Rocket Scientist: An Interview With Wayne LaBar

 

Wayne LaBar is the founder and principal of ALCHEMY studio, an experience and institutional development, design and consulting services studio located in Maplewood, NJ.  Alchemy Studio works with museums, science centers, boards, civic leaders, governments, NGO’s, filmmakers and others involved in the informal learning field.  

With over 26 years of museum experience and numerous papers and presentations, Wayne’s former roles include: Vice President of Exhibitions and Featured Experiences at Liberty Science Center (Jersey City, NJ), Director of Exhibits at The Tech Museum (San Jose, CA), Project Manager at Krent/Paffett Associates, Inc. (Boston, MA) and Project Manager at the Carnegie Science Center (Pittsburgh, PA). Wayne is currently the Vice President on the Board of the National Association for Museum Exhibition (NAME.)

We're happy that Wayne was able to share some time (in between jetting around the world!) to share some thoughts with ExhibiTricks readers.

What’s your educational background?   Rocket Scientist. Really. I have a Bachelor’s Degree in Aerospace Engineering from Georgia Tech. I also worked at NASA. After that, I began a doctorate in Planetary Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh… until I ran away with the circus, which is my euphemism for joining the museum/science center field.


What got you interested in Museums?   Well, on one hand, personally I’ve always loved going to museums. Some of my earliest memories are of visiting the American Museum of Natural History, and visits to places such as the Franklin Institute. These probably set the stage for what I think is your real question. How did I get into this business? Like most good stories, this involves a woman. In fact, one morning my girlfriend at the time in Pittsburgh mentioned that there was an ad in the paper for somebody with a biology degree  and for someone with an engineering degree  to join the Buhl Science Center and help develop the exhibits for a new science center (to be the Carnegie Science Center). We both applied as she was a biologist and I for the engineer position. I got a job and she didn’t. If you’re wondering, yes we broke up.

How does working with teams to create exhibits inform your design process?  (Or does it?)   All of my exhibit and design experience is one of a team process and approach. I think this is one of my favorite parts of the work I do. Learning, interacting, being inspired by others - all come from this process. While I believe that certainly there is usually a vision (for an exhibition down to a single experience) that must drive the process, it always takes the talents and abilities of team members to make an exhibition or exhibit sing.


Tell us a little bit about how your engineering background informs your exhibit design work.   I was once asked what I learned in college. After thinking for a bit, I said “I learned not to be intimidated by problems but to solve them.” It is that skill that I see most in my work. To earn that degree and solve those problems required thinking logically,  being imaginative, working with teams, doing research, being creative, being thorough and focusing on detail.  I use all of those every day.

What are some of your favorite online (or offline!) resources for people interested in finding out more about exhibition development?  Well first, a plug: visit my blog to see some of my personal insights and inspirations about exhibition development. Also, check in to ExhibitFiles, the NAME website and books such as Kathy McLean’s Planning for People in Museum Exhibitions.

Another great resource is the NAME journal: “Exhibitionist.” I would recommend that anyone interested in the museum exhibit business should subscribe.” Link: https://aam-us.org/ProductCatalog/Product?ID=11

I also go to several sites for inspiration which are not directly related to exhibit development. I suggest Fast Company, Wired, Gizmodo, and io9.

What advice would you have for fellow museum professionals, especially those from smaller museums, in developing their exhibitions?   I would examine what differences a smaller institution has over a larger institution and then leverage those to do something different, something that stands out. I would imagine that, at a smaller museum, there can be less bureaucracy, thus maybe allowing teams to be more nimble and experimental, trying things out more, open to more partnerships, probably more community-centered. Identify and use these attributes.

What do you think is the “next frontier” for museums?   Well, I think that museums, at their heart, focus on passion. What I mean is that whether it’s art, science, history, different collections, music or even memorial museums, they are a celebration of human passion for a subject - passions to study a subject, to collect, to understand the world, to create artistic expression, to connect across cultures, to inspire shared vision. The next frontier is for museums to embody the passion they are about. Too often museum organizations’ structures stymie passion in visitors and staff. Museums need to let go.

What are some of your favorite museums or exhibitions? 

The most recent can be seen on my blog.  Other places that are my favorites: House of Terror in Budapest, Science Museum of London, Melbourne Museum, American VisionaryArt Museum in Baltimore, the City Museum in Saint Louis and, of course, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

Can you talk a little about some of your current projects?   Yes, the studio is working on several projects right now.   We are deeply involved in bringing science centers to Saudi Arabia, and there are several science center or informal science learning projects that we are part of. In addition, we are helping an emerging children’s science center in Northern Virginia. Additionally, we are working with the Australian National Maritime Museum to help them think through and reimage their exhibit experience. 

We are also working on a giant screen/IMAX scale film about large-scale engineering projects. ALCHEMY studio has projects in several different mediums from the museum field – permanent exhibits, traveling exhibits, programming & curriculum, media, organizational strategy, master planning, operations, and pretty much anything and everything else related to dreaming about, launching, or running a museum.

If money were no object, what would your “dream” exhibit project be?

Well, certainly, if I could, I would love to do an incredible science/culture/art of cooking exhibition. Having a lot of design, research and ideas from previous work, it would be wonderful to do that project. For something completely different, I would love to an exhibition on the space station. One for astronauts!

Finally, it would be a joy to do a project about and for my two Labrador Retrievers – Reposado and Anejo. Yes, they are named after tequila which would also be a great project to do! Get me started and I’ll keep coming up with new projects!

 
Thanks again to Wayne for sharing his thoughts! You can find out more about Wayne and his work via the ALCHEMY studio website.




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All Hail The Queen!

History and "the past" are really all about context, aren't they?  I was thinking about that today as I finished putting together a wonderful little project called FlipBooKit that I backed on Kickstarter (pictured below.)

FlipBooKit is a "flip book" type of animation device in a little box that is operated via a hand-turned crank on the side.  The animation style brings to mind a Mutoscope and also the ground-breaking work of Eadweard Muybridge.  The late 1800s saw a burst of clever animation devices (including the Thaumatrope, Zoetrope, Pheanakistascope, and Praxinoscope)  that led directly to motion pictures.

It's amazing in our age of 3D and HD video, not to mention animation and video editing software, that these low-tech Victorian-era devices and techniques have such a hold on us. 

Or is it?

Think about how "Steampunk" (essentially a mash-up of Victorian-era styling and cool technologies) has invaded movies, science fiction, art, cosplay, Maker Faires (usually with a designated Steampunk section) and even museum exhibitions!

Since we're on the subject of Victorian-era influences on our modern world, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the brilliant book entitled "The Victorian Internet" by Tom Standage.  (An absolute steal in paperback for only $5.98 at Amazon.  Hurry --- it's a limited supply at this price for some reason.)

Standage argues (quite effectively) that the telegraph (The Victorian "Internet" of the title) actually ushered in many of the advances that we associate with the modern Internet.  Creating New Identities? Hackers? Online Romance? Near Instantaneous Transmission of News Stories?  Been there, done that, and in the time of Queen Victoria, to boot.  (Standage's book takes some of the air out of the puffed-up arguments concerning so-called "digital natives" as well ...)

So all hail Queen Victoria!  (Or at least the years associated with her reign.)  The devices, designs, and technologies in force during the late 1800s have certainly given designers and developers numerous inspirations so many years later.



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ReWind: Inventables

As I've been thinking about and developing "maker" type spaces a lot these days, I thought I'd commend the Inventables website to ExhibiTricks readers again.

Who wouldn't love a website that provides cool stuff like Soft Gel Magnets or Aluminum Foam?   Inventables is just such a website, and it's been great fun trying out their stuff for new exhibits and prototyping projects.

The clean and simple Inventables website gives you examples of new and interesting materials (with specs!) to investigate,  as well as nice search features that lets you sort materials by qualities like "glow in the dark" or "magnetic".

Also, the Inventables site lets you buy small quantities of materials at relatively inexpensive prices.  Maybe you could set up demos or materials science investigation areas for visitors --- a "Material of the Month" perhaps? 

So take a little "mad money" from your current project budgets and click on over to the Inventables web site.  Who knows where some of those cool materials may lead you?

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Real World Advice For Emerging Museum Professionals?

This month I'll again have the pleasure of teaching the graduate class in Exhibition Development at Bank Street College.

While I'm continually impressed by the high caliber of the students I work with, I always feel compelled to share "real world" museum advice with them --- especially with the job market so tight.

So I'd like to harness the brain power of my ExhibiTricks readers and ask you to please share (anonymously if you'd like) in the Comments Section below one bit of advice about the museum business that will help my grad students as they move forward and consider their place in the museum ecosystem.

Thanks very much!


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Less Fuzzy

Be less fuzzy. As the New Year approaches, that's my resolution for my own work, as well as my advice for my clients.

There are lots of "fuzzy" terms in the museum business: Interactivity, Prototyping, Evaluation ...

Everyone has a basic idea of what they think those terms mean, but it often becomes clear(er) as a discussion or design meeting progresses that the use of a term like "interactive" could cover everything from a simple flip-up label to a more complicated design activity.  If you don't lay down some markers at the beginning of your discussions, you can really end up in a bad spot further into the design process.

This has come up recently as I've been speaking with clients and colleagues about "Maker Spaces." "Maker" and "Making" have become a sort of nebulous (and essentially so fuzzy as to be nearly worthless) shorthand for "spaces where visitor do creative things."  (Also, true to Museums loving to jump on a marketable bandwagon, the term"Maker" latches onto both the success and notoriety of Make magazine and Maker Faires.)

Unfortunately, without being a bit more specific, one museum's "Maker Space" could be an unstaffed table with glue sticks and recycled scraps, while another museum's space could be a staffed area where people could use tools like soldering guns and 3D printers.

While shorthand terms like "Maker Space" are a reasonable place to start a design conversation, the devil really is in the details.  Find a way, early in the process, to get specific about each person's starting point and expectations.

So as 2013 beckons, I wish all my ExhibiTricks readers a happy, healthy, and less fuzzy New Year!


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Visitors Are Heterogeneous: An Interview With Erika Kiessner

Erika Kiessner is an Exhibit Developer and Prototyper who is passionate about great exhibit experiences and the wonders of the world we live in.  I'm so pleased that Erika was kind enough to agree to be interviewed for ExhibiTricks!



What’s your educational background?
I have a BASc in Industrial Engineering, where I focused on Human Factors, which I earned at the University of Toronto. I have an MFA in Media Arts, where I focused on Interaction Design which I earned at the Utrecht College of Arts (Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht) in Holland.



What got you interested in Museums?
I grew up in Toronto and always loved visiting the Ontario Science Centre (OSC.) My family also took yearly trips to Sudbury to visit both friends and Science North. But the clincher was participating in a program at the OSC called the Ontario Science Centre Science School. This program allows you to do one semester of your final year of high school in classes taught at the OSC
by educators from the OSC.

The program involved a lot of museum experiences, such as mentoring with OSC staff and running small carts on the floor of the museum with visitors. Seeing behind the scenes at the OSC was a magical experience. I loved everyone I met there. The people I met were all smart and enthusiastic about science. They were inquisitive and creative and they all seemed to love what they were doing.

I already had a love of the museum, but now I saw how great things were behind the exhibits and I wanted to be a part of that. I saw so clearly how this was a group of people sharing their passions with the world and that I could do the same thing. I’ve never lost the joy that I felt then even though I’ve moved on from the OSC.



Does working with teams to create exhibits inform your design process?
It absolutely does. I don’t think that creating exhibits is something one can do alone. Visitors are heterogeneous. So seeing things from multiple viewpoints is crucial to ensuring you reach your actual visitors rather than just people like you.

Plus, I find creative pushback very helpful in refining and improving ideas. Ideas rarely emerge fully formed and ready to go to production.



Tell us a little bit about how your tinkering and fabricating skills inform your exhibit design work?  I have interfaces on my mind all the time. When I am thinking about an exhibit concept or problem, the interface is the first thing I try to frame my solutions with. In that way the “what” of an exhibit is tightly linked with the “how” of it.  When it comes to a whole exhibition, I am thinking about what the theme is and how to give visitors access to its concepts through individual exhibits and experiences.





What are some of your favorite online (or offline!) resources for people interested in finding out more about exhibition development? I’m not sure that I have an answer to this. I think there is lots of great maker stuff in Instructables. There are interesting reviews in ExhibitFiles. But when I want to know more about exhibition development, I tend to talk to people about it.

I think that Human Factors is a rich area to mine for lessons about how people use things and interpret them. Also, there is an amazing amount of research in the design of retail spaces (Journal of Consumer Research and the like), which gets at the psychological impact of design. I am interested in learning theory, but people are so different from each other in the way that they learn.



What advice would you have for fellow museum professionals, especially those from smaller museums, in developing their exhibitions?
Test things out. I am personally often guilty of assuming that I know what visitors will know, or what they will want. But it is tricky to guess and it is easy to miss some really great elements thinking that way.

Even if the museum doesn’t have the resources to try out whole exhibits, there is lots of value in testing out just the text elements. It is cheap and easy to do, and it can give a lot of value to the exhibition.



What do you think is the “next frontier” for museums?
I think we are right on the cusp of an Augmented Reality(AR) breakthrough for museums. The tools for building exhibits that integrate AR are starting to reach a critical mass. Soon enough developers will get their hands on them and we are going to start to see some new ways of doing displays with them.

With smartphones becoming ever more common, visitors increasingly have the tools they need right in their pockets. I only hope that museums can agree on a shared platform so that the visitors do not need to download a new app every time they walk into a new institutions.



What are some of your favorite museums or exhibitions?
I love Science North in Sudbury for how it handles its live animals and makes use of its space.  Seeing Galileo’s telescope in the travelling “Galileo, the Medici and the Age of Astronomy” exhibit really blew my mind. I love the Louvre because it is impossible not to be blown away by the sheer density of it. The City Museum is this beautiful, amazing thing that really challenges all one's preconceptions about museums.

The Mill City Museum in Minneapolis is wonderful both for how it showed the old building and how it used the old elevator as a really unique theatre.  The Johnson Geo Centre in St. John’s Newfoundland is dug into Signal Hill and the exhibits are walled in by the rock of the hill. The Utrecht University Museum has an amazing cabinet of curiosities in it. But to be honest, it is hard for me not to love something about every museum I have visited. I have yet to visit one that didn’t have some real treasures in it.



Can you talk a little about some of your current projects?
The project I’m most excited about right now isn’t for a museum at all. We are building interactive set pieces for a modern dance company. It is a really challenging experience because the needs of dancers are very different from the needs of visitors!



If money were no object, what would your “dream” exhibit project be?
I would love to do a science exhibition about a city, embedded in the city landscape. I imagine walk-up exhibits on street corners and points of interest that draw your attention to something in the vicinity and give a science-based explanation for it. From architecture to wind patterns, local flora to material properties, there are elements of a city that are easy to take for granted even if there are fascinating explanations for them.

For example, in Toronto one of the big downtown office buildings has a cantilevered portion that suspends 13 stories over the sidewalk. An exhibit there might draw an area on the ground with the statement “Standing here there are XX thousand pounds of concrete suspended above you!” Then an explanation about how the building is constructed to support the structure overhead.


Thanks again to Erika for sharing her thoughts with ExhibiTricks readers! 

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 Free 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!)