OpenAirExhibits.com

In this issue:
Welcome
Now finding exhibits is easier than ever
These windows to the past and future can add dimension to your garden
Is it time to get more mileage from the exhibits you create?
Combine art and pots and history with this crowd pleaser

Valentine's Day tends to dominate February, but if you've worked through the hearts and flowers, you may be ready to finish out the month with pots and photos and 3-D glasses. In this issue, we've got the scoop on two primarily indoor rental exhibits with possibilities for outdoor support activities and an introduction to a versatile new outdoor interpretation tool.

You'll read about a fascinating new approach to bringing the past and the future to life for your visitors. Pastports, TM, developed by Bill Firstenberger, can add a new dimension to your interpretive approach, and the units come with their own potential sources of funding. Bill is a museum curator and owner of Museumcroft.

Garden Historian and Author Susan Tamulevich has approached garden history from another direction. Her A Place to Take Root exhibit connects generations of gardeners through the pots and plant cradles they have used.

And Madelaine Zadik, manager of education and outreach for the Botanical Garden at Smith College, shares how her garden moved from throw-away to traveling exhibits with Plant Adaptation Up Close, A Biological and Artistic Interpretation.

Traveling exhibits are perfect for bringing in new visitors who may never have seen your permanent collections. Garden and arboretum managers just getting into exhibit hosting may find this month's reasonably priced alternatives especially attractive because they offer a way to get into the game without major fund raising efforts. And for venues that regularly host exhibits, the pots and photographs are low-stress additions to an ongoing schedule.

Be sure to visit the Open Air Exhibits website - openairexhibits.com -- and browse the new Resource Guide and Exhibit Catalog. The February listings are just the beginning of a reference resource that will:

	Save you time in finding exhibits and professional support
	Provide information you need to make exhibit decisions
	Offer references on gardens and arboreta that have previously hosted the exhibit or worked with professionals whose services are listed

Each month we'll be adding more listings to make Open Air Exhibits your one-stop website for all the information you need to create a dynamic exhibit program for your venue.

Imagine looking at a spot in your garden or arboretum. See yourself taking two steps back and one step over, and suddenly you see a limestone building or an antique garden that used to be on your site.

Is your vision chemically induced? No, you are looking through a Pastport TM, an outdoor interpretive tool created by Bill Firstenberger, owner of Museumcroft, and in the vernacular of the '60s, what you see is totally cool.

Firstenberger became intrigued with the idea of photographic site replication in 1992 when he was part of an archeology dig on the James River in Virginia. The dig photographer put transparencies of historic photos in a modified 35 mm camera, mounted it on a tripod and searched out the site where the original photo was taken. Looking through the camera viewfinder, archeologists could easily locate lost structures, landscapes and other old world features lost in the new world.

Firstenberger, a museum curator by trade, saw the possibilities for an interpretative technique and introduced a simplified version of the process with a paper presented at the Historical Archeology Conference of the Upper Midwest in 1997. The first Pastports, then called Windows to the Past, were installed at the Billy Sunday Historic Site Museum in 2002, and the units remain in place today.

Each Pastport is a photo image etched in Plexiglas and framed in western red cedar. The illustration can be horizontal or vertical, and to make it work, you need:

	An historic photo or rendering with at least two points of reference that still survive on today's landscape
	A copy of your original image in clear focus without major damage or deterioration. The image needs to be on a CD @600 DPI resolution and can be black and white or color.
	Accessibility to the location where the photo was originally taken.

No historic photos of your venue? Not a problem. You can achieve the effect of witnessing "ghosts of the past" using a catalog of historic photos assembled by Firstenberger and his staff.

Fascinated by the concept but have no money in your budget? That's not a problem either. The cost of each unit is only $750, with discounts available for each additional unit to a minimum price of $600 each on purchases of 11 or more. Pastports qualify for grants from Eastman Kodak and Fujifilm. Both prefer applications that include local matches.

"This is one of the easiest projects to sell for fund raising," according to Cathy Allen, director of the College Park Aviation Museum, where Pastports were installed this month. "Supporters can get their names on the exhibit panel…and if you position the panel outside the front entrance, donors don't even have to pay admission to show their gift to their friends.

"Pastports are a clever way to bring the past to the present that requires no volunteer or staff support to provide interpretation. The units can be placed in busy or remote areas - it doesn't matter - either way, you have instant interpretation, and your visitors don't even have to read or understand English to get it," Allen said.

She approached the Museum Assistance Program of the Maryland Historical Trust for funding and reported that the Pastport installation proposal was enthusiastically received.

"The granting board liked everything about Pastports, especially that they provided nearly living history without requiring the bodies and marketing required to support an actual event. I also approached a citizens' group for $500 to add to the $2,500 request to the Historical Trust to demonstrate community support. It was the easiest money I have ever raised," Allen said.

The potential for the medium is limited only by the purchaser's imagination. An exhibit designer could use a Pastport to place dinosaurs in his prehistoric plant collection. A development director could turn the Plexiglas and cedar structure into a window on the future, showing a proposed building to potential capital campaign donors. To see some of the possibilities for yourself, just click on this link to the web site:
http://www.museumcroft.com/exhibits.html#pastport.

Ready to add a Pastport to your venue? You'll need to allow 6-8 weeks from order to installation. You can see how the photos worked to depict historic gardens on the grounds of the Village at Winona on Firstenberger's web site, www.museumcroft.com, or call or email him at 574-265-3664 or museumcroft@juno.com.

It took a major renovation of the Lyman Conservatory and the addition of an Exhibition Gallery to get the Botanic Garden at Smith College into the traveling exhibit business.

"Our first exhibition, Plant Spirals: Beauty You Can Count On, was a collaboration with the math department at Smith. That exhibition was a great success, and we had many inquiries from other places wanting to rent it. Since we were new to exhibit development and fabrication, the way we produced Plant Spirals made it impossible for any other institution to host it. It was designed specifically for our space. The panels were not durable enough, lacking waterproof coating, and the interpretation needed rewriting for more general audiences," according to Madelaine Zadik, manager of education and outreach.

"But the experience made us realize that we have something to offer other gardens looking for educational exhibitions. When we began working on Plant Adaptation Up Close, A Biological and Artistic Interpretation, we made the decision right from the beginning to conceive and design an exhibit that could easily travel to other venues," Zadik said. "We'll still produce exhibits designed specifically for our venue, but we will create others that will be of broad appeal. I have learned a tremendous amount about producing exhibitions, and I see that there is a niche out there. Since we are producing exhibitions anyway, why not make them travelable. And since all gardens don't have the kind of facilities required for hosting larger or museum quality (meaning requiring greater security) exhibits, our exhibits can provide a much needed alternative. They are geared toward a garden visiting audience with a strong educational component. Plant Adaptation, in particular, combines art and science in a very unique way, making it accessible to a broad audience without watering down its content."

What advice does she have for garden managers thinking about moving from temporary to traveling exhibits?

"Start small! Exhibitions need to be durable and able to stand up to being shipped. Hire a great designer. Edit, edit and edit the text. You'll probably end up with about a third of the copy you started with. And test out the text on various audiences before committing it to production. Try to make the exhibition as modular as possible so that it can easily be reconfigured to fit a variety of spaces. Don't make it too linear so that a visitor would have to read one panel before another - that doesn't work in many spaces. Create the flow so that parts of the exhibit can be left out to fit into a smaller space. Try to keep costs down, and don't expect to be inundated with requests for rentals. Try to keep the fees low, as many gardens don't have big budgets for this kind of stuff (unless it is going to be a big block buster exhibit that will bring in the crowds)," Zadik explained.

Not ready to begin creating your own traveling exhibit yet? You can rent Zadik's Plant Adaptation Up Close for $1,500 for a two-month (minimum) run, with additional months priced at $500. The rental fee brings you panels, framed artwork, display panels and signs, a PowerPoint presentation about magnification and 25 pairs of 3-D glasses.

3-D glasses? You may be asking yourself -- aren't those only for Saturday matinees of science fiction movies? There's some of that science fiction drama in the story of carnivorous plants that survive in soil so low in nitrogen that they have to eat insects and small animals to survive. The saga, created in collaboration with the Smith Microscopy and Imaging Facility and Northampton, Massachusetts Artist Joan Wiener, is told in a stunning collection of photos of desert plants, parasitic plants, floating aquatic plants, vines, drought-tolerant plants and epiphytes as well as the meat eaters. To see the exhibit on the web site, just click on this link:
www.smith.edu/garden/exhibits/plant_adaptation/adaptationhome.html

Stats for this indoor display include:

	Exhibit components: 13 panels ready to be hung
	Space requirements - About 85 running feet - can be reduced if fewer panels are used
	Insurance - Insurance value of the exhibition is approximately $18,000, and the borrower is responsible for insurance while the exhibit is under its control
	Security requirements - Similar to "limited security" requirements of SITES. Personnel must be present at all times while the exhibit is open to the public. Supervision by a guard, student, volunteer or receptionist is OK, and they may be performing other duties as well as watching the exhibition. The exhibition needs to be locked and secure during closed hours, and fire protection must meet all ordinances.
	Environmental requirements - indoor display, no direct sunlight that would fade panels, no contact with heating or ventilation outlets and humidity and temperature controls in the exhibit space.

For more information on exhibit rental, contact Madelaine Zadik, 413-585-2743 or mzadik@smith.edu.

Garden Historian and author Susan Tamulevich has created an exhibit that even Martha Stewart loves. In fact, last year Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia provided funding to redo exhibition panels to incorporate new material discovered at venues where the exhibit has appeared.

What captured the attention of the Domestic Goddess? A Place to Take Root includes more than 100 examples that help trace the history of the pot, explore its materials and shapes, and illustrate how it has developed in response to changes in horticulture and garden styles, from ancient Egypt up to the present day, with special emphasis on the flowering of American designs in the 18th &19th centuries.

The exhibit and the Stewart attention are an outgrowth of the current, broad revival of the historic flowerpot in indoor and outdoor decoration. Taking advantage of the new enthusiasm, Tamulevich put together the historical overview, noting that flowerpots connect generations of gardeners as few other icons can.

The beauty of the pot, she noted, is its use to the gardener, of form flowing from function, and the beauty and the exhibit have appealed to visitors across the country including the US Botanic Garden, The Botanic Garden at Smith College and the Royal Botanic Garden in Ontario, Canada. Later this year, bookings are scheduled for Historic Morven in Princeton, New Jersey, and Bartram's Garden in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

What makes A Place to Take Root such a successful exhibit for gardens, according to its creator, is that it brings in new populations of visitors and brings back the people who have visited the garden before. Gardeners are a natural audience for the show, but the topic and related activities also bring in potters, artists, museum curators and decorative arts aficionados, collectors, architects and historians. At the New Haven Colony Historical Society, for example, a general mix of interests was represented at Tamulevich's lecture about putting the exhibit together. Gardeners came to hear Gordon Heyward, garden author, talk about using plants in the garden, and artists and architects were drawn by Guy Wolff's potting demonstration.

Each venue has added its own special touches to the presentation:

	Potter Guy Wolff has made special-design flowerpots for the host venue, which have been sold at a silent auction to raise funds
	The exhibit opening has been used as an occasion for a champagne reception, a tea, a potting demonstration and a lecture series
	Gift shops added exhibit-related items

And in every venue, Tamulevich strives to include a local potter or examples of historic flowerpots. The local material engages visitors, draws media attention and provides information for the book she plans to produce at the end of the exhibit run.

Designed for indoor use only, host gardens have also created complimentary outdoor components. As an example, when the exhibit was at the US Botanic Garden, the USSR Terrace featured small vignettes of period plants in facsimile period pots from Ancient Egypt, Ancient Rome, the Far East, etc.

The exhibit comes in two sizes - A Place to Take Root represents the full evolution of garden pots from Ancient Egypt to present day and rents for $2,500 for one month and $2,000 for each additional month plus one-way shipping fees. Venues usually keep this one for one to five months.

If your space or budget requires a smaller commitment, you can choose the smaller version that focuses on the development of the flowerpot and garden containers in the United States in the 18th, 19th and 29th centuries. Rental fee for this version is $1,500 for one month and $1,000 for each additional month plus shipping fees to and from the venue. This exhibit, notes Tamulevich, is small enough to go via UPS, and has been rented for a one-week flower show (at the one-month fee) as well as for several months at a time.

Each host venue is required to fully insure the exhibition for theft and/or damages, and no exceptional security other than that which the venue provides to its permanent collections is required.

Tamulevich requires that the host garden provide two to four strong staffers to help load and unload the exhibit pieces. In addition to the pots and garden containers, the package includes 14 wall panels and individual labels for each item.

To preview the exhibit, go to www.aplacetotakeroot.com, and for booking information, you can contact Tamulevich at 203-488-0411 or info@aplacetotakeroot.com.

Editor: Cathy Garison
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