The bones of a woolly mammoth believed to be nearly 15,000 years old were unveiled in Abu Dhabi’s Marina Mall this week. While some people might be critical of displaying an ageing skeleton in the seemingly uninspiring environs of a shopping centre, the decision also makes a great deal of sense. Malls are part of the fabric of our society and places of continuing civic engagement.
Can there be a better way to get the community involved and engaged than to put the exhibit in the centre of a mall? Not only can shoppers serendipitously stumble upon the exhibit, but parents are afforded the luxury of a free attraction that doesn’t involve a full-day trip to a museum. With a number of museum projects under construction in Abu Dhabi, it is also a relatively informal way to get people excited about knowledge acquisition through exhibitions. Educational initiatives such as this serve to deepen the knowledge of young people and, in some small way, might help encourage students to be more inquisitive about the world. By placing this exhibit in an informal setting, it is also hoped that certain young or reluctant “investigators” might become sufficiently motivated to conduct their own research projects.
However, as Dr Mark Beech, an archaeologist directing the coastal heritage and palaeontology section of the Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority’s historic environment department notes, there is currently no local natural history museum. Such institutions abroad maintain independent educational programmes in addition to their museum offerings. In other words, the museum is just the tip of the iceberg for an entire research community.
While we have a proven commitment to research institutions and museums, we would do well to embrace initiatives and events that inspire our youth in creative new ways. Exhibitions like the woolly mammoth in Marina Mall can provide a memorable learning experience for children, provoke their imagination and introduce them to unknown worlds. This will, in turn, help foster scientific curiosity in the young generations to understand and discover man’s relation to nature throughout history.
