%0 Journal Article
%T Curating the collider: using place to engage museum visitors with particle physics
%A Alison Boyle
%A Harry Cliff
%D 2014
%V 
%N Autumn 2014
%K CERN
%K Collider
%K Large Hadron Collider
%K Museum
%K particle physics
%K place
%K re-creation
%K room set
%K Science Museum
%K space
%X CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest particle physics facility, provides museological opportunities and challenges. Visitor interest in cutting-edge physics, with its high media profile, is tempered by anxiety about understanding complex content. The topic does not readily lend itself to traditional museum showcase-dominated displays: the technology of modern particle physics is overwhelmingly large, while the phenomena under investigation are invisible. For Collider, a major temporary exhibition, the Science Museum adopted a ‘visit to CERN’ approach, recreating several of the laboratory’s spaces. We explore the effectiveness of this approach, at a time when historical studies of scientific laboratories and museum reconstructions of spaces are subject to renewed interest.
%Z At the time the front-end research was carried out, around 65 per cent of adults had heard of the LHC and CERN, although recognition was often by association rather than name (e.g. ‘the big science experiment in Switzerland’). Subsequently, extensive media coverage of the 4 July 2012 Higgs boson announcement probably led to greater familiarity.

%Z See also Kohler’s discussions and suggested amendments to Finnegan’s categories (Kohler, 2012).

%Z For a detailed history of the foundations of CERN, see Hermann et al., 1987. Operational history until the 1970s is covered in History of CERN, Volumes II and III.

%Z http://international-relations.web.cern.ch/International-Relations/office/listcountries.html  
%Z As mentioned in various particle physics keynote speeches during 2011, including European Physical Society meeting, Lepton Photon and HEP; in several interviews he has also used E for ‘everywhere’.

%Z Full analysis and reporting awaits completion of the exhibition touring programme as we hope to carry out evaluation across different venues. However, some key points are related here.

%I The Science Museum Group
%@ 2054-5770
%B eng
%U https://journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/article/curating-the-collider/
%J Science Museum Group Journal