Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service's Blog

What's New Online? Using Web 2.0

I'm just off the plane from snowy Montreal, where this year's Museums and the Web conference was held and where discussions centered on the use of Web 2.0. Chances are if you're reading SITES' blog, you're already quite familiar with the uses (and misuses) of this newish technology. Blogs, wikis, Flickr, social networking, YouTube--these are the buzz words for the Web 2.0 generation. But how do we use these platforms (wisely)? Should museums/cultural institutions care? Should we be afraid of losing control of vetted, academic content?

Yes, we should care. Non-profits are often are the last to jump on the technology bandwagon, yet this is one case where we should embrace what's out there. Web 2.0 has great potential for museums, encouraging more active, more meaningful visitor participation--a tangible means of getting visitors hooked and thinking after they walk out the museum's doors. Still, it's not entirely self-serving. People get something out of contributing, whether a photo on Flickr or content that's been shared on a museum wiki, there's a satisfaction in making connections with like-minded individuals, in knowing that curators may be shaking their heads and saying, "Well, I never thought of it that way."

A handful of folks admitted that you just have to change your plan-everything-years-in-advance attitude and see what happens. You don't know where the content/commentary will go until it's up there. Gail Durbin of the Victoria & Albert Museum in the UK was a big advocate for this kind of "learning by experiment" as were others who admitted you just have to wait, watch, and wonder how your project will evolve.It's a very organic process.You have to let it flower and just continue to trim back the dead blooms.

That leads us to the second question. Should we be afraid of losing control? I heard this particular comment from all the leading museums. "We want to use x,y,z technology, but we're apprehensive about blurring the line between our well-researched materials and unsubstantiated 'facts' from the public." Some participants insisted that you should visually establish a clear distinction. Perhaps there's obvious "official" information in one area and more dynamic, user-generated content in another. Remember, you can moderate commentary. You can offer a policy that indicates what is legitimate and what will be removed.

What about not-so-complimentary feedback? Don't worry about Negative Nancy, who tells you that your exhibition brochure wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. The great thing about a loyal social network is that the group will often come to your defense. It's all about strong building relationships--whether real or virtual.

Kermit and Friends in Mesa, Arizona

These days, the phrase "going green" means something completely different than it did back in the '70s. For many of us, the green craze blossomed with our first glimpse of lovable Kermit the Frog, on stage with say an equally affable Linda Ronstadt or John Denver. We adored our amphibian friend then, and even this generation of hard-to-impress youngsters finds him hard to resist, along with the green guy's colorful comrades: Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, the Sesame Street Gang, and all the rest.

The man behind these well-known and much-beloved characters is the subject of "Jim Henson's Fantastic World," a wildly popular SITES exhibition touring the country until 2011. So far, this exhibition has been a huge hit, not only because we all have a soft spot for Kermie but because of well-planned special events, programs, and fund raising efforts.

Recently Smithsonian National Board member, Gay Wray, hosted a grandparent/grandchild day at the Arizona Museum for Youth, for example, recently hosted a grandparent/grandchild day as an introduction to the exhibition. About 20 families participated in the event, which included a bouncy but memorable bus ride to the museum, a hot and cheesy hamburger lunch, and a surprise visit from the "Magic Fairy," who effortlessly granted wishes with one swish of her wand. Of course, the exhibition itself wasn't too shabby either as wide-eyed fans gawked in front of the real Kermit and a host of other puppets.

"The most rewarding thing," said development officer Jennifer O'Keefe, "was that most of these kids had never been to the museum or even any museum. In the case of one painfully shy visitor, the puppets and hands-on activities encouraged her to open up a little. By the end of the day, she was laughing and participating right along with the other kids."

That, my friends, is what it's all about, and I think Kermie would agree.

SITES Remembers Civil Rights Leader

In her own words, SITES director of scheduling and exhibitor relations Michelle Torres-Carmona recounts a meeting with civil rights activist Johnnie Carr in Montgomery, Alabama.

"One of the most rewarding aspects of my job at SITES is attending exhibition openings. I was reminded of this when I learned Mrs. Johnnie Carr had passed. Up until her death, Mrs. Carr was the president of the Montgomery Improvement Association, a position she held since 1967, after the previous president, Dr. Martin Luther King moved on to a lead a national movement. I had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Carr in December 2005, during the opening of 381 Days: The Montgomery Bus Boycott Story at the Alabama State Capitol.

There were multiple events taking place in Montgomery that week--the 50^th anniversary of a milestone in our country’s history. While my visit was filled with many wonderful memories, too many to share in a blog entry, one moment truly stood out. It included a conversation with Mrs. Carr, Dr. Joseph Lowery, and Congressman John Lewis (also in Montgomery to take part in the activities). These three icons of the civil rights movement were waiting to tape an episode of the Tavis Smiley Show. Before they went on, they began to talk about their friend, Martin. I looked at Lori Yarrish, deputy director of SITES, because at that precise moment, we felt so honored to be listening to this conversation.

To the world, he was Dr. Martin Luther King, but to Mrs. Carr, he was simply "Martin." She talked about his sense of humor; she even recounted a few jokes, noting Martin could be quite the jokester. Given his iconic status, we sometimes forget Dr. King was also a human being. It was truly a special moment, Lori and I were both struck at the clarity of Mrs. Carr’s memory as she talked about Dr. King. She was, after all, ninety-four years young.

We will forever remember Mrs. Johnnie Carr. Her sacrifices and contributions have given African American women and all Americans so many opportunities today. Thank you my freedom sister."

Brand New Exhibition Tackles Race Issues

A conversation with Gabrielle Tayac, curator of IndiVisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas, a new exhibition from the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) and the National Museum of African American History and Culture:

Q. Tell us a bit about your background.
A. In professional terms, I have a Ph.D. in sociology from Harvard University, specializing in historical approaches to identity issues in indigenous societies. I also come out of a long-term commitment to human rights, working with groups like Amnesty International and Survival International. In personal terms, I am enrolled in the Piscataway Indian Nation through my father, am Jewish through my mother, and grew up in Greenwich Village in New York City. I now reside in Takoma Park, Maryland, with my husband and two children.

Q. How long have you been with NMAI?
A. I came to NMAI in 1999, first serving as the Director of Education. I then moved into a curatorial role, to work on the inaugural exhibit, Our Lives, and also one that opened in 2007, Return to a Native Place: Algonquian Peoples of the Chesapeake. Being on the "mommy track," I worked on contract from 2005-2006, and then came back permanently as a historian.

Q. What’s the most rewarding thing about your job?
A. The rewards are endless. I am grateful, on a daily basis, to be involved with the project of uncovering new truths and dispelling stereotypes about Native peoples; I am profoundly honored to be participating in this new legacy of understanding through NMAI.

Q. What are some of the challenges of working on an exhibition like this one?
A. There are many, many challenges. The history and contemporary experiences of individuals, families, and communities who have blended African and Native American heritages are enormously complex throughout the Americas. A major challenge is to try to narrow down the focus and select stories among the thousands that exist. We know that we can't tell all of the stories or speak to all of the experiences, but we hope to give the public enough information so that they can learn more on their own with a set of thoughts to begin with. I am also deeply aware of the emotional pain and policy implications that affect people due to the legacy of colonialism, slavery, and dispossession, so our team is carefully approaching topics that may still be raw for people.

Q. What's the format of the exhibition?
A. IndiVisible will be a panel show and will feature some stunning and powerful images from many different sources. We will also be gathering new images from contemporary fieldwork. One of my favorites was just brought to me by our project manager, Fred Nahwooksy (Comanche), after returning from a trip home to Oklahoma. It shows Ta-ten-e-quer and his wife, Ta-Tat-y, with their niece and her children. The elders in the photo are in classic Comanche dress, while their niece (the daughter of a Comanche woman and an African American Buffalo Soldier) and her children are in early 20th-century clothing. They are clearly mixed African and Native, yet they arrive at the photo studio as a united family.

Q. What do you hope people will take away from the exhibition?
A. Our hope is that people come away with a clearer sense of the vastness of the African-Native American experience in its many aspects, with a deep understanding of the historic and contemporary groundings of real-life stories. I believe that this exhibit will speak to people of all backgrounds, who are engaged in the essentially human pursuit of being and belonging.

So Long, Farewell Shannon

We were excited, and of course a bit cranky, when our colleague Shannon Perry announced that she had accepted a position at the Smithsonian's American Art Museum last week. Shannon has been one of our aces in the Scheduling and Exhibitor Relations Department since 2004. She was a serious asset from the start, working with hundreds of potential and existing exhibitors to ensure that Smithsonian collections and research were shared with communities both large and small, all across the country. Her background in curatorial work with the Dixon Gallery and Gardens (TN), the Fire Museum of Memphis, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts really helped Shannon understand the nuts-and-bolts of the museum world (as well as its challenges), allowing her to make successful matches between SITES exhibits and host venues.

That being said, we've recently learned that Shannon was hiding many things from us during her tenure with SITES--even as she quietly and effectively performed her duties right down the hall. For example, we didn't know that she recently finished assembling a cook book featuring recipes from her family and friends. Her colleagues might also be surprised to learn that she served as the art director for four plays featured in New York drama festivals. I, for one, certainly didn't know that Shannon loved all types of puppies and is an avid golfer, who like the rest of us, has a tendency to use "very, very poor language when she is upset with her game." (This is a direct quote from her husband!)

All joking aside, we will all miss Shannon immensely, and we're sure that many of you will miss her too! We wish her luck, and I will be thinking about her the first time I hit the links this spring.

A Conversation with Michael Benson

On Tuesday, our team of writers and editors, project directors and press people finally met artist Michael Benson face-to-face. We've been working with him for the last two years on an uber-ambitious space imaging exhibition called Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes (If you follow our blog, I've gushed about this one on previous occasions.)

It was the first time I had an opportunity to get to the bottom of his story, both personally and professionally. With a background in photography and film-making, this self-proclaimed 2001: A Space Odyssey aficionado is a fascinating guy with big plans for the future. Here's what he had to say:

Q. How did you go from making politically minded films like Predictions of Fire (1996) to collaging together images taken by the space probes?
A. There were delays on one of my other films, and I started as a kind of hobby in the mid 1990s. Those, of course, were the days before search engines like Google, but somehow I managed to find NASA's Planetary Photojournal. The website included lots of partially completed images that were taken by Galileo, and new images were coming through all the time.

Q. What's your goal in creating the images?
A. I try to imagine what these things would look like to a human being if we could somehow hover above the surfaces. We see full views, not pieces. These images give a more complete representation than anything that we've seen before. In fact, the image of the Mars dust storm and the photo of Europa above Jupiter were made up of hundreds of individual frames that I pieced together, giving incredibly comprehensive and sweeping views.

Q. Take a long time?
A. Yes, months and months. Six months in the case of the Jupiter view. I just kept adding more and more frames.

Q. Where does the color come in?
A. Getting the color "right" requires help from scientists. I've worked closely with Dr. Paul Geissler, literally a rocket scientist, to render these pictures into what we believe is true color. But it's not an arbitrary process.

Q. Having spent years on Beyond, what's next for you?
A. I've started thinking about a companion book (to Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes) called something like "Far Out." It will pick up where this book leaves off, moving out of the solar system and into deep space, looking at nebulae, galaxies, and deep-space phenomena.

The team is especially interested when they hear about this next endeavor as project director Devra Wexler chimes in with a more fitting title for this next book. It should be called "Beyond Beyond," she grins.

Have another minute? Check out the Beyond photoalbum in the left column.

SITES Walks It Off

We were ready! Yesterday was the Smithsonian's annual SHAPE Walk (Smithsonian Healthy and Active Program for Employees). About 500 SI walkers, clad in an array of costumes, converged on the plaza outside of the Hirshhorn to register and get a little encouragement from Acting Secretary of the Smithsonian Cristián Samper, himself an avid walker.

Made up of Denise Schelin, Michelle Brown, Robin Mays, Heather Shelton, Steve Arnold, Shermane Boudreaux, and Aoife Toomey, SITES' team was appropriately called the "Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibitionists." Odd name you say? The name reflected the stunning and ultra-classy t-shirts we sported. You've probably seen them before in such beach boutiques as Wings and Sunsensations--the eye-catching shirts with the shapely bikini babes or six-pack muscle men, hence the "Exhibitionists." Don't worry, we were all covered, thank goodness.

"The Mighty Winds" of Smithsonian Folkways took home the coveted first prize in the costume contest, and we came in a close second. (Folkways' presentation was a multi-media event, complete with a little jig about computer gov-trip training, and this IS very funny to federal employees, believe you me. Who can compete with that?).

The real event was the walk itself, two laps around the lovely leaf-swept National Mall on a 70-degree day. And our team made good time (I won't mention names, but we lapped several other SI units. Sorry, red team.) In the end, we had a great time and even had a chance to have our picture taken with the Secretary before he jetted off to lap the red team.

-Heather Shelton, SITES writer/editor

Amazing Canyon Photographers

As a writer/editor for the Smithsonian, I get to learn about myriad topics that had, quite literally, never ever occurred to me. Someone with a master's degree in art history may have never considered the impact of soils on the health of our planet or the influence a Latino baseball player on underprivileged children. (I'm talking about Roberto Clemente, the Pittsburgh Pirates' favorite son.) Just think, while I was engulfed with Maya ceremonial cocoa vessels and early American architecture, there was actually other research going on, discoveries being made by the Hubble Space Telescope, new data being unearthed by Smithsonian scientists, curators, and archivists.

What's the point, you say? Well, I'm currently reading about yet another topic that blows my already-stretched mind: a crew of 26 salt-of-the-earth photographers who have physically pushed the limits of their medium. These are the passionate artists who will be featured in Lasting Light: 125 Years of Grand Canyon Photography. It's not that I'm completely unfamiliar with the Canyon; in fact, the Southwestern United States happens to be my favorite corner of the Earth (I've almost perished here several times). What I am amazed by is the sheer tenacity of these photographers, willing to go to superhuman lengths to get the shot, whether of the Canyon rim, an unexpected waterfall, a bitter snowstorm, or a simple desert flower. These pictures, folks, are things of rare beauty.

-Heather Foster Shelton, SITES writer/editor

Happy 55th Birthday SITES!

In 1952, SITES launched its first traveling exhibition. Fifty-five years and more than 1,600 exhibitions later, SITES' program has grown to embrace a wide range of subjects, cultures, and artifacts. Each year, more than 50 exhibitions travel to hundreds of cities and towns where millions of people encounter discoveries and collections that give the Smithsonian its special place in American life.

As one of SITES' longest-serving staff members, I've continued to be energized by the constant flow of new things to learn: new exhibition subjects, production technologies, and the digital revolution. Thanks to working on SITES exhibitions, I can identify somewhat obscure Judaica and Hubble Space Telescope imagery and know where to look for giant squid. I've published books and brochures on contemporary art from Vietnam, Mexico, Russia, and the U.S., not to mention baseball, tropical rainforests, revolutionary posters, and Antarctica.

Stick with us and you'll soon be an expert on something you never imagined you'd know!

-Andrea Stevens, SITES Director of Strategic Communications

Smithsonian Unsung Hero Awards

Steve Arnold, director of IT at SITES, was honored with a prestigious Unsung Hero award yesterday at the National Museum of Natural History. Steve's parents, sister, and colleagues cheered him on (with raucous noise-makers and whistles) as he received an engraved plaque from the acting secretary of the Smithsonian, Christián Samper.

A dedicated Smithsonian employee for more than three decades, Steve joined SITES five years ago with the charge of transforming its IT program into a thriving 21st-century operation. He has more than succeeded. Over the past three years, Steve took the lead in replacing SITES’ antiquated exhibition tracking database with a state-of-the-art integrated system. He managed a 15-member task force that addressed user needs, coordinated all aspects of system implementation with OCIO, trained staff, wrote reports, and resolved issues under tight deadlines. SITES’ new system—TRAX—was launched this year to accolades from colleagues and contractors alike.

Way to go, Steve!