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In this issue:
Welcome
An interview with Mary Pat Matheson: Big Bugs was just the start of big results for this dynamo of the Atlanta Botanical Garden
Now Showing – see these exhibits at a venue near you
The eyes have it – Stephanie Weaver shares the power this graphic element
Lost World Studios brings life-sized dinos to your venue

This month marks the first anniversary of the News to Use Newsletter. If you saw the first issue, you read an interview with Dave Rogers, the creator of Big Bugs, and some thoughts on connecting exhibits to your mission from Melissa Wraalstad of the Morton Arboretum. In the months that followed, the newsletter has covered everything from how to raise $70,000 in six months – advice from Patricia Rich and Richard Daley of EMD Consulting (March) – to Pastports, Plexiglas photo installations that can superimpose anything from dinos to historical structures on your current landscape (February). You’ve read about exhibits ranging from photo displays of the Dust Bowl available only to venues in Kansas (May) to the dino giants of Project Exploration designed especially for conservatory display (January). All of these and more are archived on the Newsletter page on the Open Air Exhibits web site – openairexhibits.com.

It has been a wonderful year of discovery and meeting people who are committed to both the development of and use of exhibits in outdoor venues. I hope that you have found the information useful and that, as a result, you have joined the growing group of managers of gardens and arboreta who are using exhibits to draw new audiences to your venues and to keep your loyal patrons coming back.

To celebrate the newsletter’s first birthday, the lead interview in this issue is with one of the most vocal proponents of exhibits in the garden, Mary Pat Matheson of the Atlanta Botanical Garden. Consultant Stephanie Weaver weighs in on effective signage, and Lost World Studios, a listing from the Exhibit Directory on the web site, is included.

An interview with Mary Pat Matheson:
Big Bugs was just the start of big results
for this dynamo of the Atlanta Botanical Garden

Mary Pat Matheson is executive director of the Atlanta Botanical Garden and a leader in the trend of introducing major traveling exhibits into the botanical garden world. Midway through the run of her current blockbuster, Niki in the Garden, we asked her to share her thoughts on exhibits, building garden support and the potential role that a garden can play in its community.

Q. May Pat, Niki de Saint Phalle is a sculptor known best for her Nanas, large scale sculptures of women in outrageous shapes (see photos at openairexhibits.com or the Garden’s web page, atlantabotanicalgarden.org.) How did you know that her work would have such an amazing appeal to your visitors and attract attention nationally?

A. It’s a unique story - I was introduced to her work by someone in our community who had been involved in Niki's permanent installation in Escondido, California. The opportunity to curate a major exhibition of Niki's outdoor sculpture at the Atlanta Botanical Garden was irresistible for several reasons. Niki de Saint Phalle had done two major "garden" installations (Italy and California) and though her work is fanciful, it's also of the earth, organic with beautiful stones and glass.

Atlanta is an international city and has recently branded itself as a cultural destination with the "Every Day is an Opening Day" tagline. The exhibition supported our strategic goal of becoming one of Atlanta's premier cultural organizations, a visitor destination and a supporter of the city's economic growth and new brand through tourism.

I knew it was right for our Garden because of its international appeal, organic nature, fantastic size, whimsy and appeal to families as well as adults. When I saw it in person in California, children, teenagers and adults were interacting with the work. Everyone was clearly as charmed as I was. Also, the scale, which was enormous, was perfect for an outdoor setting and the organic nature of her stonework was appealing for the Garden. The last part of the equation was intuitive, and Turner Broadcasting Systems, Inc. shared the feeling that it was a wonderful fit for the Garden, the city and their philanthropic goals and generously became our Presenting Sponsor.

Q. To make your vision a reality must have required ready resources of staff and funding. Can you give us an idea of what it takes to support an exhibit of this magnitude and what you expect to gain in return?

A. The Niki de Saint Phalle exhibition is a major exhibition on par with the Chihuly exhibition. This is a once-in-a-decade type of opportunity and requires an investment of about $1-million. The investment is primarily in transporting and installing the massive work – more than 20 semi-trucks of sculpture. Second to that is the marketing investment which has been significant, both cash and in-kind, from Turner. We've had more than 20 million impressions nationally - you can't put a number on the lasting impact of that kind of coverage. The attendance has been very good, we're 20% over 2005 in June and July and gift shop revenue is tracking closer to 30% higher. The exhibit was fully funded with sponsorships, enabling us to put the earned revenue to use in supporting the mission of the Garden, care of collections etc....The exhibit brought a new donor to us who has now made a three-year commitment to sponsor our Thursday Nights. Rental revenue is up this year as well, which is indirectly attributable to the greater exposure the Garden has received.

Our approach to Niki and our other exhibits is to maximize the impact, which translates, among other things, to staying open late one night per week. Our garden is stunning at night, and the exhibit is totally different with the lights reflecting off of the brilliant colors of the mosaic and the city skyline lit in the background. The investment to stay open late is not large, and the payoff is more exposure, greater visitation, more gift shop sales and bar revenue.

Q. Matching exhibits and events to the right sponsors is almost an art in itself. How did you match Niki and Turner Broadcasting? What overlapping interests did you identify to make the partnership mutually beneficial?

A. Turner is incredibly generous to the Garden and community, and their philanthropy supports programs that bring culture and entertainment value to the city. Niki was a perfect fit - an exhibit for adults and children, interactive, international (like Turner) with great education and entertainment value. It's also an investment in their employees and their families, who get into the Garden for free during the entire duration of the exhibit.

Q. You have been a vocal supporter of exhibits in gardens for some time now. Did you become a “believer” with the Chapungu exhibit that you hosted when you were executive director of Red Butte Garden in Salt Lake City?

A. Chapungu was not my first exhibition experience. When we opened the Children's Garden at Red Butte Garden in 1999, we brought in Dave Roger's Big Bugs Exhibition as a way to mark the opening of the Children's Garden and create a lasting impact on families in the area. It was tremendously successful, so I immediately began thinking of other exhibitions that would be suitable for the Garden. Chapungu was like a dream falling from the sky - pure serendipity; which has happened numerous times with respect to exhibits.

I had seen Chapungu at Kew Garden in 2000 when vacationing with my family. We were so moved by the beauty, mystery and emotional relevance of the pieces, we stayed hours looking at them and watching the Shona sculptors work. I told my husband that, if the exhibit ever traveled to the United States, I would pursue it. Flash forward to 2001, when visiting Dr. Peter Raven at the Missouri Botanical Garden, I noticed a Shona sculpture on his desk. To my surprise, Peter told me that the Missouri Botanical Garden had just showcased the Chapungu exhibit and that it was available for a 2002 show. That was it - we brought the exhibit to Red Butte and saw a 50% increase in visitation. It was highly successful, well thought of in the community, helped expand membership and raised new funds for the Garden.

Q. In each case, it sounds like an exhibit worked almost magically to increase attendance and revenues. Why do you think the formula works so consistently?

A. We live in a dynamic world, and botanical gardens compete for visitors’ leisure time against museums, parks, sports and any other leisure activity. In order to compete, gardens and museums need changing programs and exciting new things to attract visitors. Exhibits support that in several ways - they have a limited time in the garden, which creates the urgency for someone to visit, they interpret mission in unique, creative ways, they enhance the entertainment and educational value of a visit and they are “fundable.”

Our consumer analysis at Atlanta Botanical Garden demonstrated that most people surveyed "intended" to visit the Garden multiple times in a year but had not been in several years. Exhibits help turn interest into action. A primary recommendation from that study was to flip the "not enough time" perception to "can't afford emotionally not to go" - Make missing hurt, more like Starbuck's, less like the newspaper. Exhibits certainly worked at Red Butte Garden when we showcased Big Bugs and Chapungu, and they have been tremendously successful in Atlanta where people who missed our Chihuly exhibit still feel the "hurt" of having missed that blockbuster.

Q. If you were doing a David Letterman “Top 10 List” of reasons for using exhibits, what would your top five be?

A. Counting down, they would have to be:

	Drives visitation by giving visitors an "urgent" reason to come to the Garden
	Broadens audience - can be appealing to art aficionados, children, families etc...
	Very fundable - corporate sponsors want marketing value
	Creates an interest from the community in "what's next?" at the Garden
	Dynamic, creative, surprising - all equal reasons for visitors to come back!

Q. Obviously, the successes you have achieved are repeatable. Would you recommend exhibits as a universal tool for gardens seeking to boost attendance and revenues?

A. Each garden is unique and has different strategic goals. I don't think exhibits are for every garden, but for gardens that are supported through visitation and earned revenues, exhibits can be used successfully to diversify audiences, increase visitation and earned revenues. They are also great for interpreting mission in a new and refreshing way. Sculptural exhibits can also be tied to the "beauty" part of our missions - we shouldn't forget that the aesthetic value of our gardens is one of our key drivers for attendance, and art is often a perfect match to plants and gardens. Just think of your favorite European garden, and you'll likely find sculpture an important component of the design.

One of the challenges of exhibits is finding an appropriate exhibit for the Garden. There are some interesting, smaller scale exhibits available, but there's no formula for success. It takes a highly creative approach -- I suggest that gardens interested in doing exhibits take the time to see what's happening around the country and learn from the success of others.

Q. In addition to leading gardens and arboreta into more enthusiastic and more frequent use of traveling exhibits, you have also made your garden an economic resource for Atlanta and earned a place at the table with city decision makers. What advice do you have for garden administrators who aspire to growing their venues to similar positions of significance in the communities they serve?

A. Participate with the Convention and Visitors Bureau, keep statistics about memberships (demographic data), track visitor numbers, zip codes for demographics data and analyze what portion of total attendance is tourist-based. The Convention and Visitors Bureau can give you an established dollar value for every tourist who comes to a city in terms of per-day spending. Our ACVB estimated the economic impact of Chihuly in the Garden to be over $60-million based on our numbers of tourists. Use that data in every talk you do in the city, and make sure city planners, council members and others are aware.

Participate in city programs such as Leadership Atlanta, Rotary, and planning efforts to make sure that the leaders in the city are aware of your organization's impact on the city.

Be a part of the Museum Directors Group - we meet every month to share information, compare visitation etc... and work on common issues.

And prepare a "brag sheet" about your garden's big impacts from visitation, capital campaign, education programs, students served and collections of merit or national standards.

Niki in the Garden will be on display at the Atlanta Botanical Garden through October 31. For more information on hours, entry fees and promotional activities, visit atlantabotanicalgarden.org.

One of Mary Pat Matheson’s recommendations for venue administrators looking to bring exhibits to the garden or arboretum is to start seeing what others are doing. To help you get started or continue your research, here’s a listing of exhibits appearing in a venue near you:

Chihuly
New York Botanical Garden, New York City – through October 29
Franklin Park Conservatory, Columbus, Ohio – October 7, 2006 – February 25, 2007
Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, Coral Gables, Florida – December 9, 2006 – May 31, 2007
Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, Missouri – through October 31

Patrick Dougherty -- sculptor
Desert Botanical Garden, Phoenix, Arizona – Installation February 2007

Lost Word Studios Dinosaurs
Red Butte Garden, Salt Lake City, Utah – through October 2006

Tree houses
Dallas Arboretum, Dallas, Texas – through December 31, 2006

Robert Wick living bronze sculpture
Denver Botanic Garden, Denver, Colorado – through December 31, 2006

Dave Rogers’ Big Bugs
Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, Austin, Texas – through November 4, 2006

Every successful exhibit creates the challenge of keeping the visitors safe while they enjoy the display and the display safe from overenthusiastic patrons. Effective signage is one way to control visitor/exhibit interaction, and Consultant Stephanie Weaver suggests a powerful graphic approach in her first column for News to Use. By way of introduction, Ms. Weaver has worked for the San Diego Zoo, the Chicago Botanic Garden and the Chicago Children’s Museum. Now she helps other businesses create great experiences to keep customers coming back for more, and here are her thoughts on effectively managing visitor behavior:

Successful "rules" signs have watchful eyes.

When I do presentations to staffers from public gardens, one question that frequently crops up is, "How do we get people to follow our rules?" Rules are important to keep visitors and plant collections safe, but many staff members believe that visitors ignore (or don't read) any of their carefully worded rules signs. So I am asked, "Is there a way to word them so that people stay out of our exhibits, on the paths, and don't ruin our collections?" I found a fascinating suggestion from a recent study that suggests the design of the sign might create more compliance. UK researchers Melissa Bateson, Daniel Nettle, and Gilbert Roberts found that people are more likely to follow posted rules if the sign includes an image of eyes watching them.

This innovative study, which you can find on Daniel Nettle’s web site: (www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/daniel.nettle/), focused on whether people were more likely to donate money to an office coffee fund if the poster design changed--from a header of flowers to human eyes. They studied several different versions of the poster, with and without eyes, and found that people were three times as likely to comply with the posted rules when eyes were present.

They are guessing that the feeling of being watched, however subtle, influences behavior. It's called "reputational concern" in behaviorist-speak. So, if you work at a zoo, and don't want people pounding on the glass at a primate exhibit, try primate eyes on the sign. In a garden or park, try a photograph of a person's eyes that is themed to your exhibits. See their paper for more specifics. If you try this, I'd love to know what your response is like.