Thursday, September 29, 2011

Coming Full Circle: Some ExhibiTricks Changes


It's been 360 posts and over four years since I first started the ExhibiTricks blog.  I've been thinking a little bit since this Summer about some changes and additions I'd like to make, so I thought I'd let you know what's coming up.


First of all my sincere thanks to the tens of thousands(!) of folks who tune in every month --- I hope you'll continue to find useful/interesting things here.  I'm planning on continuing with what seems to have settled into a weekly posting mix of commentary, design inspirations, and tips about useful exhibit resources and materials, along with interviews with some of the smartest and most interesting exhibit folks in the biz.  (Speaking of which, next week we'll have a great interview with Beth Redmond-Jones.)

So that all stays.  But I'd like to prototype three new and additional features that I hope will foster a bit more interaction with (and between) my ExhibiTricks readers.

The first new feature is SoapBox, and basically it's a forum for anybody who'd like to pitch an idea, or vent a rant, or just express some creative exhibit-y thoughts in a public forum.  As long as it has at least a tangential museum/exhibit/design connection, I'm happy to give you the podium.   If you're interested in being part of SoapBox, just send me an email.

The second new feature I'm calling ReWind.  After 360 posts and counting, I've started to develop a nice "back catalog" with some really useful information and inspiration that even I dip back into on a continuing basis. It is all searchable, but it also is a bit unwieldy, so I'll regularly dip back into the ExhibiTricks vaults and pull out some "evergreen" posts to add some new intro thoughts and updates to.

Last, but not least, is the Exhibit Doctor feature.  Much of my consulting work, as well as just collegial "shop talk" with folks at conferences or on the phone is about solving common exhibit problems that keep coming up again and again in different museums, and in different contexts.  So I'm soliciting suggestions for nagging exhibition problems that you'd like to submit to the Exhibit Doctor (that's me.)

If I choose your idea/problem, I'll include free calls, emails and research to thoroughly dig into your problem and to provide good resources and options to address your knotty exhibits issue.  The only "catch" is that you allow me to capture all of the process and post it on the blog.  If you'd like to make an appointment with the Exhibit Doctor, send me an email with your pitch or problem.

So that's it for now.  I hope the three new features interest YOU and start adding different facets to your ExhibiTricks experience.  Obviously ReWind will start right away next week, but I suspect SoapBox and the Exhibit Doctor will take a bit more time to gain traction.

I'm looking forward to the next 360 postings!



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Friday, September 23, 2011

A suggestion for the MacArthur Foundation: Give Arthur Ganson a "Genius Grant"



The MacArthur Foundation just announced the class of 2011 for the "genius grants." And while I sincerely congratulate this year's winners, for the past several years I keep noticing that there is a name missing from the list of awardees.

That would be the artist and creator of kinetic sculptures, Arthur Ganson.


If anyone has "shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction" to quote the grant standards, it is Arthur Ganson.  To further quote from the MacArthur website: "There are three criteria for selection of Fellows: exceptional creativity, promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishment, and potential for the fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work."  Again an apt description of Arthur and his work.

Rather than speak in greater detail for Arthur or his work,  I'll just direct you to his excellent website, and the wonderful video from the TED Conference embedded at the top of this post.

Creative work is often un(der)appreciated work, and while many wonderful artists, craftspeople, and facile thinkers will never receive the recognition they deserve, I hope that Arthur Ganson soon becomes part of the cadre of MacArthur award winners.



Don't miss out on any ExhibiTricks posts! It's easy to get updates via email or your favorite news reader. Just click the "Sign up for Automatic ExhibiTricks Blog Updates" link on the upper right side of the blog.

P.S. If you receive ExhibiTricks via email (or Facebook or LinkedIn) you will need to click HERE to go to the main ExhibiTricks page to make comments or view multimedia features (like videos!)

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Exhibit Design Toolbox: babyCAD


I'm all for FREE tools that help exhibit designers, so let me commend babyCAD to your attention.

BabyCAD is an online tool that lets you intuitively create exhibit installations.   It's clear that right now babyCAD is geared more toward trade show and pop up exhibits, but that being said, I really liked how quickly and intuitively I could knock together a respectable rendering with multiple exhibit elements.

The babyCAD program allows you to choose from a set of items arranged by categories that you can adjust to fit particular exhibit and display situations.  Two additional features that I like are the ability to add "skins" (like logos or artwork) to selected elements, as well as the ability to save your creations (that you want to share with clients) as either a PDF or a custom Web link.  The Web link is a URL that allows clients to control all the 3D-viewing aspects of your exhibit rendering in babyCAD without editing capabilities.

If you need to design kiosk-based or portable installations in your institution, babyCAD is well worth a look.

So what are you waiting for? Go to the babyCAD website and give it a whirl!


Don't miss out on any ExhibiTricks posts! It's easy to get updates via email or your favorite news reader. Just click the "Sign up for Automatic ExhibiTricks Blog Updates" link on the upper right side of the blog.

P.S. If you receive ExhibiTricks via email (or Facebook or LinkedIn) you will need to click HERE to go to the main ExhibiTricks page to make comments or view multimedia features (like videos!)

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Why We Do What We Do: An Interview with Sean Duran


Sean B. Duran was the Vice President for Exhibition and Design at the Miami Science Museum before his untimely death in April 2016. Before that, Sean held a progressive series of positions at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia where he was the leader of content and design development teams for exhibitions and public programs that interpreted the research of the Academy’s Center for Systematic Biology and Evolution.

I've kept this interview in place as both a memorial to, and a record of, Sean's thoughtful contributions to the museum field.

Sean's exhibition projects include Moving Things, a light hearted look at how things move; serving as co-PI on Charlie and Kiwi’s Evolutionary Adventure, an NSF-funded research and touring exhibition project; Heart Smart, a science research project and personalized, trilingual exhibition experience where the exhibition components record data about the health of individual museum visitors; the NSF funded Amazon Voyage, a touring exhibition that has been seen nationally by more than one million visitors; and The Dinosaurs of China, a massive twelve thousand square-foot collaborative exhibition partnership with the Beijing Museum of Natural History.

A particular focus of Sean's work is bilingual communication in exhibitions and he has been core to the development, testing and implementation of bilingual design protocols for all visitor-oriented projects.  Sean’s attention is now turning to the growing momentum behind the development and construction of the new downtown Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science, a 250,000 square-foot science museum and aquarium scheduled to replace the small, aged, though well-loved, current museum.  Sean lives in Coconut Grove, Florida with his wife, a trained chef and informal educator, and daughter, who is in second grade and loves the ocean.


What’s your educational background?
I went to Saint Vincent College and Seton Hill University where I did a BFA, and University of Pittsburgh where I studied history, science and museum studies.  Dr. Paul Chew was the president of a small regional art museum and my advisor. He hired me part-time at the Westmoreland so I was thrown sink-or-swim into how museums do what we do.  I’m so sorry he’s now passed on because I often think I’d like his current view on things.



What got you interested in Museums?
I think museums are in my DNA. My dad was a staff taxidermist at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh and I have a certain fondness for the smell of naphthalene wafting through a workspace.  Some earliest memories are of sawdust-covered museum-basement floors, stacked sauropod bones and the decayed Viking ship at the thoroughly old-school 1970’s era Carnegie.



How does working with teams to create exhibits inform your design process?  (Or does it?)
People bring much of themselves to the design process, and Miami is an incredibly diverse place so I work with community members and colleagues from quite literally all over the world ­ as many of us in exhibition work do. So there is great strength in that diversity.  Most museums are not on track to become welcoming to all.  Non-whites veer away from museums and this trend isn't new and not likely to change until Latinos and African-Americans cease to be so rare on museum staff - or better yet, are commonly running museums.

On the bright side, Museum magazine quoted John Zogby who called the millennial generation the first "globals" and they have embraced diversity so thoroughly that distinctions of race, gender and sexual orientation are fading into the background. If museums engender the kind of participatory experiencers they seek, maybe the barriers won't be so severe.



Tell us a little bit about how your “non-museum” skills/activities inform your exhibit design work?  Non-museum activity? Can watching baseball at 9:30 at night inform exhibit design work? I guess not, that’s just recharging batteries.  My 7 year-old daughter is probably been the best non-museum-activity-museum-activity I’ve ever had. Its not a very diverse focus group but it puts a face on why we do what we do. It’s simply humbling to create museum experiences that may inspire a young person's interest in science and critical thinking. We get the government we deserve and if she grows up to vote from the position of an informed critical thinker, that’s success on both axes.



What are some of your favorite online (or offline!) resources for people interested in finding out more about exhibition development?   I think volunteering is a great way to find out about exhibition development.  Everyone has something they can contribute and museums are hungry for the help.  And through online networks, exhibition teams can include anyone interested in participating in the development and design of an exhibition. I like what Liberty Science Center did in this way with their Cooking exhibition.



What advice would you have for fellow museum professionals, especially those from smaller museums, in developing their exhibitions?  Don’t lock yourself in to any one approach or process as every project has its opportunities. If you only define success as perfectly following a specific flow of steps you’ll likely miss some opportunity to make something really special.


What do you think is the “next frontier” for museums?  Who can say… humans are innately experimental. We recently finished up an exhibition area with a fairly small footprint called "Room for Debate". The interactives in this room include a Snibbe infotiles wall, a nice feedback video kiosk by Brad Larson, a pair of carbon calculators, and other elements aimed at promoting discussion around visitor's lifestyle choices and resulting environmental impact.

The entire space was made from found materials (like magazines that were rolled and stacked to form a wall and repurposed cremation tubes that were lined up to form another) or, green materials (like wheat board, sustainably harvested woods, and recycled plastics). These were tagged with hanging labels so visitors could compare the merits or challenges of the different substances. Graphics were printed with soy inks directly on hunks of old shipping crates that had arrived at the museum for one reason or another. We are doing some remediation stuff now - adding more labels – even more comfortable seats - scheduling demos right inside the space - - no surprises.

I think the greatest challenge museums face as we venture into the “new frontier” is how to strategize the response to demographic shifts that are presently transforming the social landscape of the United States. Ethnicity (and age) will have the largest impact on museums as the definition of mainstream requires revision. Like, what we were shooting for in the “Room for Debate”, museums need to become places where people want to hang-out – not places they feel they ought to visit – so as demographics change, museums need to become places where all people do feel welcome, do hang-out, engage and contribute.



What are some of your favorite museums or exhibitions?
That’s hard to say, but I’m interested in exhibitions that trust their audience enough to employ humor as a delivery strategy. For example there was an exhibition at the Skirball in Los Angeles called “Jews on Vinyl”. …..it was a simple, not exhaustive exhibition and I think this supports a point that in terms of humor in exhibitions, risk is equable with scale suggesting smaller and less expensive stuff has a better chance of surviving the committee.

Non-museum people Josh Kun and Roger Bennett were the duo behind Jews on Vinyl. The Skirball allotted them about 600 square feet of light filled space where they arranged comfortable furniture, like a hipster’s ‘50s living room. There were ipod listening stations loaded with play lists. One was titled You Don’t Have to be Jewish – another contained 50 versions of Hava Nagila. ……and they hung the requisite  “wall of vinyl” . The space was welcoming; it feel comfortable; a place to laugh with others. I was so taken with this exhibition I called the Skirball and spoke to Erin Clancey. She had managed guest curators Josh and Roger and she confirmed that “welcoming” was in fact a core intent. They wanted visitors to be able to interact with the records as they would in their own homes.



Can you talk a little about some of your current projects?  
Long term, my near-full attention is turning to the growing momentum behind the development and construction of our new downtown Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science, a 250,000 square-foot science museum and aquarium scheduled to replace the small, aged, though well-loved, current museum.

More recently we just completed the “Stingray Sea Lab” touch tank space and another new exhibition called "Moving Things", about exploring the most efficient way to move things from one place to another. The stingrays were especially fun because we repurposed an underutilized space - the museum's gift shop (we now do the same level of sales from a kiosk in the lobby). We opened it up to the elements by removing a metal and glass wall along one side creating a sheltered indoor/outdoor space. We used a light tube through to the roof to augment natural light to the algae tank and selected LED lights for all of the fixtures reducing the energy load. The algae in the tank is plumbed to do a portion of the work cleaning the water so we have also reduced some of the load on the filters by incorporating these natural elements.



If money were no object, what would your “dream” exhibit project be?
Since there is no such thing as an infinite sack of cash, I’d say my dream project is the one we’re doing right here developing and building the new Miami Science Museum.


Thanks again to Sean for taking the time to share his thoughts with ExhibiTricks readers!  You can follow the progress of the new Miami Science Museum on their blog.





Don't miss out on any ExhibiTricks posts! It's easy to get updates via email or your favorite news reader. Just click the "Sign up for Automatic ExhibiTricks Blog Updates" link on the upper right side of the blog.

P.S. If you receive ExhibiTricks via email (or Facebook or LinkedIn) you will need to click HERE to go to the main ExhibiTricks page to make comments or view multimedia features (like videos!)

Thursday, September 1, 2011

The Numbers Game


Museums, like most organizations, run by the numbers.  Budgets, Schedules, Opening Dates, and most of all, Attendance Figures.

Museums are a little obsessed with attendance numbers.  Like the results of standardized tests in the Education world, we in the Museum world want to use those attendance numbers (and visitor demographics) for validation --- especially with funders.

Take that nice infographic at the top of this post for example. (Thanks to Philip Katz from AAM for providing this info!) It shows that the annual attendance in 2010 for all U.S. museums was approximately 850 million.  Wow! That's a lot! Especially when you compare that number with the combined bar on the right which totals up the annual attendance for major league sports and theme parks at 471 million.

(For you data heads, AAM says that the typical annual attendance is 850 million (defined as discrete on-site visits).  By comparison, the major pro sports (MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL) had 132 million paid attendees (in 2010) and theme parks attracted 339 million (in 2009). AAM relies on the statistics gathered by the Motion Picture Association of America in their 2010 Theatrical Market Statistics [see http://www.mpaa.org/policy/industry], rather than going back to the original sources.)

But beyond providing a little cocktail party trivia, or a clever opening line for a conference speech, what do those numbers really tell us? What's the context?

Are we to believe that people somehow value museums more than major league sports or theme parks? If so, why don't we have more "museum fans" wearing jerseys and lining up every day outside before opening time?  (Or better yet, scalping tickets to get inside!)

I'm grateful for every museum and every museum visitor that the 850 million number represents, but I'm also worried about the people (increasingly young and non-White) who aren't represented by those numbers.

I'm concerned that we as a field will think that somehow we're "beating" theme parks and major league sports when we should be concerned that alternative "edutainment" venues are appropriating our best ideas and techniques and using them to eat our lunch.

I applaud AAM's efforts to ask how can we use these numbers to become part of a far-reaching discussion with museum visitors (and those not yet regularly visiting) and policy makers.

Because it's not just a "numbers game." It's how we use the numbers and data to improve and continue to push all museums forward in these tricky economic times.

Onward!

UPDATE: Please share your financial data to help AAM fight for all museums on Capitol Hill and elsewhere. In the past, museums across the nation contributed data to AAM's Museum Financial Information survey; now museums can contribute the same key data through AAM’s secure online tool, Museum Benchmarking Online (MBO) (www.aam-us.org/MBO). Museums need credible, comprehensive data to make our case to policymakers – especially when they start cutting budgets. MBO is a quick, easy way to support the advocacy efforts of the entire museum field.

Go to www.aam-us.org/MBO for details, including a list of the data being collected, a checklist of the documents you’ll need to assemble, a video introduction to the system, and highlights of the additional benchmarking capabilities for subscribers. You do not need to subscribe or be an AAM member to enter your museum’s data. For the good of the museum field, please take a few minutes to share your vital statistics with AAM. If you have questions, send them to benchmark@aam-us.org.


Don't miss out on any ExhibiTricks posts! It's easy to get updates via email or your favorite news reader. Just click the "Sign up for Automatic ExhibiTricks Blog Updates" link on the upper right side of the blog.

P.S. If you receive ExhibiTricks via email (or Facebook or LinkedIn) you will need to click HERE to go to the main ExhibiTricks page to make comments or view multimedia features (like videos!)