The representation of international states, societies, and cultures in twenty-first century space-themed exhibits: an anthropological inquiry into museums in California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia

This thesis investigates the inclusion and exclusion of cultural information within museum exhibitions at space and science centers, aerospace museums, planetariums, and public astronomical observatories in California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. Aside from the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, museums with content on space exploration have received sparse academic attention and, prior to this thesis, no study has investigated the use of cultural content at space museums in these four regions. This topic is explored by amalgamating archival documents on the historical development of space museums, and through the study of exhibit labels and panels at 19 space museums, including a case study of the Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland, California. The theoretical frameworks of anthropology are used to assess the ways in which space museums use exhibit panels and labels to create specific cultural narratives. To accomplish this, data mining techniques were used to quantitatively assess how and to what extent culturally affiliated terms were incorporated into museum exhibit panels and labels. In so doing, this research both quantitatively and qualitatively assesses the extent at which international cultures and histories are represented. In part, this thesis is intended as a critique on the current state of space museums and their exhibitions, and provides brief samples of diverse cultural narratives that might be of interest to future exhibit designers and curators, such as pre-colonial Mayan cosmology, Germany’s role in the origins of spaceflight, and the activities of modern East Asian space programs. Ultimately, this thesis demonstrates the potential data mining has for museum research, finding that space-exhibits do present multicultural narratives to varying extents, but that such narratives are less common in Southern California and become increasingly abundant the further one travels north.