KYW reported on the groundbreaking this week for the new Benjamin Franklin Museum at Franklin Court, slated to open in 2013. Remer & Talbott has been working with Independence National Historical Park and the exhibit designers to develop the new, state-of-the-art permanent exhibition. View the report here.
Exhibitions, Planning and Project Management
The Civil War Road Show — one of our recently completed projects — began traveling last month, and has been popping up in the press as it tours throughout the state. Ros was interviewed for this article in the Altoona Mirror.
Check out this video, with footage from the temporary exhibition on gender equality that we curated for Vision 2020: http://drexel.edu/vision2020/who/
"Life and Age of Man...," lithograph by Currier & Ives, 1856 - 1907. Library of Congress
As a consultant with Remer & Talbott and a master’s candidate in art education, I often see parallels between exhibitions and curriculum planning. I was trained to create a lesson plan using KWL: What do students know?; What do I/we want them to know?; and How will they learn it? And students learn best when they are able to identify with the subject, forming a personal connection. I believe the same applies for people of all ages visiting a public history exhibit.
So the next question is, as educators (and curators, and interpretive planners, etc.), how do we create ripe opportunities for personal connections? One way to approach this is to consider that — as articulated by 20th-century educator Ernest Boyer – as human beings, we all share certain commonalities that transcend time, space and culture:
- Life cycle
- Symbols
- Aesthetic response
- Sense of time & space
- Group membership
- Production & consumption
- Awareness of nature
- Values & beliefs
(Here’s one place they’re explained a little further, in relation to art: http://www.schoolartsdigital.com/schoolarts/20080909sample/?pg=48#pg48)
This may appear to be an oversimplification, but I think it’s deceptively simple. And as a “list person,” sometimes I find it useful to refer to a list that states the obvious, which I might have otherwise overlooked. It is also interesting to note, in retrospect, that in creating the traveling exhibition for Benjamin Franklin’s 300th birthday, for example, we incorporated human commonalities intuitively. For Franklin, particularly numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8! I look forward to further exploring these commonalities and their usefulness for exhibits.
-Melissa
For the exhibition, From the Absence of Many to the Presence of All…The Unfinished Business of Women’s Equality, our client wanted an exhibition that would celebrate achievements in the historic struggle for women’s equality. They wanted an exhibition that would sound the alarm that the struggle is far from over. They wanted to be sure that everyone understood the risks that pioneering women brought to the fight. And they wanted to be sure that women working toward equality today are also given their due. They wanted visitors to the exhibition to be inspired by the past. They wanted visitors to cautiously celebrate the present. And they wanted visitors to imagine a future when the fight for equality is a thing of the past.
The exhibition at the National Constitution Center is something of a whirlwind – or maybe tornado — to catch at visitors’ sleeves just as they’ve done all their learning for the day and are preparing to exit into Signers’ Hall. Before they can go mingle with the statues of America’s founding fathers, our exhibition insists they spend just a little time with its founding mothers and with women today who are not ready to bring the story to a close until there is a finale we can all be happy with. We couldn’t build life-size statues of our founding mothers, but we’re hoping that visitors feel just as compelled to seek out that photo op with Sojourner Truth as they do with Ben Franklin. That they’ll read Abigail Adams’ words addressed to her husband, then meet her husband’s fellow founders in the next room and wonder if he ever conveyed to them her warning: “If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice, or representation.” Go, Abigail!
We do hope that visitors will see just how much women have achieved and continue to achieve toward equality, even as laws, customs, poverty and ignorance all continue to push back progress. If visitors leave understanding that equality can be attained – and it can be taken away, or even given up – it’s our belief that when they meet the women of our exhibition, as well as the men in Signers’ Hall, they’ll leave knowing that for all people, the blessings of liberty are contingent and not guaranteed.
In the end women’s status is evolving and transitional. The women featured in the exhibition had one thing in common: the belief that less is NOT more, that failure is NOT an acceptable option and that equality IS in sight if we sharpen our focus. We hope visitors enjoy what they see and will leave the exhibition newly invigorated and inspired toward achieving the perfect vision of 2020.
Try to visit before March 31st, when the show comes down!
The exhibition we curated for Vision 2020, a national initiative for women’s equality and leadership, is now open at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. It will be on view until January 2011 (if not longer).
To learn more, visit the Vision 2020 website.
