The New England Aquarium (NEAq) will develop a traveling exhibit and associated programs to focus on parallel scientific and environmental issues facing Lake Victoria (East Africa) and North American fisheries. The NEAq is working in partnership with the national Museums of Kenya (NMK). This project results from NSF supported research on Lake Victoria biodiversity crises and a workshop that involved 70 scientists, policymakers, and resource managers. A 5,000 sq. ft. exhibit "Lake Victoria: Mukasa's Tear" will be developed that will present both the Lake Victoria and North American fisheries issues in six modules including: Biodiversity Then and Now; Changing Life Styles; Lake Victoria Timelines; Fisheries Technology; Global Markets; and Towards the Future. Complementary educational programs will include on-site interpretation, special programs for K-12 classes, teacher workshops and curriculum materials, special events. The exhibit will open at NEAq in 1998 and will begin its national tour in 1999. A second version of the exhibit (which will be funded separately), will be shown in Kenya.
The Science Museum of Minnesota (SMM) will develop an interdisciplinary national traveling exhibition about raptors (birds of prey). Created in collaboration with The Raptor Center at the University of Minnesota (TRC) and the Museum Magnet School of the St. Paul School District, this exhibit and its related programs will explore themes of biodiversity, ecology, and human relationships with the natural world. It will help visitors understand raptors as diverse, charismatic, biologically-complex animals whose continued survival is linked to fundamental questions of public policy, economics, and environmental ethics. combining the perspectives of the sciences with those of the humanities, the exhibit will present science in a real-world context of human values and actions. Opening at SMM in the summer of 1944, the 5,000-square-foot exhibit will travel for five years or more to other large museums, nature centers, and zoos throughout the U.S. Using specimens, models, artifacts, dioramas, audiovisual programs, and interactive components and supported by theater, demonstrations, and a variety of other on-site programs, it will provide a compelling mix of informal learning experiences for families, school groups, and other general audiences. Beyond the museum walls, the themes of the project will reach schools and other important outreach audiences through videotapes, teacher training programs, educational materials, and other programs. SMM will also produce a scaled-down version of the exhibit that will tour to smaller museums, nature centers, and zoos.
The Field Museum of Natural History proposes to design and construct an Animal Resource Center of 24,000 square feet in the context of its encompassing larger exhibit, "Diversity and Survival in the Animal Kingdom." The Center will capitalize on the museum synoptic collections of animal mounts and models and will interpret these irreplaceable specimens in ways that will introduce central biological themes in ecology and evolution. The exhibit conjunctively will use a wide variety of learning techniques to appeal to the varied audience. The museum anticipates that the exhibit will serve fifteen million visitors over the next twenty years and that it may serve as a cost-effective model for other natural-science museums.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Michael SpockDebra MoskovitsBarbara Becker
The Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History is developing an innovative exhibit and teaching laboratory called INTERACTIONS. The unique feature of INTERACTIONS is the combination of an exploratory, interactive natural science exhibit with an adjacent live-insect-rearing laboratory. The exhibits will give the visitors some of the exploratory tools and experiences of the scientist and involve them in the process of scientific discovery. The laboratory will provide visitors with direct experience with scientists and involve them in the scientific process. Ecological in scope, INTERACTIONS will communicate environmental issues. The museum's plant and insect halls, designed over thirty years ago, will be renovated totally. In their place, a single, large exhibit and teaching laboratory will be created focusing on the interactions of insects and plants. The exhibits, videos, computer stations, and adjacent insect rearing laboratory will invite visitors to participate, question and examine. This combination of exhibits, hands-on activities, video, and laboratory will increase the retention of information, stimulate interests in natural science, and give vitality to the museum experience. The total cost of renovation, modernizing, exhibit construction and installation is $1,340,000 with $1,000,000 raised by a vigorous capital campaign. This request is for the balance of $340,000 to complete the exhibit construction.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Dennis PowerCatherine WoolseyNorman IkedaJohn Torkington
The Pratt Museum, a natural history museum in Southcentral Alaska, proposes to bring before the public an exhibition on oil pollution. Using the historic disaster of the March 1989 grounding of the Exxon Valdez, the museum presents a dramatic, grassroots story of the desperate struggle to protect the environment and preserve traditional lifestyles. The exhibit's purpose is to increase public awareness of national and global issues pertaining to the development, transportation, and use of petroleum. The 1,500 square foot presentation shows what an oil spill is like through photographs, maps, graphics, and three- dimensional participatory elements. The exhibit is scheduled to open at the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History in early 1991, beginning a three-year tour of 12 museums that will reach between 1.5 and 2 million viewers. The NSF contribution will support the circulation of the exhibit and the development of interactive components to enhance both the permanent and traveling presentations. Computerized graphic displays and an educational chest of learning tools will enhance the basic exhibit through multi- sensory activities designed for hands-on gallery use, increasing accessibility for children and disabled visitors. This cooperative project invloves private foundations, individuals, the Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
Interactive science exhibits will be designed, developed, and installed in the Brookings Interpretive Center at the Missouri Botanical Garden. The Brookings Interpretive Center is a new educational facility attached to the Climatron, a geodesic dome greenhouse. The exhibits will be installed in one of five theme areas: Tropical Rain Forest Biome, Tropical Rain Forests at Risk, Global Ecosystem, Desert Biome, and Temperate Biome. In addition to the science exhibits, the project will develop a series of science demonstrations to be used in the Brookings Interpretive Center and will allow for additional signage and audio effects to be added to the Climatron.
The Science Museum of Connecticut (SMC) proposes a three- year exhibit project called The State of the Environment. This cost-effective project will serve over 500,000 citizens a year by producing two permanent exhibits - 2400 sf for SMC and 400 sf for SMD's Roaring Brook Nature Center -- and eight traveling exhibits for use primarily in connecticut's Priority schools. These innovative exhibits use highly accurate sculptural relief maps which are animated by laser graphics and responsive to visitor inquiries through a research-calibre database containing vast information on Connecticut's environment. Thorough evaluation will help SMC design visitor experiences that make map-database interaction attractive, easy to use and understand, and educationally satisfying. State accredited teacher workshops will give educators a firm grasp of database capabilities prior to its use in the traveling exhibits for schools. Traveling exhibits will support goals in Connecticut's NSF-funded Statewide Initiative. Teacher's Guides will facilitate in-dept investigations for high school science lessons. These exhibits will provide hands- on experiences with professional tools for environmental research, show how environmental maps are made, teach basic principles of environmental science, and provide-in-depth information about the ecology of an entire state.
Zoos have the opportunity to reach a large audience and to improve public understanding of biological principles. Zoos can go beyond creating an appreciation for nature by actively encouraging their visitors to apply these principles and take action on behalf of the environment. Tropic World: A Primate's View will improve the interpretation of an existing exhibit at Brookfield Zoo by encouraging visitors to experience a tropical rainforest from a non-human primate's perspective. Visitors will be challenged, by interactive forms of interpretation, to explore the similarities and differences between themselves and other primates. This experience will provide a framework for visitors to consider their own relationship with their environment. The project objectives are: 1. To improve public understanding that , like all organisms, primates use and depend on their environment. However, humans ar the only primate species that can choose how they impact their environment over extended time and space. 2. to motivate people to act on behalf of the natural world through conservation. 3. To contribute to the body of knowledge of how informal education affects people's knowledge of natural science topics, as well as the behavior of people in relation to conservation issues.
The North Carolina State Museum of Natural Sciences requests $544,390 for the design and implementation of Freshwater Westlands: Habitats of Beauty and Function. This project consists of two main components: a 2,800 sq. ft. exhibit and related education program. The exhibit will communicate ecological principles and provide visitors of all ages with an appreciation of the diversity and beauty of freshwater wetlands habitats. The exhibit is comprised of three main areas: an introductory theater, an immersion diorama, and an interactive hall. Exhibits are designed to present many aspects of freshwater wetland habitats, including hydrology, dendrochronology, organism structure, and function, life- cycle, ecological research, and environmental policy. Through interactive exhibits on scientific concepts, visitors will gain an appreciation of both a particular habitat and the process of science and its application to their lives. The major objectives of the education program are to help teachers of grades 4-8 to bring the study of freshwater wetlands into their classrooms and to employ experientially oriented pedagogy. The project will offer a teacher resource guide, prepared in collaboration with state science curriculum staff, a satellite workshop for teachers, a freshwater wetlands edition of Wildlife in North Carolina, a statewide publication prepared in collaboration with the NC Wildlife Resources Commission, and a classroom program in the museum.
The New England Aquarium will develop an "inquiry-driven" gallery for the study of aquatic sciences in a move to go beyond the "naming" experiences in biology and environmental education. The project will focus on seven conceptual themes: 1) adaptation and evolution; 2) habitat; 3) life cycles; 4) development and metamorphosis; 5) species interactions; 6) energy flow: and 7) signals and senses. The exhibits will challenge the visitor with questions, puzzles and games. Curriculum materials will be developed for teachers along with a users guide for visitors. Outreach activities are planned, aimed at minority students and visitors. The Aquarium serves approximately 155,000 students and over one million visitors every year. The redesigned gallery will house eight tanks, ranging from a series of small tanks with accompanying video clips that display seldom seen behaviors such as the "birth" of seahorses, lobster molting, etc. to three 250-gallon tanks that will display ancient fishes and a variety of species showing different kinds of locomotion, color and sound. A 2500- gallon tank housing a school of fish will demonstrate different ways terrestrial and aquatic animals sense their surroundings. A 4000-gallon floor to ceiling tank will display a salt marsh on one side and a mangrove forest on the other and a 6000-gallon tank will house large groupers, moray eels and small gobies. The NSF award represents $273,971 out of a project total of $857,986.
The Museum of Science in Boston proposes a major modification of its permanent New England Wildlife Zones exhibition hall in order to improve its effectiveness with visitors with impaired sight, hearing, or mobility. They will document and share with other museums the successful methods and techniques used in the exhibition development process is an effort to improve barrier free access in the country's more than 600 science and natural history museums. The museum has completed a preliminary needs assessment with the assistance of handicapped consultants, developed alternative design solutions to problems of limited accessibility and effectiveness for the hall's existing dioramas, and organized a design team that includes senior museum exhibition and education staff and a handicapped scientist and educator as Co-PI. The Massachusetts College of Art's Adaptive Environments Center will provide assistance in design for the handicapped and evaluation will be under the direction of George Hein, head of Lesley College's Program Evaluatlion and Research Group. Following an extensive design and evaluation process, new exhibit units will be constructed as educational adjuncts to the existing hall of dioramas, and the impact of the changes will be assessed, as part of a dissemination plan that will include popular and professional papers and a "how to" work book distributed to science museum exhibit designers with the assistance of the Association of Science Technology Centers and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. This is a challenging project with the opportunity for a significant impact on handicapped individuals who are often excluded from the motivational and informational resources of science and natural history museums by unnecessary design limitations. The Museum of Science's commitment is strong, the project staff are highly qualified, and there is active participation by handicapped individuals in the project.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Larry BellCharles HowarthBetty Davidson
The Brookfield Zoo, operated by the Chicago Zoological Society, will develop a participatory exhibition on avian anatomy, physiology, behavior and ecology, "Be a Bird", whose overall goal is to bring biology to life with participatory exhibits in a zoo setting. The Brookfield Zoo will design and construct a permanent exhibition that uses discovery learning concepts to improve visitor understanding of birds and to motivate visitors to observe avian behavior in their everyday lives. Accompanying evaluation activities will contribute to a better understanding of informal education methods in zoos.