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ANY museum of science and technology risks ending up like a python that’s
swallowed a goat: bloated with artefacts from human history, it struggles to
digest its prey into pithy statements that show-case generations of ideas
and objects. A museum has to look forward as well as back. It also needs to
satisfy today’s three-second attention spans and be aesthetically satisfying at
the same time.

You can’t fault the new Wellcome wing at London’s Science Museum for effort.
The planners of this £50 million development, now open to the public, have
clearly worked hard. But I found myself wondering whether it is an art
show—all installation, performance and play? Or is the new wing aimed at
education and instruction in science and technology.

The timing for the preview couldn’t have been better. It was 27 June, the day
after the sequencing of the human genome was announced, illustrating one of the
new wing’s strengths—its ability to showcase science as it’s happening.
For example, a PCR machine that amplifies DNA fragments. The machine has now
gone, as the genome sequencing story slips down the news agenda. Another exhibit
lets you test your own DNA. I noticed that the rather fetching pattern on an
elegant screen separating one exhibit area from another is made of human
chromosomes. A nice touch.

Other exhibits include short, sharp takes on contemporary topics in science
called Talking Points. There’s a small, contained area to engross the under
eights while you explore other items such as Digitopolis, an interactive
art/tech display for adults, or Antenna, which lets you access the latest
science news. There’s a whole slew of things under the label, In Future, which
two hours was not enough to cover.

To reach all this, visitors walk through 250 years of history in an older
gallery full of pieces that made us modern. All are original: the Apollo 10
capsule and Francis Crick and James Watson’s spindly DNA molecule sit beside
Stephenson’s Rocket, Ford’s Model T and a prototype of the Clock of the Long
Now, ticking once an hour, chiming once a year.

This long and well-lit gallery contrasts with the cool, blue gloom of the new
wing. The building is all engineering and science fiction: you’ll find struts,
ties, bolts and metal holding up galleries from above or below. A giant screen
loops a video-art piece on a wall, as bits of the building appear to drop from
the ceiling on springs a few metres above the heads of people travelling up
escalators to an Imax theatre.

Some exhibits looked too delicate for the hurly-burly of public use—the
maintenance and minders for the DNA machines, for example, will be a big
expense. Perhaps this is why all the main exhibits are sponsored by large
companies with deep pockets in addition to the wing’s main donors, the Wellcome
Trust and the national lottery.

Intel has given £1.5 million over three years towards Digitopolis. The
BBC and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council contribute to the
Antenna science news exhibit, as does the journal Nature. Other donors
include the pharmaceuticals companies Glaxo Wellcome and Pfizer.

All the companies deserve praise for their declared aims: to communicate, to
inform and encourage the public’s interest in science. But I wonder how far
their generosity will extend. Can we expect, for example, a
pharmaceuticals-sponsored exhibit to cover a controversy about clinical trials
or drug pricing? And what if the BBC decided to cut back on science programming?
Will we get to read all about it in Antenna? I doubt it.

Presumably, such questions are exactly what the new wing’s planners want us
to ask, which is why I’ll be going back soon. Other questions are less welcome,
such as why is access for someone on crutches so poor if lifts are out of order?
And some of the signs to exhibits need a rethink. Ankle-height notices are
suitable only with knowledge-digesting pythons.