The Witte in San Antonio hosted the Sherlock Holmes exhibit a few years ago and I had a total ball
with it. For those who aren't familiar with it, the exhibit begins with an introduction to Arthur
Conan Doyle, then you make a turn and find yourself in a murder scene - with Sherlock Holmes as
the victim. You proceed through the exhibit following Dr. Watson from one interview to the next,
exploring Victorian culture and gathering clues, including at an opium den. Finally, we were lead
into a room where Holmes himself interviews you to find out if you've solved the mystery. The
Witte employee who served as Holmes was just dandy in the roll - totally got into the character!
The interviewing room was a decked out Victorian drawing room. The only drawback was that for the
more shy visitor, actually being interrogated by Holmes himself can be a bit much - there was no
way I could talk my husband into accompanying me, even though he helped gather clues. It was just
to intimidating and I had to face the great detective myself.

Another wonderful interactive exhibit that I thought was well done was a traveling Ice Age exhibit
I saw at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science about 5 years ago. They had a tar pit made of
tacky glue that grabbed your shoes, giving the impression that you were trapped in the tar. There
was also a cave with blackboard walls to do cave drawings in. The piece de resistance, however,
was the atl-atl interactive. On the far wall, across the open atrium, was a mammoth outline with a
small heart in the center of the figure. A wire ran across the atrium from the launching pad to
the heart. A spear was threaded on it. The visitor holds an atl-atl, notches it in the back of the
threaded spear and hurls it across the atrium. If you throw it hard enough, it hits the heart and
the mammoth makes a loud trumpeting sound. I could have thrown that atl-atl all day... very
engaging.

This was a great topic! 

Cecelia
--- Dan Bartlett <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> At our annual staff retreat we were discussing benchmarks for various 
> areas of the museum from visitor services to collections care to 
> exhibits. We were discussing other institutions we thought were doing a 
> good job in each particular area and why we felt that way.
> 
> In our discussion about exhibits we had a hard time identifying very 
> many really good interactive history exhibits. What do you all think? 
> Who’s doing it well? For this discussion, by “interactive” I mean 
> something that goes beyond touching different animal pelts or pushing a 
> button to see a video. The exhibit must also be designed so that it can 
> be used by a visitor without requiring mediation by an interpreter.
> 
> I’ll start by offering one of my favorite examples. The Chimney Rock 
> National Historic Site in Nebraska 
> (http://www.nebraskahistory.org/sites/rock/index.htm) has among its 
> exhibits a small wagon, perhaps ¼ scale, along with a large selection of 
> the kinds of items that pioneers traveling on the Oregon Trail might 
> have chosen to take with them. Visitors can select items to load on the 
> wagon. Should we take food, or some furniture? The wagon is rigged to a 
> scale and at some point a red light comes on indicating that the wagon 
> is overloaded. There is no way to get some of everything on that wagon. 
> You have to choose and in doing so you get a unique perspective on the 
> challenges of traveling west before the advent of the railroad. It 
> allows for intergenerational learning in that adults can guide the 
> child’s activities thus placing them in a mentoring role, or children 
> can work on it alone or in small groups and still take away the main 
> idea. It can be used multiple times with different outcomes each time 
> and from a construction and maintenance standpoint, it’s very low tech 
> and looks to be very durable.
> 
> So what do you like and why?
> 
> Dan
> 
> Dan Bartlett
> Curator of Exhibits
> Midway Village & Museum Center
> Rockford, IL
> 
> =========================================================
> Important Subscriber Information:
> 
> The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain
> detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to
> [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes).
> 
> If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to
> [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "Signoff Museum-L" (without
> the quotes).
> 


                        Ce Ottenweller
  Museum Development, Writer, Voice-Over Artist 
713-302-2793
   
  Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear--not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward, it is not a compliment to say he is brave; it is merely a loose misapplication of the word. - Mark Twain
















 
____________________________________________________________________________________
Never miss an email again!
Yahoo! Toolbar alerts you the instant new Mail arrives.
http://tools.search.yahoo.com/toolbar/features/mail/

=========================================================
Important Subscriber Information:

The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes).

If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "Signoff Museum-L" (without the quotes).