I saw the Einstein exhibit at the Museum of Science yesterday and came away wondering as usual about the oddness of the popular Einstein cult. The overall impression was of a kind of secular hagiography, centered around the display of personal relics and the veneration of Einstein's goodness and wisdom (for instance, though most of the exhibit was about Albert Einstein the man, there was no direct discussion of his questionable treatment of the women in his life). Part of the atmosphere came from the low lighting used to help preserve delicate original documents, but the ambient music and presentation of objects contributed. Kibo remarked that people went around speaking in hushed tones, as if they were in a holy place.

The exhibit went more or less chronologically, from an early biographical section about Einstein's childhood, to a middle part mostly about the special and general theories of relativity, to a long third section about Einstein's life as a celebrity and quasi-political figure, and his final years at the Institute for Advanced Study. I was, of course, mostly interested in how the middle part was presented. They did an OK job popularizing special relativity (though I thought that some of the exhibit copy needed a rewrite), and it was nice for me to be able to spend some time staring at Einstein's scientific manuscripts. The biggest disappointment to me, though, was the relatively meager treatment given to general relativity, which to my mind was Einstein's most staggering and anomalous achievement, and one that I spent years trying to wrap my brain around. It would have been an interesting challenge to try to do better than that for a popular audience.