainers, who, in keeping with Exploratorium philosophy, teach and learn simultaneously. Explainers are a diverse group of young people who are trained and supported by staff scientists and educators. The experience provides them with an enthusiasm for learning, as well as knowledge and communication skills that serve them throughout their personal and professional lives. Our Explainer programs started in the early days of the Exploratorium and quickly became a model for museums worldwide.

We’re at the Forefront of Science Education

By making science visible, touchable, and accessible to a wide variety of people—at the museum, online, and in the classroom—our explore-for-yourself way of learning and teaching impacts science education worldwide. Our professional development programs provide teachers with the skills, tools, and support they need to apply inquiry-based learning and teaching in their classes. Our structured learning programs—for homeschoolers, families, and Members, for example—bring learning by doing directly to a diverse group of people. We also design programs that make connections between the traditionally separate worlds of formal (school) and informal (museum) education and understanding.

With a goal of impacting science education policy nationwide, Exploratorium senior staff members have testified before Congress about science education policy. In 2010, Exploratorium Director Dr. Dennis Bartels, a nationally known science-education and policy expert, was invited to join the Science Technology Engineering Math Working Group for the President’s Council on Science and Technology (PCAST).

We’re an R&D Laboratory That Experiments with Cutting-Edge Ideas

We create, experiment, test, and build nearly everything at the Exploratorium ourselves, always looking for the most interesting and important ideas to pursue, often pushing the limits of what’s possible. In this sense, we’re a classic research-and-development organization, constantly creating new activities, Websites, events, artworks, exhibits, and more.

The hundreds of exhibits you see when you visit are built in our shop, which is visible to visitors. We conduct visitor research and evaluation on our exhibits, and tinker with them over time. The floor of the museum constantly changes and evolves as new exhibits and exhibitions are created, tweaked, or retired.

We continually push the boundaries in cyberspace, too, experimenting with visualizations of natural and urban systems, exploring possible Internet2 applications; experimenting with augmented reality; exploring mobile computing applications; creating a virtual world in Second Life that features interactive exhibits, public programs, and streaming live Webcasts.

We’re a Community of People Who Share Ideas, Experience, and Expertise

Our community of over 400 Exploratorium staff members—scientists, artists, educators, exhibit developers, writers, designers, and more—forms the creative and administrative core for everything we do. We constantly brainstorm, evaluate, create, and invent the Exploratorium—but we don’t work in a vacuum. Throughout our history, we’ve invited poets, scientists, visual artists, musicians, and interesting thinkers into the Exploratorium to infuse our community with inspiration and new ideas, and to help us develop new directions for the museum.

We also reach out to the community in lots of ways. For example, our Educational Outreach program links the Exploratorium with community-based organizations serving inner-city children, teens, and families. Our ExNET program, an exhibit and teaching network, shares the fruits of our experience with science centers worldwide. We also partner with other institutions—NASA and NOAA, for example, on initiatives that foster a public understanding of science—and we work with other science centers on collaborative projects. We extend our community, too, through our Website, which gets approximately 24 million visits annually, and through social networking including Facebook and other online communities.