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| Adult Play | ||||||
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| Frank Oppenheimer, Exploratorium Originally published in February/March 1980 issue of The Exploratoriurm | ||||||
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| Frank wrote this article for the February/March 1980 issue of The Exploratoriurm magazine, which was on the topic of play. That same issue was dedicated to the memory of Jackie Oppenheimer, Frank’s first wife and co- founder of the Exploratorium, who died of cancer as the magazine was going to press. It might have seemed inappropriate for that commemorative magazine to deal with such a light-hearted topic, but the consensus at the Exploratorium was “Jackie would have liked that.” The article captures an important aspect of Frank’s attitude toward work and learning. | ||||||
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| When we were planning this issue of The Exploratorium magazine some months ago, we thought of taking photographs of a crane operator knocking down a wall with a huge steel ball. It seemed to us that anybody who had ever seen this activity would like to get a hold of that swinging ball and play with it for a while. We asked our staff photographer to photograph this activity in San Franciso; we would also talk with one of the operators to see if he ever had this sense of playfulness that we associated with the wrecking ball. Immediately after these discussions the photograph of the Minneapolis grain elevator appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle. The photograph confirmed our notion that it was indeed a playful activity, and we contacted the Minneapolis ball-and-crane operator. Contrary to our expectations, the operator perceived what he had done as getting publicity for his firm. Despite the operator’s perception of his own activity, we see it as something which matches our conception of playfulness—that of using a prop of society out of the context of its designated purpose, which in this case is to knock things down. The imaging of a face on a | ||||||