Spreading the word about carts

On March 3, 2011, Rich Faron of Museum Explorer teamed up with Heidi Moisan of Chicago History Museum to lead a roundtable discussion at the Smithsonian's Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Smithsonian educators gathered to hear Rich and Heidi's presentation "Wheeling Visitors In: Customizing Carts to Connect with Audiences."

One of the roundtable attendees channeled her enthusiasm into a lovely blog entry, which we share with you here. Thanks to Jennifer Brundage, National Outreach Manager for Smithsonian Affiliations, for her kind observations!

How to Connect with Audiences in Real-Time Situations? Use CARTS!

Public programmers in museums today face huge challenges. With reduced staff and shrinking budgets, they must nevertheless manage a public trust and an institutional commitment to provide visitors with content, relevance and inspiration. For any given exhibit or event, they're expected to creatively:

• Invite exploration and inquiry

• Target audience interests

• Appeal to awareness

• Inspire personal connections

• Engage visitor curiosity

• Encourage interactive learning

• Facilitate discovery and sharing

• Drive attendance

• Develop repeat visitors

• Enhance the bottom line

For museums, zoos and aquariums, the stakes are high. We all understand the real mission: create new market segments and donor interest through aggressive advertising and outreach so we can capture the imaginations of a discriminating public that has ever-increasing options for how to spend leisure hours and dwindling dollars.

To meet these challenges head-on, museum exhibition and education departments have run a nonstop race for the past 25 years or so, looking for new ways to educate--but also to entertain and retain--the people who visit museums. And there's no end in sight. Because museums need a steady stream of visitors and the revenue they generate, we're pretty sure that exhibitions and the related educational programming will serve as the primary public attraction well into the 21st century.

In order to keep exhibits and programs feeling up-to-date, educators, exhibitors and programmers have had to identify new tools and innovative ways of presenting refreshing, open-ended experiences day in and day out. Lots of them are experimenting with flexible program delivery methods like activity carts.

Carts answer the question of how to provide more activities for visitors while addressing that long bulleted list of expectations. Beyond relating museum mission messages to local school curricula, carts are family-focused, visitor-friendly and interactive. They can move from place to place. They're simple. They're affordable. They're fun.

Maybe the best thing about carts is that they're based on one of the oldest and most reliable forms of audience engagement: direct, one-on-one human contact. A museum visitor meets a museum staff person face-to-face--on the floor, close to the habitat, in front of the painting, next to the tank.

Great exhibits and their related programs inspire audiences to forge personal links with what they see and experience, inviting them to connect with new ideas in memorable ways. Carts help this happen. They bring staff and objects to the museum floor, providing self-contained platforms for open-ended, immediate exchange with audiences. By putting staff, objects and new ideas into direct proximity with visitors, carts become platforms for meaningful conversation.

Museum Explorer has developed a host of program carts for museums and zoos alike. Visitors and museum professionals couldn't be more pleased with the results. In addition, we were invited to present our work with carts at a Smithsonian Institution roundtable this spring. Watch for more details to come!

Speak Up For Museums!

If you've read the latest issue of Museum magazine, what you're about to read here will be old news. If you don't get Museum or haven't gotten around to reading it yet, here's a quick project for you.

The American Association of Museums is holding its third annual Museums Advocacy Day on February 28 and March 1. On February 28, a lot of people who care about museums will gather in Washington, DC, to learn effective ways to make the case for museums with members of Congress. On March 1, these "citizen-advocates" will actually meet with members of Congress to let them know how their legislative decisions will affect the museum community.

We can't all travel to Washington to participate in Museums Advocacy Day. But anyone who loves a museum of any size or shape can speak up for museums. Let your voice be heard! Here's how:

1. Go to speakupformuseums.org.

2. Enter your ZIP code in the "Contact Congress" box at the upper right side of the home page.

3. You may need to enter your street address and city on the next page.

4. When you arrive at the Advocacy page, you will see links to your elected officials. You will also see a link on that page for "Issues." Click here for a list of letters on a variety of topics important to museums today. (Our favorites: Why I Love Museums and Museums are Critical Partners in Education.)

5. When you click on the letter of your choice, you will be asked to enter your contact information. When you click the button to "Review Your Message(s)," the text of the letter will appear.

6. Personalize the letter as you wish. Hit the send button, and your letter will land in the inbox of a legislator whose decisions will affect the future of our museums and our communities.

Speak up, and speak often. Let your senators and representatives know how important museums are to you--and why.

When exhibit planning intersects with community dreams

Earlier this month Museum Explorer was recognized as part of a team from the Evanston History Center that won an Award of Excellence for Exhibitions from the Illinois Association of Museums. The award-winning exhibit, "Lifting as We Climb: Evanston Women and the Creation of a Community," presents and celebrates women and women's organizations in Evanston's history. We were grateful to learn that IAM made particular note of the team's "excellent planning process" and the "remarkable record of women's achievement" that the exhibit documents and displays.

We love being recognized for an "excellent planning process." Yet no amount of excellent planning holds water without complete support from the client museum. We were privileged to work closely on this project with EHC archivist Lori Osborne, who served as exhibit curator, and EHC director Eden Pearlman. At the Evanston History Center, Eden Pearlman has created and continues to nurture a collaborative environment that elicits the very best effort each team member has to offer.

Even more important than any planning process is this. In the last 10 years there has been much discussion about how museums need to serve their communities. In our opinion, these communities aren't just neighborhoods, or lines drawn on a map. Instead, community is mapped on the mind--a set of common interests and perspectives. Good museums, like the EHC, help focus interests not just in external content areas like art, science, and history, but also in internal realms such as identity, self-worth, and self-actualization.

Museums serve communities by helping visitors realize goals. Could a new age for museums be at hand, as various political groups, commercial ventures, and cultural bodies begin to see that the act of exhibit development itself can catalyze mutual interest and cooperation? As everyday people learn that exhibits can excite and inspire a local community, exhibit development becomes a tool through which communities can consolidate knowledge, cultural energy, and material wealth to achieve a common agenda.

The Evanston Women's History Project and its exhibit, "Lifting as We Climb," does just that. While the Evanston History Center is a small museum with a tight resources and a small, hardworking staff, they are playing the big game with big success, in ways that great--and greatly endowed--museums can only dream about.

When it all works out

How often do things work out just the way you want them to, with a minimum of fuss and bother? In the museum exhibit business, there's usually no shortage of haggling and hand wringing between the revelation of an idea and the Big Opening. But every once in a while we get lucky.

The new reading rail on the pedestrian bridge overlooking the pond at Cafe Brauer, at Lincoln Park Zoo, is one of those lucky projects. Step 1: A simple idea. People walking across the bridge see the gorgeous Chicago skyline in the background. Let's put a "map" of the skyline right at their fingertips so they know what they're looking at. Step 2: Museum Explorer creates concept drawings.

Step 3: Chicago Architecture Foundation generously shares existing graphics files with the metal fabricator so no one has to re-invent the wheel, i.e., create new scale measurements and drawings for each building. Step 4: The metal fabricator builds the reading rail just the way we drew it.

Step 5: Bingo! People love it.

The bridge over the pond is part of the larger Nature Boardwalk project at Lincoln Park Zoo. Catch up on Nature Boardwalk news and see great photos of plants and animals that live there: check out the blog written by Vicky Hunt, the zoo's coordinator of wildlife management. Barbara Brotman of the Chicago Tribune wrote a recent column about Nature Boardwalk; take a look at it here.

Or better yet, hop on the train or the bus and head out to Lincoln Park Zoo, wander around, and see the Nature Boardwalk--and much more--for yourself. Can't beat the admission price: it's free.

A big idea in a small package is about to hit Chicago's streets

As exhibit developers and designers, we're lucky to have the chance to explore intriguing topics. Like reporters on late-breaking stories, we get the scoop--sometimes from the discoverers themselves--on intriguing finds: dinosaur fossils, new (non-extinct!) species, artifacts from archaeological digs in exotic places. We get to suggest ways to present cool stuff and amazing ideas to the public. We get to tell museum audiences some thrilling stories.

And sometimes . . . we get to work on a real hidden treasure.

Something that's not just interesting, but special. A unique way of delivering a message. A gem.

That gem is the Story Bus of Chicago's DuSable Museum of African American History. The DuSable had the idea of putting an exhibit into a small bus, then driving that bus to neighborhood festivals, branch libraries, malls--places where school-aged children gather. This little exhibit rocks because it rolls! And while the bus is only about 20 feet long and 8 feet wide, the exhibit inside covers 130 years of Chicago's growth and change, and delivers a hopeful message about a great person.

The person? Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable, the founder of Chicago. From the exhibit introduction:

He settled here among native peoples and raised a family. He ran a successful business, working with customers from many different places. He worked hard. He earned admiration and respect from people who knew him.

What we learned about Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable moved our entire exhibit team. The more we read about du Sable and his achievements, his creativity and his instincts as a frontiersman and entrepreneur, the more we realized what an amazing person he was.

It became clear that du Sable's story carries a powerful and relevant message for people of all ages. During this time of economic uncertainty, we can all be inspired by this man who had a vision, took a risk, and worked hard to make his way in the world. In the words of the exhibit:

Each day, we build on du Sable's legacy

Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable was the founder of what has become one of the most exciting cities in the world. Chicago has grown by leaps and bounds since du Sable's time, though, and he didn't make that happen by himself.

Chicago has been home to many famous people. But the people who built up this city, brick by brick and block by block, aren't always the ones whose names we know. Or whose autographs we'd love to have.

Du Sable's vision lives in people who work hard. Who see a need and figure out how to fill it. Who see a chance and grab it. Who help their neighbors. Who have a dream, and take a risk to make that dream come true.

Look around. Du Sable's legacy is found in people you meet each and every day. And in people like . . . you.

So keep your eyes open for the DuSable Museum Story Bus. It just might come to your neighborhood one of these days. When it does, step inside to see "Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable: Legend and Legacy." We were inspired by the story of Chicago's founder. We hope you will be too.

Chillin' with the rhinos at Lincoln Park Zoo

Unless you're a visiting scientist, or working on behalf of science, animal welfare or conservation, it's nearly impossible to get behind the scenes on a summer day at Lincoln Park Zoo.

But every once in a while it pays off to be an exhibit developer. On a recent sweltering afternoon, we at Museum Explorer found ourselves inside an enclosure, gazing face-to-horn with the zoo's two large male rhinos and trying to wrap our brains around rhino ways as we gear up to develop new interactive interpretive signage for LPZ.

We spent almost an hour with the rhinos, some of it literally hands-on, as we got a feel for what they're like. We patted their heads, touched their massive horns (which felt kind of like giant toenails, in case you were wondering) and stroked their immense flanks. Petting those powerful flanks was like rubbing your hand across a hot sidewalk, dense and dry and rough.

During our visit, we learned that rhinos love to munch on bright green golf-ball-sized food pellets that are surely made from some sort of super-concentrated healthful rhinoceros nutrients. After the main course, their keepers let us offer the rhinos handfuls of alfalfa. Those long rhino lips nibbled skillfully around our hands to pluck out the alfalfa stems, more nimbly than our own human fingers could have done it.

And what goes in . . . comes out. In a big way. Amazingly, the rhinos themselves are pretty much odor-free. But their poop is another story. Mostly it's just huge, as in XXXXL. Each rhino drops about four loads a day, at about 20 pounds a plop. Eighty pounds of poop . . . hmmm. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the interactive for that one! Now we know why zookeepers are in such great shape.