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In this issue:
Welcome
Chapungu - this African sculpture can work magic in your venue
The "Goldilocks" Approach - Carla Pastore has created an exhibit right-sized for your garden
Expand your interpretation by adding a community grant application to your SITES exhibit rental
Add wings to your 2007 exhibit schedule with Outhouse Exhibit Services' butterflies

This month's issue is about money and opportunity and dialog.

Traveling exhibits - while long-time staples of the museum world - are relatively new to gardens, arboreta and outdoor venues. A core group of garden managers has discovered the value of using rental exhibits to boost visitorship and bring new attention to their permanent collections. Most of us -- and I am including myself in this group as a volunteer with the San Antonio Botanical Society - are just beginning to experiment with the potential of adding traveling exhibits to our programming line-ups.

The newness of the concept, combined with the limited number of rental exhibits currently available, makes this discipline a real pioneer effort for both venue managers and exhibit developers. The fastest avenue to growth of exhibit availability and development will result from dialog between users and developers, and News to Use is a perfect forum for sharing thoughts, needs, questions and concerns.

If you have questions about exhibit rentals, promotion, results or other issues, send them to info@openairexhibits.com. We'll find the garden administrator, exhibit creator or some other expert who has the answer and share it with you and our readers. The conversation is two-way. If your company supplies exhibits to gardens and arboreta, we'll be happy to pose your audience research questions in this monthly forum and invite readers to respond.

The new version of The Sea King's Garden, developed by Garden Exhibit Gallery and featured in this month's issue, is an example of the benefits that this kind of collaboration produces.

In addition, you'll read about the Smithsonian Institution's community grant program that provides funds for interpretive programs to complement its rental exhibits.

And two bigger-budget offerings are included this month: a turn-key butterfly exhibit that showcases living pollinators in your garden and Chapungu - the African sculpture exhibit that has attracted new audiences to botanical gardens around the world. In addition to stats on this dynamic exhibition, you'll read about how the sculpture has helped outdoor venues diversify their audiences, increase visitorship and membership and provide vibrant programming in the midst of drought.

June finds us midway through 2006. You are probably ready to start planning for 2007 if you haven't begun already. Take a moment to ask yourself if you are satisfied with attendance figures. Could you use a news hook to promote fund raising with donors or sponsors you may not have approached before? Does your permanent collection need freshening or enhancement to draw the visitors you need?

If you are an exhibit vendor, do your offerings meet garden needs and align with garden missions? Are they priced to fit into a garden's budget? Do they include the interpretive materials and educational models to make them turn-key?

This reflection could take you from a Ready/Fire/Aim 2007 to a year positioned right on target for success. It's something to think about……

Chapungu - The great stone sculptures bring the magic and inspiration of Africa to visitors and staff

Chapungu, the registered trademark for the Great African Stone Sculpture Exhibit, is the Shona name for the bateleur eagle, a protecting spirit and messenger of the gods. The exhibit itself has had an inspirational and almost transcendental impact on garden visitors around the world, and rentals for this blockbuster display are now coordinated from the heart of America in Loveland, Colorado.

Chapungu events are essentially art exhibitions featuring between 60 and 80 large and often monumental stone sculptures from Zimbabwe, Africa. When combined with cultural programs of music and dance, story telling and slide presentations, artists at work and sculpture workshops, they create an unforgettable artistic and cultural exchange.

There are two exhibits to choose from:
Exhibit 1, Chapungu Custom and Legend, includes 80 large stone sculptures that can be place indoors or outdoors, currently available for 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011. This version has been featured at the following venues:
Missouri Botanical Gardens, St. Louis MO, 2001
Boyce Thompson Arboretum, near Phoenix AZ, 2001-2002
Red Butte Gardens, Salt Lake City UT, 2002
Garfield Park Conservatory, Chicago IL, 2003
Chicago Botanic Gardens, Chicago IL, 2003
Denver Botanic Gardens, Denver CO, 2004

Exhibit 2, Stories in Stone - An African Perspective of Family, debuted at the Franklin Park Conservatory October 2004 - July 2005. It includes 53 pieces, but will be expanded to 70 sculptures that can also be displayed indoors or outdoors. Current availability for this exhibit is 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011.

Both take about two months to install and a month to remove. The usual time at a host venue is June 1 to October 31. Winter exhibits are booked from October 1 to the end of March or April the following year. In addition to the sculpture installation, the host venue provides:

	A 1,500 ft. covered area for sculpture sales and a designated craft sales area in the existing host gift shop
	An outside area of 1-2 acres for the sale of large pieces
	An outside storage area for storage of empty crates
	A storage area for sales sculptures not yet displayed and sold
	An office with a desk, telephone, photocopy and computer internet service for gallery and Chapungu office staff. International calls for Chapungu's account

How much does all of this cost?, you may be asking yourself. The large version is $180,000, and the smaller one is $160,000. The total covers:

	A $40,000 exhibit fee
	Moving the main exhibit from the previous venue, including installation and dismantling
	Importation of stone sculptures and raw stone from Zimbabwe for the sale gallery and workshops
	Accommodation for all visiting staff and artists
	International air travel costs (approximately 26 people) and local transportation costs including hired vehicles for staff and visiting artists
	Training of local staff volunteers, including tours, slide shows and lectures
	Per diem expenses for staff and artists including sales staff, visiting artists who conduct workshops and daily demonstrations and invited musicians
	Hiring of local contract staff
	Communication costs (telephone, fax, etc.)
	Insurance - The sculpture is insured by Chapungu, including $5-million in public liability coverage
	Production of a catalog specific to the exhibition
	Interpretive materials

Other costs for the host garden include:

	Cost of promotion
	Cost of an opening and closing event
	Time of two staff members to assist with installation and dismantling
	Cost of equipment used to install and take down the main exhibit and large sales pieces and to move large sales pieces when they are sold
	Cost of storage of sales items and containers if on-site storage is not available

The total represents a commitment of funds that not only brings an exhibit to the venue but also offers a point of interest that draws visitors from a wide cross section of non-traditional visitors to host gardens. Recent exhibits have attracted between 80,000 and 200,000 visitors.

Previous host gardens have defrayed the cost in a variety of ways:

	Adding a $2 to $3 surcharge for exhibition admission
	Offering workshops that can produce $15,000-$20,000 in revenue for the garden
	Sale of African art in the gift shop - which has generated up to $20,000 during past exhibits
	Solicitation of donors and sponsors - the involvement of minority communities such as African-Americans has helped attract interest among funders.

The return for orchestrating donors and artists and massive blocks of stone? The testimonials from garden managers and visitors speak for themselves.

"During the course of the exhibit, many people visited our gardens who had not been here before and stated that they visited specifically because of the exhibit….Certainly we had a record attendance during the time of the exhibit and received many positive visitor statements of appreciation…" Linda Greene, COO, Denver Botanic Gardens, 2004.

"Red Butte Garden has had a very positive and profitable relationship with the owners of the exhibit. Our visitation increased 40% over the same months last year…." Mandy Self, Interim Executive Director, Red Butte Garden, 2002.

"The show was a great success for us, turning what would have been a disastrous year of drought into a fantastic experience for our visitors, staff and volunteers…" William R. Feldman, Director, Boyce Thompson Southwestern Arboretum, 2002.

And a rather poetic entry from the Red Butte visitor book:
"The Chapungu exhibit to us, at any rate, almost exaggerated the brittle sense of language. I have seen my fair share of art in all the great and proper places, but I have never wept, or lost my breath, or felt as if my body were shedding space or becoming supremely dumb and purely liquid in the head and finely alone as I did on that day while the forms of Chapungu let me ride on the contour of very old and universal silences."

To find out more about bringing this moving experience to your garden, contact Roy Guthrie by email - rgatchap@aol.com and by telephone - 303-322-1917 or 970-461-8020. You can get a preview of the sculptures on the Chapungu web site: www.chapungusculpturepark.com

When Carla Pastore and her associates at Garden Exhibit Gallery brought The Sea King's Garden exhibit to the market in 2005, they thought they had covered all the bases by creating two versions of the display that would make it feasible for most venues. See the original article in the October Issue of News to Use in the Newsletter archives on the web site - openairexhibits.com

Feedback from garden managers across the United States indicated that they wanted a smaller version of this underwater fantasy that carries out the story of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid." Pastore and her staff of creative professionals complied and have created a new, 500-square-foot version of the exhibit that rents for $17,500 for an eight-week run. It includes succulents that create the feeling of a coral reef just as the original version does, but there are fewer props and only one topiary of the Sea King in the new package.

"I have been gratified at the amount of interest shown by smaller gardens," Pastore explains. "When I conceived the idea for The Sea King's Garden, I thought it would appeal to medium to large gardens with substantial operating budgets. What I have found is that many smaller gardens, zoos and aquariums are ready to add exhibits to their programming but need something on a smaller scale to get started.

"Budgets are one consideration, but venue managers just getting into exhibit rentals are also concerned about selecting exhibits that fit with their missions, their space, their climatic conditions and the time their staff members have to devote to maintenance."

Pastore, an accomplished horticulturist and former president of the APGA, has enthusiastically entered the field of rental exhibits for gardens.

"After visiting numerous public gardens as part of my job, I saw a critical need to create interesting exhibits that would bring in new audiences. Gardens can no longer survive with a traditional collection of plants. They need to have new and exciting offerings that can compete with zoos, aquariums and theme parks for the consumer's time and money.

"Exhibits take a tremendous amount of time, effort and creativity to design. Garden managers often don't realize or even budget for the staff time that goes into preparing this sort of display. By renting an exhibit occasionally, the garden staff is freed up to work on other projects or future exhibits," she says.

To see The Sea King's Garden, visit the web site, www.gardenexhibitgallery.com. Contact Pastore at cps47@comcast.net or call 610-255-5555.

You may be able to add up to $5,000 in support activities or interpretive materials when you rent an exhibit from the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service thanks to a program supported by the MetLife Foundation.

Smithsonian Community Grants are designed to help host venues deepen their connection with their communities, engaging local audiences in new and exciting ways. Offering a maximum of $5,000, the grants can be used for projects such as a lecture/film series, family days, student transportation and workshops and classes.

Examples of how past recipients have used the funds include a Traveling Trunk Program entitled Appalachian Garden created by The Mountain Heritage Center in Willowtree, North Carolina, ($4,565) and a series of public lectures and garden tours developed by The Spartanburg County Public Libraries of Spartanburg, South Carolina, ($5,000). Both grants supplemented the Vanishing Pollinators: Photography by Carll Goodpasture exhibit which has since been retired.

To be eligible for the grant:

	the program must be in conjunction with a SITES exhibition
	your garden or arboretum must have a valid 501(c)(3) designation
	you must have a signed venue contract for the SITES exhibition
	your proposal must provide for using the funds within six months of receiving it
	and you must return the grant if the exhibit is cancelled

To find out more about the grant program and SITES exhibits, visit the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Services' web site: www.sites.si.edu

Add wings to your 2007 exhibit schedule with an Outhouse Exhibit Services Butterfly Garden

Looking to delight visitors between Memorial Day and Labor Day? Outhouse Exhibit Services can help with a butterfly garden that is sure to enchant adults and children alike.

A natural tie-in to educational initiatives for your garden or arboretum, the display gives visitors an up-close look at some of nature's best pollinators. The full-service contract with Outhouse Exhibit Services includes:

	Design and installation of a screened structure, garden beds and pathways
	Full landscaping
	Initial livestock supply of no fewer than 500 butterflies and moths
	At least one active water element, such as a working waterfall
	Full installation by Outhouse Exhibit Services staff and all travel related expenses
	At least one site visit prior to installation of the exhibit
	Assistance with all USDA permitting, at both the state and federal level: guaranteed compliance with all USDA guidelines
	Staff and volunteer training

The walk-through exhibit requires about 1300 square feet - about 36' by 36' - and the host venue takes care of site preparation including any leveling or grading necessary. Available water and electricity are also required, and the host staff is responsible for care and feeding of butterflies and plants for the duration of the exhibit. The exhibits typically run from Memorial Day to Labor Day, but are flexible depending on what area of the country you are in.

The host venue also has to provide security against vandalism and a $500,000 limited liability insurance policy.

Rental prices can range from $75,000 to around $150,000 depending on size requirements.

To find out more about how a butterfly garden can fit into your programming, contact:
Outhouse Exhibit Services
612-961-0782
Or click on this link to the Outhouse Exhibit Services web site:
http://www.outhouseonline.com

Editor: Cathy Garison
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