Welcome

Welcome to the May issue of News to Use from Open Air Exhibits. I look forward to meeting many of you in person at next month's APGA meeting in San Francisco. The theme of this year's gathering is Sustainability - Walking the Talk, and a web site posting I saw recently reminded me how closely exhibits are related to sustainability.

On the Marquette University web site, a student posted these thoughts:

"Museums often use 'blockbuster' touring exhibitions to draw crowds, bombarding us with traveling collections of everything from moon rocks to Egyptian mummies. These extravaganzas draw the crowds, but they are merely sideshows to the main attraction of the Permanent Collection, those items collected over decades that have been almost continually on display…"

Traveling exhibits are indeed "sideshows" that help introduce new visitors to your facility and your permanent collections. They also give loyal patrons a reason to come back one more time to see the temporary display and enjoy old favorite plants and places in your garden or arboretum.

You only have to open the Weekender Guide in your local newspaper to see how much competition there is for leisure time - from movies to tractor pulls to festivals to rock concerts. A well-promoted exhibit is an excellent tool for keeping your venue's name in the mix. It offers some urgency, since it will be displayed for a finite time, and invites residents or tourists to pick you from among the options available.

Your visitors may be coming to see the temporary sculpture exhibit, or life-sized dinosaurs or a traveling butterfly display, but each time they step inside your gate, they are also being exposed to the plant collection that defines your garden. Each time a visitor comes to see the "sideshow," you have the opportunity to tell your story and build on the relationship with a potential member, volunteer, sponsor or donor.

Exhibits are catalysts, helping you to continue the conversations that sustain your connection with all of these audience segments. In this month's issue, you'll find a geographical round-up of exhibits, highlighting ecosystems from Canada to the tropical forest of Panama (a real benefit is that both of these are bi-lingual, the former in French and the latter in Spanish) to the Dust Bowl of Kansas. There's also a look at the pros and cons of self-guided interpretation.

And with this and every issue of the newsletter, as well as the Open Air Exhibits web site Exhibit Catalog and Resource Guide, the goal is to provide you with easily accessible information about the traveling displays that can complement your permanent collection and sustain your visibility in your community. Happy reading!

For Kansas venues only….

The Kansas State Historical Society has created two small exhibits that garden administrators in that state can use to demonstrate the sometimes destructive relationship between man and the environment.

While public gardens are showcases of man's ability to cultivate natural beauty, the first offering shows just the opposite. "Dust Bowl in Kansas" is a small display, only 21 black and white photos, that documents the devastation that man and weather can bring to a geographical region.

The exhibit documents the drought of the 1930s, when "topsoil became powdery dry and the vegetation that usually held it in place grew sparse. Strong winds raised dust into billowing clouds and dumped it in drifts across the Plains."

To add dimension to the presentation, host venues can also book Lloyd Sponholtz, University of Kansas, to lecture on "The Plow the Broke the Plains: Dust Bowl Legacies."

Leased by the Kansas Interpretive Traveling Exhibit Service, the display is shipped in a single plastic case measuring 24'" x 18" x5" weighing 10 pounds and one NIMLOK case with wheels measuring 49" x 38" x 14" and weighing 150 pounds.

The second offering available only in Kansas is "By a Thousand Artifices: The Folk Technology of Farming in the Flint Hills." Produced by Emporia State University, this exhibit also features historical photographs focusing on Kansas farmers seeking to overcome and adapt to a difficult environment from the 1920s through the 1940s. It documents memorable farming practices including the creosote chinch bug barrier and the "hopperdozer," and explores the evolution of agricultural technology and the changing relationship between the farmer and the land.

This display is shipped in two exhibit cases each measuring 35"x23"x8" and weighing 50 lbs. each.

Both have a $20 fee that covers a four-week rental period, and the host venue is responsible for round-trip shipping fees and care and security of the exhibits while they are on loan.

If your facility is in Kansas and you are interested in sharing an insight into Dust Bowl devastation or farming lore with your visitors, contact the Program Scheduler at the Kansas State Historical Society, 785-272-8681, ext. 414. You can get more information online at www.kshs.org/exhibits/traveling/index.htm.

Working toward the perfect visitor experience
Does an exhibit have to include docents to WOW audiences?

If you are like many administrators of outdoor venues, finite funds and volunteer resources have prompted you to settle for self-guided tours and on-your-own interpretation for your permanent collections as well as traveling exhibits. You've probably given some thought to what impact this has on the overall visitor experience, and your peers in the museum world are also debating the impact of do-it-yourself interpretation.

As early as 2003 Margie Marino, then manager of Exhibition Services for the Association of Science and Technology Centers, and Judy Koke, then manager of Visitor Studies and Program Evaluation for the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, tackled the topic. They analyzed surveys conducted by a tech museum, an historical center and a museum of nature and science and came up with these conclusions, which appeared in Dimensions Magazine:

	Staff on the exhibit floor, both paid and volunteer, can help guests to orient themselves and feel less vulnerable when exploring an unfamiliar task or environment;
	Facilitators who mirror intended audiences can help visitors feel more comfortable and welcome;
	By using a variety of approaches, such as exhibit prototyping, demonstrations, hands-on activities, theater, and storytelling, floor staff can facilitate social learning and help keep museum galleries fresh and new.

When you are deciding how much to budget to cover additional staff or how much effort to invest in recruiting volunteer docents, here are some thoughts on their relative value:

In the research work, visitors reported a higher satisfaction level when staff or docents on hand were able to customize the experience by mirroring their attitudes, voice and body language as well as their culture and general abilities - basically bringing the exhibit to their level.

Men and teenagers are generally less inclined to engage with a live exhibit guide, so the more women and children you anticipate in your audience, the more a live guide would be appreciated.

The more interactive elements you have in the exhibit, the more staff or volunteers on hand can help encourage and facilitate visitor interaction and keep the traffic moving so that exhibit stations are available to all guests.

The research revealed that guests retained more of the information provided by a living guide than information shared in a film or video. The human touch made the experience, as one woman put it, "seem especially created for my family," and as a result, more memorable.

On the downside, Marino and Koke found that, for exhibits that are primarily static, a chatty docent or staff member can actually detract from the experience of a visitor who is trying to view objects or read interpretive material.

Bottom line, the nature of the exhibit, the anticipated audience and the current or potential skill level of your staff or docents are all factors in helping you decide whether or not to invest in living guides.

Expand your venue's borders with these exhibits that cover the Americas

Whether you are in Salem, Massachusetts; Sacramento California; or some place in between, you can introduce your visitors to the wonders of the tropical forests of Panama or the vulnerability of Canada's plants and plantscapes with two traveling exhibits.

Managers of gardens and arboreta in states along the Canadian/American border may be particularly interested in Green Legacy, a bilingual (French and English) exploration of the beauty, diversity and vulnerability of Canada's native plants. Launched in 2002, it was developed by The Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa and the Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington/Hamilton.

The exhibit demonstrates how native plants create a sense of place and connect us with landscapes of long ago. Visitors learn about natural and man-made causes of rarity among wild plants. Profiling efforts to protect and recover species at risk, Green Legacy encourages visitors to take responsibility for the fate of native plantscapes and to get involved at the community level.

Requiring 1,500 square feet of display space, the exhibit includes plant specimens, interpretive units and panels, computer interactives, video, hands-on components and activity-based programming materials.

Rachel Gervais of the Canadian Museum of Nature's Traveling Exhibitions staff advises that the renting venue assumes full responsibility for any loss or damage including damage and/or loss attributable to theft, vandalism or mishandling; to deterioration caused by extremes of heat, light, humidity, insects or fungus. Insurance for the value of the exhibit -- $300,000 - is also the responsibility of the host venue.

The exhibit area needs to have a constant temperature of 70 to 75 degrees and a relative humidity of 50 -55%. The display requires continuous surveillance during public hours and a secured location at all other times. Generally four to six staff members are required for the two to three day set-up.

Minimum booking is for 12 weeks, and the rental fee is approximately $4,400 US plus a customs fee of around $600 and a transportation fee. The first free date as of this writing is July 2007.

To read more about adding an international dimension to your programming with this exhibit, visit www.nature.ca and click on exhibits, or contact Rachel Gervais, rgervais@mus-nature.ca, 613-566-4211.

A Magic Web, the Tropical Forest of Barro Colorado Island, is the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service's study of Panama's tropical ecosystem through the photographs of Christian Ziegler. This is another bilingual exhibit (English/Spanish) that reveals the magic web of interactions in nature, such as ants and the Cecropia tree. The tree provides the ants with food and shelter, and they, in turn, attack any living thing that even brushes against it.

This and more stories are told in the 40 framed large-format color photographs that make up the display. A companion book, educational resources, PR materials, a DVD video program, a virtual gallery program on CD ROM, a bibliography and a speaker list are all part of the exhibit package.

The exhibit itself requires 250 running feet for display. Moderate security is required, and the fee is $2,500 for an 8-week booking period plus outgoing shipping fees, which you would pay directly to the carrier (weight is 1,400 pounds).

On tour through November 2008, at this writing, the first available rental period is October 28, 2006 - January 1, 2007. To find out more about later availability, call Ed Liskey at SITES, 202-633-3142. You can see and read more about this study of the beauty and complexity of Barro Colorado Island at www.sites.si.edu. Click on Immediately Available in the left nav bar.

About this newsletter

Editor: Cathy Garison
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