ExhibitFiles contributors are among the 450 people who’ve gathered in Washington, D.C., this week for the biennial ISE Summit, organized by the Center for Advancement of Informal Science Education (CAISE) with support from the National Science Foundation.

NSF’s ISE program has funded a number of projects – CAISE, InformalScience.org, and ExhibitFiles among them – that together are building what some have called an “improvement infrastructure” for the informal science education field. The 240+ case studies and reviews, and the growing number of Bits, contributed by ExhibitFiles members are an important part of the collective memory that’s supporting good work i our field.

The Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology in Oslo received ASTC’s Leading Edge Award for Visitor Experience last week for Klima X, an exhibition about human-induced climate change. Among the exhibition’s striking features: large blocks of melting ice that represent the melting Arctic icecap, and the yellow boots vistors put on before they enter. Jon Haavie shared a case study of the exhibition on ExhibitFiles in March. Jon encourages us all to visit before the exhibition closes December 31.
Congratulations, Jon!

ExhibitFiles members gathered in Forth Worth October 30 to celebrate the growth of the community and its collective resources over the last year.

Tom Nielsen of Tucson and Jason Jay Stevens of San Antonio received this year’s “golden” awards in recognition of their recent contributions.

Tom wrote in July about his recollections of soap bubble exhibits at the Exploratorium. “‘Exploratorium’, I think, nails it—exploration for the joy of it, up to your elbows in soapy water, shoulder to shoulder with other visitors. If there are discoveries, if there is learning, if test scores improve, fine. But without exploration there’s nothing.” Tom also wrote earlier about the Experimentarium’s Giant Ears and Seeing the Light.

In his reviews, Jason has shared his observations about exhibitions from upstate New York to Los Angeles, including the Goodbye Parade that closes every day at Rochester’s Strong National Museum of Play, the “old-fashioned charm” of the Velaslavasay Panorama and St. Louis’s City Museum, “profoundly profuse with risk.”

Many thanks to Tom, Jason, and all of the members of ExhibitFiles who are contributing to our collective memories.

If you’ll be in Fort Worth for the ASTC Annual Conference, please come to the ExhibitFiles Happy Hour on Friday, October 30, 5:00-6:30 pm, at Shula’s Bar, in the lobby of the Sheraton Fort Worth Hotel (cash bar).

We’ll be recognizing some of the outstanding contributors to the site over the last year. KC Cole, author of the recent biography of Exploratorium founder Frank Oppenheimer, also will be there to give a signed copy of her book to an ExhibitFiles member who’s helped keep Frank’s memory alive in a post on the site.

Between now and then, we hope you’ll consider contributing a case study or review – it can be of a whole exhibition, or just one exhibit that was an inspiration to you, or that taught you something you want to share with others.

Hope to see you in Fort Worth!

A new biography of Frank Oppenheimer by K.C. Cole is out this summer, just in time for the Exploratorium’s 40th anniversary.

We invite the ExhibitFiles community to help celebrate – and to take time to revisit and reflect on Frank Oppenheimer’s exhibit philosophy and practice.

Over the next three months, contribute a case study or review of an exhibit that was developed by Frank himself, or in his spirit. Then on October 30, at the ExhibitFiles Happy Hour at the ASTC Annual Conference in Fort Worth, we’ll recognize the most highly rated contributor with a copy of K.C.’s book. She’ll be there to sign the book and talk about her memories of Frank.

If you want to learn more about Frank Oppenheimer’s ideas about exhibits, there’s also a wonderful collection of his writings on the Exploratorium website – a great source of inspiration, even after all these years.

Eric Siegel, president of NAME (the National Association for Museum Exhibition
here in the United States), writes with news that back issues of the NAME journal (The Exhibitionist) are now available for download on the NAME website. While NAME is generously making this material available to all, new issues will still only be available to NAME members. Gretchen Jennings, an early contributor to ExhibitFiles, is editor of The Exhibitionist.

Wayne LaBar writes that the National Association for Museum Exhibition (NAME) – one of the American Association of Museums (AAM) Standing Professional Committees – is looking for session proposals for the 2010 meeting, to be held in Los Angeles, May 23-27.

Sessions relating to the meeting theme – Museums Without Borders – are given greater consideration by the AAM Program Committee. Such topics might include: learning how best to engage publics in new ways; how museums have succeeded (or not) in responding to different communities including minorities, immigrants, and children; how museums have succeeded (or not) in creating networks with other museums in the United States and abroad; and what we’ve learned about what works with nontraditional audiences.

If you have an idea for a session – about technology, design, content development, prototyping, or some other aspect of exhibitions – that relates to these themes, go to the AAM website to submit a session and ask for NAME endorsement.

From what I’ve heard, it sounds as if there are quite a few of us who’ve started writing case studies, but haven’t quite finished – or haven’t gotten around to hitting “publish.” I started a post some time ago about an exhibition called Rotten Truth that I worked on with Kathy McLean, Beth Redmond-Jones, and colleagues from the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, about 15 years ago. (The exhibition was never actually built – which is part of the story.) One thing that’s held me up is that this all happened so long ago that records aren’t that easy to pull together, few were in digital format back then, and documents will need scanning. It was such a collaborative project, shouldn’t we all  consult on the case study? And then there were some sensitive issues – what Gretchen referred to recently as “exhibition frictions.” Should those be mentioned? What are the “frictions” or tensions that would be meaningful to recount? I gather others are stymied by those “intellectual property” issues Paul was commenting on earlier this week. In the interest of sharing experiences that may save some reinventing-of-the-wheel – one of the reasons we created this site – I think I ought to take on those challenges and finish this case study. I hope others will overcome hesitations and do the same. The stories, however imperfect they may seem to us, are part of our collective memory, the foundation of the “wisdom of practice” that informs our field.

We celebrated the solstice by reaching a milestone: There are now 1,000+ members of ExhibitFiles. Welcome to all of our newest members!

Since the site opened at the end of April last year, word has spread, and the community’s grown – and with it, the collection of shared memories and experiences posted here.

There are other ways to share, from the more traditional channels like journal articles to personal blogs. But by contributing to ExhibitFiles, we’re building a collective resource that’s easily accessible, everywhere in the world. We’re glad to see that museum studies students have begun to use the site to post reviews and hope to see more; you’re acting as eyes and ears for the rest of us. And for those who haven’t yet shared your stories, we’ll all look forward to reading about them in the new year. For now, thanks to all for your contributions, and best wishes for 2009.

Wendy

In October, we recognized the contributions of two ExhibitFiles power-users during a gathering at the ASTC Annual Conference in Philadelphia. Paul Orselli, a self-described instigator and principal of Paul Orselli Workshop (POW!), was among the group of exhibit developers who guided early planning of this site, and one of the first to contribute a review (check out Toasters, posted in April 2007 – and his 8 other case studies and reviews).

Gretchen Jennings was also among the early advisors, and her case studies of Psychology and Invention at Play provided models for others to follow. As editor of Exhibitionist, journal of the AAM’s committee on exhibitions, NAME, she – along with Beth Redmond-Jones, Penny Jennings, Eric Siegel, and others – has looked for ways to make this site useful to NAME members. And she’s spread word about the site through presentations to groups outside of the United States.

To them, and to all of our other 960+ members, thank you for so generously contributing to our common fund of knowledge and experience.