Why does it feel like most art museums are for adults and most science museums are for kids?

Because adult science is complex and dull to people outside the field.

How do we know the makeup of the atmosphere of a planet in another solar system? That line on a graph is higher then the other one

Most art reflects on cultural and historical contexts that kids might not be aware of yet.
Most science museums are geared toward teaching scientific principles that kids are also less likely to be aware of.

So art museums depend on existing knowledge, while science museums supply knowledge to those who don’t yet have it.

Because of our cultural conceptions of the two subjects.

In our culture, it is quite well accepted that for practical reasons, children need to be exposed to and made interested in science and technology from a young age. That way they can become engineers who make good money and help us outcompete our technological/economic rivals. Having a child who becomes a successful engineer (or other stem profession, like a doctor or accountant) is seen as the mark of successful parenting to the middle class, as these roles make a good wage, contribute to society, are reasonably high up the social status heirarchy, and have a clear and achieveable path to success. Therefore parents, who are far more likely to be voters in their cities, will be willing to support spending tax dollars on science museums that are interesting and engaging to children.

And another factor is that science museums designed for children are often just as interesting and engaging for adults. The vast majority of adults have largely forgotten their high school physics or chemistry, and will enjoy remembering those lessons with hands-on demonstrations just as much as children. And while children and their parents are often the biggest target demo of science museums, in larger or more educated cities at least, many museums try to appeal to larger demographics. For example, in my city the Natural History and Science Museum has regular changing exhibits that go in-depth on topics that many find interesting. A while ago, I saw their exhibit on poison, which had a lot of interesting things to learn about the history of poison, evolution, biology, and chemistry. And most people at the exhibit were adults without children.

Anyway - art. Art, on the other hand, is not a viable career path (according to our cultural consensus). Parents want their children educated enough in art to make it a hobby and so they will be well rounded... but they don't really want their child harboring fantasies of becoming a writer or painter or musician, since these careers tend to have poor wages, have no clear path to middle class success, and will probably end up with their child living in a bohemian commune and getting a neck tattoo. Hence, there is not nearly as much pressure for large investments in the arts that appeal to children.

On the other hand, enjoying art is a sign of high social status. Here, we should differentiate between pop art and high art. Pop art doesn't need museums, and therefore doesn't require public funding. The guy who will make you a trippy landscape painting with spraypaint next to the tilt-a-whirl is an artist - but his art will almost certainly never hang in an art museum. It is too lowbrow for that, and the purpose of art museums is to showcase highbrow art - art that the upper classes have deemed "good". Going to an art museum is a way of signalling social status because what is considered "good" - what is fashionable at the time - is constantly changing, and one can signal their social status by expressing their opinion of what is "good" or "bad", which signals their closeness to social elites. The closer you are to the elites, the faster you hear about their preferences, and the sooner you can mirror them. Of course, this nuance is lost on almost everyone - they just pick up from the cultural zeitgiest that going to the art museum is a very classy and sophistocated thing to do. And so when funding the city's art muesum comes up on the ballot, a middle class suburban 43 year old mother of two teenagers isn't thinking about the museum's impact on her children's education, but is rather thinking of her own self-conception as a high-minded individual who supports "the arts", and who really should get around to badgering her husband into taking her there so she can "keep up with what is going on in the art world" in her fancy dress (that is actually 10 years out of style and hasn't fit her for the last 7).

Hence why art museums are so often boring and stuffy. Their main purpose is to serve as a social space for elites during exclusive events. Elite tastes must not coincide with common tastes - and since most people like things that are nice and friendly and fun and happy, elite tastes must differentiate themselves by being boring, disconcerting, harsh, and uncomfortable - hence the popularity of modern art and architecture. The interesting and enjoyable thing about art museums is the opportinity to get drunk with elites during their exclusive events. Then the average person, who is not invited to these events, is allowed to feel sophisticated by visiting and staring at the painting that the elites had a conversation next to but never really looked at.

Popular art - art that people actually enjoy for its own sake - doesn't need museums, since it can be enjoyed in movie theatres, in art studios, on street corners, in crowded bars, at music festivals, at home on a phone or laptop, or next to the tilt-a-whirl.

Because they are….

Suer both may have aspects that appeal to the non primary age demographic but science museums are for kids and art museums aer for adults.

I am being literal about the term Science Museums.

The museum of Natural History is a museum about Science but it is not a science museum.

My local nature and science museum is dumbing everything down by eliminating the need to read and make everything interactive. All the cool walk through exhibits are becoming interactive displays and games. :(

Science museums are FUN because the experience is the purpose: teach people scientific principles or exhibit the (progressive) history of science.

Art museums have different purposes: historical theses, expression, cultural development, discussion, drinking, or money laundering.

It makes some sense: science museums are educational focused, art museums are about very boring things that adults enjoy but kids might not.

Because you didn't get enough art education when you yourself were a child.

My fave science museum is the DaVinci Museum in Milano. It not as kiddie as the others, and my teenage kids actually enjoyed it as much as I did.

Maybe it's halfway between an art museum and a science museum because DaVinci was kinda split that way too.

Capitalism wants workers and scientists, so it gets kids interested in science and doing things with their hands.

Art is only useful to capitalism for money laundering, and we don't want kids getting interested in culture and history or the idea they can influence culture, do we?

Because science is fun and art is boring lol, like asking why the bouncy castle is for kids and why the conversation about traffic is for adults

Honestly cos adults are scared to show wnimsy and a thirst for kmowledge, or have to pretend they knew about every cool thkng that is demonstrated in a science musem. And in arr museums, adukts will pretend to "get it" to impress their date whereas kids will usually not pretend to like a picture just to impress their parents.

Many art museums have recorded guides for kids. The one I went to the other day also gave kids the opportunity to paint their own paintings based on subjects (skulls, vases, fruit etc) the painter of the main exhibition (Césanne) used.

We're all kids at heart. Go and press the button, it's fine!

Most art needs context or understanding of a subject before it can be fully experienced. Something children generally don't have the base of knowledge to understand or appreciate. Though there is certainly art that is meant singularily with just the work itself sans anything else.

Needing that art history to appreciate it doesn't work for kids most of the time.

Science helps children understand the world they are a part of. They need it in a way that art generally doesn't.

This also changes depending on what science is on display but kids as already exposed to art in the form of media and the decor of the places they live.

Higher science or perhaps a better term might be more complicated science needs advanced education to be digested, and also much of science that is new to people would need to be read and understood in publication or it is behind restricted areas for safety and also IP reasons so not really something you can bring kids to to show them.

So it makes sense, it's not too difficult to understand. But there also is room for taking the time and effort to create museums that DO allow those things that usually arent allowed.

Art in action IS a museum/gallery

Science in action will often get you killed without proper safety and that would add significant cost to projects that already have funding issues.

And then there's things like CERN... You can get a tour!

Some of the most impactful demonstrations of science are hands-on activities. After all, any sufficiently advanced science starts to look like magic, and a major objective of science museums is to disabuse people of that notion. That these demos seem to be child-oriented is simply a result of not assuming any background knowledge of the topic. But even adults might not know how a tumbler lock works, or that electricity follows all paths in inverse proportion to resistance. If something is rooted in natural phenomena, age is not a prerequisite to understanding.

As an adult, I personally enjoy science museums precisely because they're the polar opposite of technical papers and textbooks: an accessible and chill mood to learn about stuff I've seen but never paid much attention to. I'm not so vain to think that I can't learn something from a museum visit. In some sense, adults going to science museum is akin to edutainment, the genre on YouTube. Some museums even specifically have after-hours events so that adults can roam without children in the way.

Some might also call it "adult learning" or "continuing education", but whatever it is, it's enriching for individuals and families alike.

I wanna go to an art museum that lets me touch and play with the art the way a science museum lets me touch and play with the science.

To save the parents the embarrassment of having to explain something they don't understand.

Don't get me wrong, art can be just as awkward to explain but it is socially acceptable to chalk things you don't understand to the artist's creative whim

Good observation. I think people who build museums are generally closer to Science than Art (or even just the adult population in general).

I think it is very hard to teach to a general audience at an intermediate level because that grey area between noobs and experts is so vast.

I have had a lot of interests I've tried to learn about on my own, and it is usually pretty easy to start out from nothing, since everything you get exposed to is new, and you feel an immediate acquisition of knowledge or skill.

Then at the expert level, you're interacting with people that should all have a high level of existing knowledge, and you don't need to worry about the audience coming into a presentation with wildly different degrees of understanding.

For a place like a museum that is usually designed to cater to a general audience, keeping things simple is simply going to appeal to a larger potential group of people. This is something I can lose sight of myself in talking with people about subjects I enjoy. They either aren't into it as much as I am and can only stay engaged so long, or I need to do a lot of talking to find out where their current level of experience is before I can start really elaborating.

If you can find staff that is willing to be engaged at a museum or whatever place you may be at, talking with them can really help you get a lot more out of things, whether that is to ELI5 or to go deeper into the subject. I've had people be able to explain different things to me in art museums or historical reenactments, and I've talked to lots of zookeepers and rehab workers to learn more about their captive breeding programs, animals that may not be currently out for display, training and education programs, or about various laws and regulations when working with animals that would bore 99% of a general audience. I love when people ask me about things at work or at events, because there are usually so few people that actually want me to really talk about some of the specialized things I know! Most people working these places will have a passion for what they are doing and may really appreciate having someone to share that with.

When I was a kid, I liked all sorts of museums, art, science, history, natural history, etc. As an adult, I still do, although I prefer Art Museums the most.

I think most children aren't very interested in most art that isn't made specifically for children.

Science meanwhile, there are a lot of ways to make that interesting to many children, with interactive elements and such.

because in the science museum they have a lot of touch/interactive exhibits. museums, don't.