There are about 5,000 natural science museums around the world, and their number has been on the rise. At International Council of Museums, the museum is being defined ' the nonprofit organization which is established abidingly for contributing societ...
There are about 5,000 natural science museums around the world, and their number has been on the rise. At International Council of Museums, the museum is being defined ' the nonprofit organization which is established abidingly for contributing society and the development of society by collecting, storing, studying, presenting and displaying to the public.'National natural museum is a representative place showing the country's natural environment by gathering and keeping information of the country's all natural environment, and exhibiting and teaching them to people, rather than a mere museum. So, national museum will be the first place to visit in order to understand Korea's natural environment when foreign professors or tourists come to Korea. (Presidential Advisory Council for Science and Technology, 2003).
Also, when it comes to understand a country's culture, you cannot talk about times and lives of the history without mentioning the natural world. In this aspect, National Natural Museum has an important meaning, because it is a basic factor showing the country's ethnic culture for understanding the history of ethnic group's emergence, foundation and identity of the culture.
In a situation that the importance of natural museums has increased, recently the necessity of national natural museums is issued continuously even in Korea. At the same time, local governments all over the country are establishing natural meseums and similar facilities, such as science museums, institutes of biological resources, and eco center. Accordinly, recent research trends of natural museum have rather focused on quality than appearance and formality of museum, so the direction of research has shifted to the contents delivery methods and the exhibition characteristics attracting more visitors' interests.
This research is for Narrative Structure Analysis by analyzing exhibition systems of natural museums and international natural museums. Narrative is a way of expressing stories about lives and histories of the past in text.
The display of museum must have clear structure about what kind of story will deliver according to the object of the target with finality. Through the structure of narrative we must propose the object of museum, efficient display according to purpose of education and schooling.
The objects of analysis was chosen as four national and public nature museums of significant history and size, from the developed countries around Asia, United States and Europe, and four domestic nature museums; domestic museums were chosen according to their size of exhibition and variety in exhibition themes.
The main purpose of the study was to propose educational goals, by understanding the educational purposes, exhibition theme, and contents of the natural museums studied, and by analyzing their spatial composition and exhibition system by narrative structure. The study was proceeded by analyzing each blueprint and flow of the exhibition content composition system, on a case-by-case basis. Also, there were reviews on various documentations such as a variety of research reports which focus on exhibition space of the natural museums studied, and other materials on facilities and exhibitions, visits to the site and analysis on the spaces, along with meetings and interviews with and survey of curators of each natural museum.
Through these analyses, the expressive factor of main narrative structure is significantly departmentalized event element, material factor, and the structure of scenario, by subdividing the constructive formation, the feature of narrative at the space of display, and the cognitive classification of expression of display, we can classify them total 12 things, and we studied space& construction method and the link&continuity of semantic transport of each of subjet with emphasis for interpreting narrative
The results of the analysis which is focused on the expressional elements of the narrative structure are as follows.
The main theme of the overseas natural museum which has each thematic subject consists of the picaresque plot which is an element of event and, in the mid-topic, the purpose of the museum and the basic plan and the theme are being told with a certain stream of time. However, in the case of sub-themes, it was quite difficult to identify their narrative structure mostly because they tend to consist of exhibition items designed to explain the mid-level theme, although some narratives of the sub-themes were made within the mid-theme.
In the case of domestic natural history museums, the main theme consisted of picaresque plots, which are episodic elements as theme topic, just as natural museums abroad are. However, the narratives of mid-themes were not made as a whole, except the Seodaemun Natural History Museum which is a municipal museum.
It was hard to understand the narrative structure. Because the sub-themes of the domestic museum of natural world were also mostly composed of the items to explain the themes.
Any natural museum should deliver accurate educational goals as it was supposed to do at the time of establishment, and adopt a narrative structure which is in line with its educational purposes to zones and themes of educational purposes, in order to offer effective education and exhibition befitting its educational purposes.
Therefore, the study attempts to understand the types of exhibition by accurately defining museums and in turn to propose a narrative structure for a natural museum when new national natural museum will be built in the future.
It is to make clear that an effective education in the curriculum of natural museum exhibition can be carried out by applying a narrative structure, which may be utilised as an academic theory and an important material when a natural museum will be established in the future.