News to Use
from Open Air Exhibits

October 2006

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In this issue:
Welcome
No prescription required – This exhibit can help your visitors cure their “plant blindness”
Chicago’s Field Museum offers a new look at one of the greatest connectors of plants and people in US history
Scot Miller’s photographs encourage visitors to see the beauty of Walden Woods in their own backyards
Sellmark supports your exhibit with planning, marketing, fund raising and more

Welcome

What an exciting time to be promoting the use of exhibits and the creation of visitor experiences in the world of botanical gardens and arboreta! In the most recent issue of Public Garden, the Journal of the American Public Garden Association, Editor Sharon Lee put together an excellent overview of the changing approaches gardens are using to attract visitors and make their time in the garden meaningful.

The change is good, according to Carol Line, outgoing chair of the APGA Publications Committee. In her introductory article, Line wondered if it is the visitor experience that is changing or if it is the visitors themselves and ultimately garden professionals who are changing to meet expectations and desires of new and existing audiences

Her musings bring home the challenges that garden administrators face when competing with other cultural institutions for visitation and discretionary dollars. She used the example of the occasion a new bloom on a plant specimen competing with a flashy King Tut exhibit at the art museum across town. Quoted in another article in the issue, Mary Pat Matheson, executive director of the Atlanta Botanical Garden, added more clarity when she defined her competition as “the Braves and Six Flags.” To compete, she explained, “you have to have something special to create a sense of urgency – if you don’t come, you’ll miss it.”

Matheson, featured in last month’s News to Use newsletter (openairexhibits.com, click on Newsletter in the top nav bar for an archived copy) is a leader in garden world in using exhibits to create just that sense of urgency.

To help you discover the possibilities of exhibits, what’s available, how much they cost and who to contact, News to Use brings a round-up of current exhibit offerings to your desk top each month, along with helpful information from experts in a variety of support fields including marketing, fund raising, interpretation and visitor experience.

This month’s issue includes three indoor exhibits that offer three distinctly different approaches to connecting people to plants. You can choose from a photo journey to the natural beauty that captivated Thoreau during his time on Walden Pond, a multi-media experience of plants sensing and responding to their environments and an introduction to George Washington Carver’s almost magical ability to turn plant materials into hundreds of unexpected products.

These and other exhibits that we’ve featured in past issues only enhance the impact of the visit to your garden, arboretum or other outdoor venue. They add the “limited engagement” sense of urgency that Matheson described and expand your appeal to prospective guests and long-time patrons. They represent a variety of subject matter, price ranges and space requirements.

I hope that one will fit into your marketing plan or at least start you thinking about exhibit possibilities for your venue.

Happy reading!

No prescription required:This exhibit can help your visitors cure their
“plant blindness”

How on earth do you help today’s instant messaging, 24/7 access, microwave-speed-cooking- dependent generation gain an appreciation for plants, among the slowest forms of life on earth? It’s possible! Dr. Roger P. Hangartner, professor of biology at Indiana University in Bloomington, stumbled on a way to captivate students with the barely perceptible movements of plants. Collaborating with staffers from the United States Botanic Garden, the Chicago Botanic Garden, and John Gibson, professor in the Indiana University School of Music, he turned his insight in a multi-media traveling exhibit titled, appropriately enough, sLowlife.

It all started when Dr. Hangartner began supplementing his lectures on phototropism with time lapse movie clips of seedlings developing phototropic curvatures toward a light source. Engaged and curious students proved he was on to something. With the help of all the above mentioned collaborators and with support from Indiana University, the National Science Foundation and the American Society of Plant Biologists, sLowlife was born. (You can read more about the process in the most recent issue of Public Garden Magazine, the Journal of the American Public Garden Association.)

The multi-media exhibit includes time lapse movies of plants as they sense and respond to their environment. Photos, original sound compositions based on plant movements, concise text and live plant materials work together to overcome “plant blindness” and open visitors’ eyes to the milestones in a plant’s life and more.

Available 2008 – 2010, this indoor exhibit requires a minimum of 1,600 square feet plus 400 square feet for crate storage. Components include six freestanding, self-lighted wall units, 11 video displays, three audio sources, title banners, 13 translite photographs and seating. The components develop 10 themes: Un-Still Life, Darwin’s Experiment, Sensing and Responding, Un-Seen Acts, Orchestrating, Microprocessing, 101 Tropisms, Photosynthesis, Gift of Green and The Power of Plants.

To present the exhibit, you’ll need a gallery with daily temperatures between 65 and 75 degree, dimmable ambient lighting, electrical access from the ceiling or floor and no direct daylight. Medium level security is required, including monitored public entry to the building

In addition to three able-bodied employees to assist with three days of set-up and two days of tear-down, staffing requires:

	an attendant to start and shut down the a/v components and walk through galleries daily
	an individual capable of growing, installing and maintaining plants
	an on-call technician for electronics support

The $15,000 rental fee for a 16-week engagement includes a file to produce a 16-page companion guide to the exhibit, a digital file to produce a study guide for grades 6 – 12, a media kit, a link to the sLowlife web site, plant seeds and two staff for five days to assist with set-up and take down. In addition, the renting venue is responsible for one-way shipping.

For more information on sLowlife, contact the Chicago Botanic Garden exhibits@chicagobotanic.org. You can see more of the exhibit itself at www.chicagobotanic.org/exhibits.

Chicago's Field Museum offers a new look at one of the greatest connectors of plants and people in US history

If somewhere in your mission statement you commit to connecting people with plants, George Washington Carver is the man for you! The trailblazing scholar, innovative scientist, pioneering conservationist and impassioned educator developed hundreds of products from everyday plants, including more than 300 uses for the peanut alone!

The Field Museum has created an interactive traveling exhibit that introduces this amazing man, his life and his legacy through historical artifacts, photography and film, plant models, audio-visual elements and hands-on interactives that allow visitors to experience Carver’s landmark discoveries.

The indoor exhibit requires approximately 4,500 square feet for display to cover five themed periods of Carver’s life: From Slave to Scholar, A Pioneer of Natural Product Development, Resurrecting the Soil of the South, The People’s Scientist and Carver’s Legacy Today: New Promises of an Old Science.

The three-month rental fee is $125,000, including:

	at least one experienced Field Museum staff technician to lead on-site installation and de-installation
	an Educators’ Guide with information for teacher, student and public programming
	an Exhibitor Toolkit with logo, installation shots, rights-free images and a sample press release
	a range of wholesale products developed for the exhibition and
	an Installation and Design Manual detailing exhibition layout, installation and maintenance

Rental dates open at this writing are:
August 2 – November 1, 2008
March 28 – July 5, 2009
August 1 – October 25, 2009
March 29 – July 4, 2010
November 20, 2010 – February 27, 2011
July 30 – October 30, 2011

To find out more about the exhibit, visit:
www.fieldmuseum.org/exhibits/traveling_carver.htm.
For an exhibition prospectus, contact:
Whitney Owens
Traveling Exhibit Manager
312-665-7332
wowens@fieldmuseum.org
or Robin Groesbeck
Director of Exhibitions
312-665-7371
rgroesbeck@fieldmuseum.org.

Scot Miller's photographs encourage visitors to see the beauty of Walden Woods in their own backyards

It's been 166 years since Henry David Thoreau communed with nature in the Walden Woods, and his legacy and his writings are still fascinating Americans of all ages. The beauty that engaged the author, poet and philosopher has been captured in Thoreau's Walden: a Journey in Photographs by Scot Miller. The traveling exhibition was developed by the Harvard Museum of Natural History in cooperation with Scot Miller and the Walden Woods Project sponsored by Houghton Mifflin.

Tour management for the display is provided by the Cincinnati Museum Center. Kim Graham, Traveling Exhibits Coordinator, explained that the twenty nine photographs taken at Walden Woods over a five year period immerse visitors in the natural beauty that inspired Thoreau.

"Our exhibit programmer loves this exhibit because of the interaction she has witnessed as visitors share memories of their personal Waldens with their companions. Parents and children become aware that the beauty of the photographs is not very different from the beauty in their own backyards. They realize that the objects in the exhibit’s nature station – the leaves, rocks, snake skins, small animal bones, feathers, pine cones and so on – are not museum artifacts but things they can look for when they get home.

"…this exhibit is a way to effect the basic message of Richard Louv's 2005 book Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder – kids need to reconnect with nature, not just through school or on field trips but at home and with family, away from sense-deadening media," Graham added.

In addition to the photographs, the exhibit, which requires 140 linear running feet and about 1,500 square feet to display, includes:

	rare specimens and artifacts connected to Thoreau and the environment of Walden,
	a short video presentation of Thoreau's legacy and how his writings influenced contemporary thinking about the natural world and our place in it and
	a hands-on nature station and nature activity cards designed to engage families in local forest ecology.

Three months before the opening date, the host venue receives:

	educational materials that may include a teacher guide, floor demonstrations and take-home activities
	a marketing package that may include press releases, print ads, a logo and art slicks, electronic exhibit images and brochure copy and
	an exhibit manual including set-up instructions, a sample floor plan, crate and blanket wrap lists and shipping layouts to load trucks.

The venue needs to offer quality lighting suitable for fine art photography, an air-conditioned and environmentally monitored space, a minimum door opening of eight feet high and four feet wide to accommodate crates and four skilled exhibition staff to assist with set-up and take down.

Expenses include a $15,000 rental fee for a 13 week run -- $5,000 of which is required with the signed contract – pro-rated shipping fees between venues and insurance during the exhibit run and while en route to the next site.

For a current itinerary and more information on Thoreau’s Walden: a Journey in Photographs by Scot Miller, visit www.cincymuseum.org/travelingexhibits, or call 1-800-733-2077, ext. 2604.

About this newsletter

Editor: Cathy Garison
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