Oxford Round Table Lecture

Harris Manchester College

Museums and Planetariums: Bridging the Gap Between Hawaiian Culture and Astronomy through Informal Education

In April 2010, the Dr. Joseph Ciotti, CAE Director, presented a lecture on astronomy in Hawaii at the Oxford Round Table series The Two Cultures: Perceived or Real. The lecture focused on the fundamental role that museums, science centers, planetariums, libraries and other informal learning venues — including now the Internet — play in lifelong learning.

Titled Museums and Planetariums: Bridging the Gap Between Hawaiian Culture and Astronomy through Informal Education--A Case Study) this talk discussed the history of Maunakea, its sacredness to Hawaiian culture, its superb geospatial location for astronomical observations, the controversy that these two different cultural perspective created and an attempted solution at resolving the conflict through the informal education offered by a planetarium-science center steeped in Hawaiian culture.

This lecture was published in the Forum on Public Policy (UK) and is available by clicking the icon below