Interpreting the Interstates seeks to understand the impact of Interstate Highways on the culture and history of Rural America. Its core is a unique collection of 36,655 large-format negatives taken before, during, and after construction of the Interstates in Vermont, the Nation’s most rural state. During year 1, we will make 10,000 of these rarely-seen images public through an established digital image archive, the Landscape Change Program. In year 2, we will use images as catalysts for public discourse at town gatherings. In year 3, we will disseminate our findings widely and stimulate public discussion using 1) a flexible modular exhibit reaching much of the State’s populace at non-traditional venues: 20 county fairs, 18 libraries, & 17 rest areas, 2) permanent interpretive signs at rest stops along Vermont’s Interstate Highways to reach millions of tourists who yearly visit Vermont on the Interstate, and 3) a book and interactive web presence for national dissemination.
The Adirondack Museum at Blue Mountain Lake, New York will develop Mining in the Adirondacks, a multi-faceted project that will include a 29,000 square foot permanent exhibit, an interactive web site module, curriculum development, and public programming. The exhibition will feature approximately 300 objects from the Adirondack Museum collection, including a tuyere plate, miners’ safety gear, picks and drills, historic photographs, an ore cart, maps, iron pigs, garnet jewelry, household items and audio recordings. A mining tunnel, open pit and mine village landscape will be incorporated to provide an immersive experience for visitors. The Mining in the Adirondacks project seeks to interpret the history of mining in the Adirondack wilderness grounded in current scholarship, best museum practice, visitor studies research, and understanding of varied learning styles. Four humanities scholars will work with museum staff.
The Rochester Museum & Science Center (RMSC) requests funding to complete initial plans for Innovation Place (working title), a major new 10,000 sq. ft. exhibition in RMSC’s third floor galleries that promotes understanding of Rochester’s technological history and its culture of invention and innovation. Collections objects, immersive environments, multimedia presentations, and interactives will be used to tell stories of invention and innovation from Rochester’s beginnings as the nation’s first boomtown after the opening of the Erie Canal to its current rank among the top knowledge-based economies in the world. By combining the sciences and the humanities into a single exhibition, this project will critically frame and interpret new questions about Rochester as a laboratory of significant technologies – on the local, national, and global levels – and the changes in regional culture and economics that both inspire, and result from, their invention.
In Spring / Summer 2012, The New York Botanical Garden will present a Garden-wide, multi-element exhibit, entitled "Medicinal Plants: Ancient Culture to Modern Medicine," which will demonstrate how plants have shaped the trajectory of medicine from a historical, humanities-based, and cross-cultural perspective. The exhibition, sited throughout the Garden’s 250-acre historic landscape, including the LuEsther T. Mertz Library, the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, the Everett Children's Adventure Garden, and the permanent collection, will examine the relationship between medicine, people, and culture. Public programs and interpretative materials will help visitors make the connection between plants and nature, and the impact, via medicine, that plants have in their lives.
The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHMLAC) contracted Randi Korn & Associates, Inc. (RK&A) to conduct audience research for the Page Museum (the Page) and La Brea Tar Pits (Tar Pits) as part of an overall strategy to examine the site’s current state and determine plans for its future. How did we approach this study? We designed the study to examine and compare Page Museum visitors’ and non-visitors’ perceptions of the Tar Pits and Page Museum; the meaning they construct from their experience; and their knowledge of current scientific research happening at the site. We conducted
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Natural History Museum of Los AngelesStephanie DowneyEmily Craig
The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) contracted with RK&A to conduct a formative evaluation in preparation for the reinstallation of its African art collections, one part of a large reinstallation project currently underway at the Museum. How did we approach this study? This evaluation explored visitors’ reactions to and understanding of the BMA’s potential approach to the African art reinstallation, employing the temporary exhibition Hand Held: Personal Arts from Africa as the base for visitor discussions. The museum used the exhibition Hand Held as an opportunity to explore different
This traveling exhibit, dedicated to the Hubble Space Telescope’s imagery, provides an opportunity for visitors to contemplate the symbiotic relationship of art and scientific exploration. The exhibit was created through a unique collaboration between the Walters Art Museum, the Johns Hopkins University, and scientists and other experts at the Space Telescope Science Institute. Standards-based support materials are available for host institutions.
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Space Telescope Science InstituteBonnie Eisenhamer
This traveling exhibit was developed in collaboration with the American Library Association and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. It consists of six two-sided panels that include images and captions that highlight relevant, historical discoveries in astronomy. The exhibit is supported by a connected suite of standards-based educational resources. Also, each exhibit panel is available as a downloadable, poster-size file.
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Space Telescope Science InstituteBonnie Eisenhamer
The Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History (NMAH) contracted Randi Korn & Associates, Inc. (RK&A) to conduct a formative evaluation for Places of Invention, an exhibition funded by the National Science Foundation. The study explored visitors’ use and interpretation of the prototypes (including barriers to use and interpretation), understanding of the relationships among people-place-invention and 21st century skills, and interpretation of what the Places of Invention exhibition is about. How did we approach this study
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Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and InnovationRandi KornEmily CraigAmanda KrantzNational Museum of American HistorySmithsonian Institution
The Harvard Art Museum will organize, present, and circulate a groundbreaking interpretive exhibition that will transform traditional assumptions about the role of artists in the production of new forms of knowledge during the Renaissance’s Scientific Revolution. The museum will create a major traveling exhibition, Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe, and related publications and public programming. The exhibition, which opens jointly at Harvard’s Sackler Museum and Wellesley College’s Davis Art Museum, addresses the participation of such celebrated northern European artists as Albrecht Dürer, Hendrick Goltzius, and Hans Holbein in the scientific inquiries of the sixteenth century, especially as manifested in their printed works. Such an investigation reveals the previously unexamined close working relationships between the artistic and scientific communities, and the exchanges of influence between them.
In May 2012, the Penn Museum will present the traveling exhibition, Lords of Time, the Maya and 2012 – an innovative exploration of the ancient and modern Maya and their conceptions of time. The exhibition will include over 75 archaeological artifacts and groups, stone sculpture, historical materials, modern reproductions, digital media components, and interactive displays to actively engage visitors in the discovery of an ancient culture, as well as its legacy to the modern world. Themes of the exhibition will span the fields of astronomy, history, archaeology, anthropology, and comparative culture studies. The exhibition is a formal collaboration between the Penn Museum, the Honduran government’s Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia (IHAH), and Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology (Peabody). After its debut at the Penn Museum, the core of the exhibition will travel to other US venues through 2014.
Guastavino Vaulting: Palaces for the People will be a multi-formatted project to examine the history and creative contributions of Rafael Guastavino and his family, a Spanish immigrant family of the late 19th century whose adaptations of a traditional Mediterranean construction technique transformed the urban landscape of the United States. The formats will be a web site and a major gallery exhibition that will travel to the Boston Public Library, the National Building Museum, and the Museum of the City of New York.