Gold: The Exhibition – The Field Museum – Chicago, Illinois

Gold banner at Field Museum

So, from time to time I revisit an exhibition that I have seen or have gotten to work with myself. In this instance, I was privileged enough to visit my former special exhibit over this past spring Gold: The Exhibition on display at The Field Museum, at Chicago, Illinois beautiful museum campus. Gold: The Exhibition was developed by the American Museum of Natural History in New York, New York, and is nearing the end of its tour.

As I mentioned when I wrote about Gold in Cincinnati, one of the unique design challenges of Union Terminal are the hallways that separate the front 5000 square foot exhibit hall from the back 10000 square foot exhibit hall. We get to create exhibitry in those hallways that prepare the visitor for what they are about to see with artifacts and content relevant to the main exhibition. This was not the case in Chicago. The exhibition space only houses the exhibit proper and there is no need for additional complimentary items.

Entrance to Gold

Seeing the usual suspects like the Seahorse Nugget in Aurum Naturae, the gold room in the Incomparable Gold gallery, and the Eureka bar from the wreck of the SS Central America on September 12, 1857 was like visiting old acquaintances on the road. There were a few new items in the Golden Ages gallery where the ladies can find plenty of things to add to their Christmas wish lists courtesy Cartier and Tiffany’s. If you are into coins, then look no further than the Gold Standard gallery featuring many coins from all around the world spanning dozens of centuries. Lastly, stop by Gold Achievement if you have ever wanted to see an Oscar, Emmy, or a Golden Globe statuette up close, or find out what your weight is worth in gold, now is your chance! For local ties, Chicago also added a Grammy won by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as well as the Chicago White Sox 2005 World Series Trophy.

IMHO (In my humble opinion)

The content is still exciting, the exhibit is still spacious, and as a White Sox fan, seeing the trophy just makes the exhibit totally worthwhile. Taking the time to visit Gold in addition to the Field Museum’s Grainger Hall of Gems makes the trip doubly worthwhile. While Gold: The Exhibition is at the end of its tour, you have until March 6, 2011 to see it!

For More Information:

Website: http://www.fieldmuseum.org/gold/#index Twitter: @fieldmuseum

 

Lost Egypt: Ancient Secrets, Modern Science – Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal – Cincinnati, Ohio

Greetings Special ExhiBITs fans!

It seems like the two weeks between a new blog post go so quickly these days. Maybe it’s because I’ve been working very hard on getting America I AM: The African American Imprint exhibit opened at Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal, and another exhibit a few weeks after that, but lets not talk about that…yet… I want to take a look at the first exhibit I managed during my tenure at Cincinnati Museum Center, Lost Egypt: Ancient Secrets, Modern Science.

Lost Egypt Cincinnati Entrance

Lost Egypt is a 6,000 square foot exhibit that was produced and is traveled by my friends in Columbus, Ohio at the Center of Science and Industry, COSi. The exhibit was fabricated by Minnesota’s favorite museum, the Science Museum of Minnesota in St. Paul, Minnesota, and the artifacts for the exhibit are on loan from the Brooklyn Museum in Brooklyn, New York. The exhibit blends hands-on activities with a great selection of artifacts to tell not an Egyptian story, but to tell a scientific story through the lens of Egyptian history.

If you’re reading my blog for the first time, I will bring you up to speed on the challenges we face in Cincinnati. If you’re an ExhiBITs veteran, this will be old news. In Cincinnati we have two separate special exhibit halls separated by a ramped hallway. This always presents special design and traffic flow challenges. During Gold: The Exhibition, we utilized those hallways by putting items from our collection onto display as an added experience, and then created  a sister exhibit Queen City Gold: Out of the Vault to utilize more space near the exit of the exhibit. For Lost Egypt, we were very fortunate to have these hallways because the exhibit came with a series of enlarged photographs that the COSi team took while they were in Egypt doing their research for the exhibit. The photos set the scene and prepped the visitor for the exhibit.

Orientation Map

Once the visitor reached the main portion of the exhibit they are greeted with a large floor map that orients the visitor to where Egypt is in Africa, and the world. The exhibit basically is split into two sections, the interactive or “fun” side, and the artifact side. The interactive side was packed with fun things for kids and adults to do to understand not only how it might have been to live and work in Egypt, but how it is to work as an archaeologist and an anthropologist. You get to learn the most efficient way to pull large stone blocks to build the pyramids, visit an archaeological dig site, and learn about ground penetrating radar. My favorite is the pot shard activity where visitors  are invited to reconstruct a pot “found” at an archaeological dig site. Visitors can also learn how to speak simple Egyptian phrases, and in “You CAN Take it With You” visitors are invited to think about what types of things they would like to take with them into the afterlife.

Not only do you get to see x-rays of different mummified animals, but the centerpiece artifact of the entire exhibit is a fully intact, well conserved mummy of a teenaged girl, named “Annie.” Of course, that wasn’t exactly a birth-name. Annie is short for anonymous because her name cannot be found.

As I mentioned earlier, we also created a sister exhibit to go along with Lost Egypt centered around Cincinnati Museum Center’s own mummy Umi. Umi comes to us from the Cincinnati Art Museum, and the University of Cincinnati graciously assisted us with performing CAT scans on Umi to determine lots of things including that he in fact is a young male after he was mistaken for a young female for centuries, and magnification of the amulets all over his wrappings.

The exhibit not only teaches that science is important in unlocking the ancient secrets of ancient Egypt, but it also shows that the Egyptian ideals of life after death may not be too unbelievable. After all, Annie is living today teaching people across the country. It’s a small, and quick exhibit to get through, but it is highly interactive, and highly informative.

The exhibit premiered at COSi in the Summer of 2009, we had it in Cincinnati in the Fall of 2009, and it recently opened at the California Science Center in Los Angeles, California and will be there until September 6, 2010. The exhibit is set to travel to the member museums of the Science Museum Exhibit Collaborative. See all the official websites below for more information, and for many more pictures, check my Flickr where I have pictures from the Columbus installation and the Cincinnati installation!

I’m off to the opening of National Underground Railroad Freedom Center’s newest exhibit Textual Rhythms: Constructing the Jazz Tradition, Contemporary African American Quilts tonight, check back here in two weeks to see what I think!

Lost Egypt’s Official Website: http://www.lostegypt.org

COSi’s Website: http://www.cosi.org follow @CosiCols on Twitter

Science Museum of Minnesota Website: http://www.smm.org/ follow @sciencemuseummn on Twitter

Brooklyn Museum: http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/ follow @brooklynmuseum on Twitter

California Science Center’s Website: http://www.californiasciencecenter.org/MainPage.php              Follow @casciencecenter on Twitter

Cincinnati Art Museum’s Website: http://www.cincinnatiartmuseum.com follow @cincyartmuseum on Twitter

…and don’t forget us!

Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal

http://www.cincymuseum.org follow @cincymuseum on Twitter

Oh yeah, and me… @Czarshaw on Twitter and Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/specialexhibits/

Me and the Camel

 

Gold: The Exhibition – Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal, Cincinnati, Ohio

Turning the lens to my own current special exhibit, Gold: The Exhibition and her companion exhibit Queen City Gold: Out of the Vault are on display at my home museum Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal, in Cincinnati, Ohio. Gold: The Exhibition was developed by the American Museum of Natural History in New York, New York, and is nearing the end of its tour with only one more stop after Cincinnati.

On of the unique design challenges of Union Terminal are the hallways that separate the front 5000 square foot exhibit hall from the back 10000 square foot exhibit hall. We get to create exhibitry in those hallways that prepare the visitor for what they are about to see with artifacts and content relevant to the main exhibition. These hallways also provide a natural queuing area in the case of heavy volume. The entry hallway to the Gold exhibit is done in a gold mine theme with several artifacts to browse on the way to the main exhibition.

Large letters spelling GOLD greet you as you enter the main hall of the exhibition. The exhibit is divided into six different galleries that discuss Gold from its natural form all the way to gold awards. The first gallery, Aurum Naturae has an interesting selection of natural gold artifacts such as the Seahorse Nugget…shaped like a Seahorse. There is a video that introduces the exhibit by discussing the formation of gold, gold in the past, and gold’s uses today.

The Incomparable Gold gallery reveals that gold has been found on almost every continent (Sorry Antarctica!) and hosts one of the most breathtaking things in the exhibit: the gold room. This is a 300 square foot room with extremely thinly pressed gold on the walls and ceiling made with only 3 ounces of gold! Golden Ages showcases golden items from around the world illustrating that gold was found in most corners of the Earth and was valued similarly in all of these places. This gallery shows you how gold quickly became used to signify someone’s status in their community.

Lost and Found discusses shipwrecks and has two significant pieces in the exhibit. The wreck of the SS Central America on September 12, 1857 brings us the largest surviving ingot from the California Gold rush, the Eureka Bar, and dozens of $20 gold Double Eagle coins in their original pine box…or what is left of it anyway. If you are into coins, then look no further than the Gold Standard gallery featuring many coins from all around the world spanning dozens of centuries. Lastly, stop by Gold Achievement if you have ever wanted to see an Oscar, Emmy, or a Golden Globe statuette up close, or find out what your weight is worth in gold, now is your chance!

The fun doesn’t stop there! Another fun thing we often get to do here at Cincinnati Museum Center is design and produce a local connection exhibit where we are able to highlight treasures from our own collection that pertain to the content of the traveling exhibit. Queen City Gold: Out of the Vault is that exhibit and it showcases some really exciting local items like William DeHart Hubbard’s Olympic medals, 6 Reds World Series trophies, a coffee pot that a child could fit into, tons of gold adorned dishes (the mustache cup being my favorite), books, and weapons. You can even see some beautiful jewelry from local jeweler Lee Krombholz!

My Professional Opinion –

The content is exciting, the exhibit is spacious, and with the added exhibit the entire experience is well worth the ticket price. You fundamentally get two exhibits for the price of one! You only have 9 days (From Monday, May 3 anyway) left to see it here in Cincinnati! Gold: The Exhibition and Queen City Gold: Out of the Vault close on Wednesday, May 12, and don’t forget 2 kids get in FREE with the purchase of an adult admission. For more information, please visit:

http://www.cincymuseum.org/explore_our_sites/special_exhibits_events/current_exhibits/default.asp

twitter.com/cincymuseum