The 19th Annual Excellence in Exhibition Competition—sponsored by AAM Standing Professional Committees (SPCs) CARE, CurCom, EdCom and NAME—drew 23 highly competitive entries from a variety of institutions, including natural history and science museums, art and history museums, children’s museums and institutions with living collections. The budgets of the exhibitions ranged from $3,200 to $58 million (the latter a long-term exhibit with acres of outdoor facilities).
Competition judges declared one institution the clear winner and awarded honorable mentions to four others, basing their decisions on AAM’s Standards for Museum Exhibitions and Indicators of Excellence. Each exhibition cited for superior quality conveyed engaging messages, used appropriate media to help visitors acquire skills or engage in rich sensory experiences and demonstrated a commitment to audience research to achieve its goals.
We urge all museums to enter next year’s competition so that this energy can continue to propel the competition. The requirements for materials have been streamlined, and digital versions make it easier than ever to enter. Writing about your entry allows you to reflect on your exhibition’s strengths and the lessons learned. Finally, showcasing your ideas to the rest of the museum community inspires all of us to push the limits of our own creativity in new directions.
Information about next year’s competition, new coordinator Maria Marable-Bunch’s contact information and entry materials will be posted in the fall on www.care-aam.org, www.curcom.org, www.edcom.org and www.N-A-M-E.org.
Special thanks go to our wonderful judges, Ellen Giusti, CARE; Elisa Phelps, CurCom; Susy Watts, EdCom; and Abbie Chessler, NAME; and to the SPC chairs who oversaw the competition: Zahava Doering, CARE; Linda Eppich, CurCom; Jim Hakala, EdCom; and Phyllis Rabineau, NAME.
“Plants Are Up to Something” at the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens stood out as an example of how an exhibition can provide extraordinary experiences. Its central component, “Real Plants, Real Tools, Real Science,” grabbed audience attention and provided an ideal framework for eradicating visitors’ congenital “plant blindness”—the fact that most people don’t see or know about vegetation. Smart interactive stations, such as Different Smells for Different Pollinators, gave elementary schoolchildren an opportunity to use scientific apparatuses to explore in a fun and safe atmosphere. Judges were impressed by how the Huntington exhaustively prototyped and tested interactive components in local classrooms, aided by its advisory board and the local community, and inventively used graphic materials that could withstand a greenhouse environment. The Huntington, which had never used interpretation with a living collection, took a chance and added a rich layer of interpretation and interactivity to this one.
In “Evolving Planet,” the Field Museum introduced visitors to the complex topic of how life evolves, quoting Darwin and featuring images depicting the diversity of life on Earth. Visitors took a walk through time, touching on topics such as mass extinction, phylogeny and convergent evolution. The media were imaginative and the collections impressive. The judges congratulate the Field Museum for not shrinking from the “e” word.
The National Zoo’s “Asia Trail” exhibited seven unusual animal species, using layered interpretation of their habitats to illustrate how scientists study them. The content focused on conservation of wild spaces and how visitors can take action on the animals’ behalf—another welcome example of a living collection using imaginative media to convey meaningful ideas.
The main idea of the Chicago History Museum’s “Sensing Chicago” was that history is all around you and you are connected to it. The target audience was 8- and 9-year-olds; kids saw, heard and touched the past in age-appropriate ways—for example, fabricating the bleachers and recreating the experience of a baseball game in a historic ballpark.
“The Wonder Cabinet” at the Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose capitalized on preschool children’s sense of wonder, love of exploration and desire to learn through doing. Interactive areas presented a modern interpretation of the 16th-century Cabinet of Curiosities as well as a Sand Lab, in which children used funnels, beakers and scales to measure sand. By replacing shovels with real scientific equipment, the area simultaneously provided sensory delight for 1-year-olds and a science lesson for 4-year-olds.
From the Judges
Many of this year’s entries met all or most of our standards of excellence. Our winner, “Plants Are Up to Something,” stood out in its thorough approach to audience awareness, testing and evaluation, incorporation of learning standards and quality and appropriateness of design. In our opinion, the Huntington team’s approach and solutions provide examples that other institutions can follow. Honorable mention winners “Sensing Chicago,” “The Wonder Cabinet,” “Evolving Planet” and “Asia Trail” also set themselves apart by seamlessly incorporating interactives into many types and sizes of exhibitions. What made the outcomes so successful was each team’s attention to prototyping, testing and their audiences.—Abbie Chessler, founding partner and design director, Quatrefoil, Laurel, Md.
Lindy Hankins is assistant curator at Museum & Collector Resource in Concord, Mass. Ellen Giusti is a visitor studies consultant based in New York.
