The United Nations has designated 2025 as the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology (IYQ), and various events are being held and planned to celebrate the development of quantum science and technology (QST) throughout this year. The proclamation recommends that the IYQ “should be observed through activities at all levels aimed at increasing public awareness of the importance of quantum science and applications.” In line with this, the Japanese National Museum of Nature and Science plans to hold the exhibition for the IYQ in late 2025. This talk introduces this ongoing project and discusses its challenges.
Embodying and exhibiting abstract concepts such as quantum mechanics through historical collections and other media is always a challenge for science curators. However, exhibiting QST with a Japanese collection in a Japanese museum raises different kinds of questions. Several Japanese scientists, such as Nobel laureates Hideki Yukawa and Leo Esaki, certainly played important roles in QST, and their materials are available. However, as for the construction of quantum mechanics in the mid-1920s, the event that endorsed 2025 as the centennial year, few Japanese were involved, and related materials are lacking. What, then, could we exhibit for the starting point of QST? Would it just be an exhibition of scientists learning the new theories far from the epicenter? Composing the exhibition of QST in a Japanese museum, or in non-European museums in general, encourages us to reconsider how we should frame the development of QST and what would be a “celebration” of it.

In China, most medical museums focus on traditional Chinese medicine, while modern medical museums are relatively scarce, lack diversity, and are generally small in scale. This study examines the current state of modern medical museums in China, highlighting the absence of large, comprehensive modern medical museums, inadequate preservation of modern medical artifacts, insufficient integration of artifacts with historical research, and a lack of specialized training for museum professionals. With the growth in museum numbers and rising visitor expectations, the medical museum sector faces significant challenges. An integrated approach involving various institutions such as university museums, archives, hospital history exhibitions, and other cultural displays is proposed. This coordinated development could enhance museum collections, reduce resource duplication, and promote a multi-faceted role for medical museums that blends medicine, science, culture, education, and tourism, potentially marking a future direction for medical museums in China.

Most national science museums in Korea focus on highlighting the achievements of premodern science under the banner of Korean Scientific History. In contrast, the accomplishments of modern Korean science are typically presented within the context of advanced or industrial technology history, often emphasizing Korea's first products or innovations. This approach makes it challenging to explore the broader context and processes through which Korea's scientific and technological advancements have evolved.
By systematically addressing the achievements of modern Korean science, science museums could help Koreans recognize science as an integral part of their cultural and historical identity. Furthermore, such exhibitions could offer valuable insights to international visitors seeking to understand the secrets behind Korea's rapid development.
This presentation aims to identify key challenges that need to be resolved to effectively showcase the compressed development of modern Korean science in science museums. It will also explore the essential conditions required to incorporate research on modern Korean scientific history into museum exhibitions. This approach not only enriches academic research on modern Korean society and science but also provides practical value for curating meaningful science museum exhibitions.

In 2022, the Destination Moon exhibition opened at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, with the aim of addressing two questions: why have humans pursued lunar exploration, and how have they achieved their goals. Although these are broad questions, the exhibit primarily answers them through a focused account of the United States’ Apollo program. This decision reflects the attributes not only of a national museum, but a collections-focused institution. The narrative of Destination Moon, like many Smithsonian exhibits, is structured around artifacts. While the US National Collection comprises over 155 million artifacts, many of them represent the institution’s aim of defining national identity through the documentation of the nation’s history, diversity, ideals and values. For this reason, artifacts related to lunar exploration in the US National Collection primarily represent American spaceflight. This paper discusses how artifacts, and the use of a National Collection in particular, create challenges for telling global histories of science, technology, and medicine. It recounts how and why the exhibit team expanded the predecessor exhibit’s chronological and geographic scope to more fully capture the cultural and intellectual history of human visions of lunar exploration predating the Apollo program, contemporary missions, and humankind’s diverse engagement with lunar exploration over time. In doing so, it offers a point of comparison for the symposium’s broader discussion of science museums in an East Asian context.