Category Archives: Exhibitions

Stewardesses, a radical idea

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This month marks 80 years of female flight attendants. It’s hard to imagine a time without them, but until 1930, airlines employed male stewards. That changed when Ellen Church, a nurse from Iowa, approached Steve Simpson at Boeing Air Transport (later United Airlines) with the radical idea of putting women nurses on airliners.  Church had wanted to be a pilot, but realized that she had no chance for that in the climate of the day. She convinced Simpson that the presence of female employees might help relieve the public’s fear of flying. Church developed the job description and training program for the first class of eight stewardesses, called the “original eight.”

Original Eight

United Air Lines' "Original Eight" female flight attendants.

Upon completion of the class, Church worked the Oakland to Chicago route.  She served only eighteen months when an automobile accident grounded her. After her recovery she returned to nursing, and her stint as a stewardess was over.  However, her idea transformed the airline industry.  Did you know that the first stewardesses were required to have nursing experience? Qualifications for flight attendants have changed a lot over the years.  At one time airlines required stewardesses to have an appearance  “just below Hollywood standards.” Today, some would argue that the glamor is gone.  What do you think?

Stewardess

1960's flight attendant in a uniform designed by Emilio Pucci. The plastic bubble helmet, to protect hairdos on windy tarmacs, was an integral part of the Pucci-designed uniforms.

Try out this fun online checklist and see if you could have qualified to be a flight attendant in the early 1950s.

To explore more about the history of commercial aviation, check out our online version of the exhibition America by Air.

“There is still a newness about air travel, and, though statistics demonstrate its safety, the psychological effect of having a girl on board is enormous.”

-  Comment about the addition of stewardesses from an airline magazine, 1935

Tim Grove is Chief of Education at the National Air and Space Museum’s Mall building.

Model Students

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I teach an exhibition design course as an adjunct professor for the George Washington University’s Museum Studies program.  I tell my students I’ve got the best job in the world: designing exhibitions for the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. They often ask what you need to know to be an exhibit designer and how they can get there, too.

Some of the many paths to this profession include education and training in graphic design, architecture, interior design, fine arts, industrial design, theater set design and interactive media. You don’t have to be an expert in any of these areas (I’m not), but what helps is having a very broad range of interests. For example, here are a few of mine:

  • Art: I majored in Fine Arts (Graphics) and have a master’s in Theater Set Design. Art is my first love.
  • Objects: Objects tell powerful stories and mean different things to different people. I’m a collector.
  • History: The stories, events and people associated with objects truly fascinate me. I can’t get enough!
  • Math: I use basic math to make detailed structural drawings of exhibits and build scale models. Fun!
  • Culture: I love learning about different cultures. When I work on an exhibition design, I keep in mind the diverse ages, nationalities and levels of education of our visitors.
  • Writing: The words in an exhibit interpret the objects and tell the related stories. I enjoy digging into the content, reading up on the subject and thinking of ways to make it accessible to a general audience.
  • Science: I discovered how much I like science when I worked on an exhibition on the physics of flight. That’s another great thing about working in a museum: you learn so much with every new project!
Jenna Kush

Jenna Kush posing in front of her banner

Each year, my GWU students select a topic related to the content of an exhibition currently under development. They conduct research, write label scripts, select photographs and design 3- by 5-foot  banners to be displayed temporarily in the Museum. They work with museum curators, designers, educators, archivists and a script editor throughout the semester to design and refine their banners. Most have no prior knowledge of the assigned topic, so the project is a true reflection, in miniature, of the exhibit design process.

This year’s student exhibit topic is satellite navigation technology. The 20 graduate students researched the history of satellite navigation, the cultural implications of social uses of GPS technology and the science of satellite operations and launch methods. They wrote exhibit labels in language that would be universally accessible, selected photographs of important objects to tell their stories, used basic math to scan and scale the photographs for correct resolution and used art skills to create an attractive layout design for their final banners. The results speak for themselves. The student banners are worthy of display in the world’s most visited museum and you can see them in the National Air and Space Museum’s “West End” gallery, right next to the flight simulator room.

Corina Miclea

Corina Miclea posing in front of her banner

The George Washington University student banners will be on display through May 2010 and possibly longer. Come check them out!

Barbara Brennan is Chair of Exhibits Design at the National Air and Space Museum.

A “New Mars” Comes to the National Air and Space Museum

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The Exploring the Planets Gallery in the National Air and Space Museum’s National Mall Building recently underwent a major update to the section devoted to scientific exploration of Mars. This new exhibit features the results of the Mars Exploration Rovers, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Express, and other recent spacecraft that have revolutionized our ideas about the surface, atmosphere, ice deposits, and ancient water on the Red Planet.

Mars Portion of the Exploring the Planets Gallery

New Mars Section of the Exploring the Planets Gallery at the National Air and Space Museum

Visitors will find fantastically detailed images of the surface taken from orbit by the HiRISE camera, a full-scale model of a Mars Exploration Rover, instruments used by the Viking spacecraft to make the first searches for life, views inside the polar caps provided by radar sensors, a watch that runs on “Martian time,” and a chunk of rock that landed in Antarctica after being blasted from the surface of Mars by an impact. The new exhibit puts all this information together to reveal Mars as a complex and still-puzzling world that holds valuable clues to the development of our own planet and those around other stars.

We welcome comments on the new exhibit. Please note that installation of a few items, such as the Mars rover model, have been delayed due to the weather-related problems at the Museum’s storage facility.

Bruce Campbell is a geologist in the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the National Air and Space Museum

A Lindbergh Treasure Trove

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National Air and Space Museum staff are hard at work renovating the Pioneers of Flight gallery, scheduled to open later this year.  It will be filled with the fascinating stories of the colorful personalities of early aviation, including Jimmy Doolittle, Bessie Coleman, Amelia Earhart, and Charles and Anne Lindbergh, plus Robert Goddard and other rocket pioneers.  One of the featured artifacts is the newly cleaned Lockheed Sirius Tingmissartoq, the dual cockpit plane that carried Charles and Anne Lindbergh on their exploratory trips across several continents in 1931 and 1933.  The trips made headlines and were the basis for two popular books written by Anne, North to the Orient and Listen, the Wind!

Cognizant of their place in history, the Lindberghs carefully saved the majority of items they packed for the trips. Now after several decades in storage, many will be on display for the first time.  Museum visitors will be amazed at the collection and will recognize Lindbergh’s impressive planning insight.  Because most people pack for travel at some point, visitors of all backgrounds will connect to the challenges of what to take on such lengthy trips.  From malted milk tablets (the granola bars of the day), to an almost 11 ft. long wooden sled, snowshoes and ice crampons (in case of emergency landing on Greenland’s ice cap) to a rubber boat with mast and sail (in case of emergency landing at sea), the plane was carefully packed with items to anticipate every possible emergency scenario.  More amusing objects include insect repellent and cans of food rations like beef tongue.

Tingmissartoq

The Lockheed Model 8 Sirius "Tingmissartoq" on display in the Pioneers of Flight gallery at the National Mall building.

Each time I work on an exhibition, I become intrigued with several specific artifacts.  With this gallery, one is the armbrust cup.  This strange object worn over the face, converts condensation from breath into drinking water – for use in emergency landings at sea.  Since weight restrictions were an ever-present challenge, the Lindberghs could take only a limited supply of water. Lindbergh had read about this new invention before his solo flight across the Atlantic and took one along.  He also took them along on the trips in the Sirius.  There is no record that he or Anne used them, thanks to smooth flights, but perhaps they helped provide peace of mind.  Obviously he considered them worth their added weight.

One question we had was the correct name of the artifact.  We encountered several spellings and were not sure which was correct.  In Anne’s books, it is listed as an “armburst” cup.  Finally, our curator did some excellent sleuthing and found the original patent, given to Charles W. Armbrust.  Who out there has heard of an Armbrust cup? Have you read Anne Lindbergh’s books listed above?  What did you think?  Let us know.

Armbrust Cup

The Armbrust Cup, worn over the face, converts condensation from breath into drinking water – for use in emergency landings at sea. Charles and Anne Lindbergh carried them on their exploratory trips across several continents in 1931 and 1933.

Tim Grove is Acting Chief of Education at the National Air and Space Museum, National Mall Building.

Saving Jenny

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The Curtiss JN-4D Jenny on display in the America by Air exhibition. The aircraft was on display at the Mall Museum from November 17, 2007, until it was removed last week. Photo by Eric Long, Smithsonian, National Air and Space Museum.

The Curtiss JN-4D Jenny is arguably one of the most famous aircraft designs in aviation history, at least U.S. aviation history.  Like the DC-3, the Piper Cub, the P-51 Mustang, the Boeing 707, and the F-4 Phantom, to name just a few, the Jenny remains a classic and an all-time favorite of anyone with an interest in airplanes.  Associated with one of the great figures of early aviation, Glenn H. Curtiss, and playing key roles as a trainer, an airmail plane, and a barnstorming aircraft in the late ‘teens and 1920s, the Jenny is a signature aircraft of the period when the airplane was evolving from a new invention to a viable technology that was beginning to have great influence in broad ways.  From the perspective of historical significance to the “nuts and bolts,” ya gotta just love the Jenny.

One of my first experiences that hooked me on early aviation was seeing an original Jenny fly back in 1972 at the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome.  As the low-powered, frail biplane winged its way gently and slowly around the field, I imagined what it must have been like to learn to fly when wings were new.  Many years later, I had the good fortune to become the curator of the early aircraft collections at the National Air and Space Museum.  Among those aircraft is one of the best remaining examples of a Curtiss Jenny.  The Smithsonian acquired its Jenny in 1918, only days after the Armistice ending World War I.  The airplane was re-covered in the 1920s, and remains completely original from that time.  The Museum’s Jenny is one of the true jewels of the collection.  It has a particular place of pride in my curatorial responsibilities, and the whole museum staff has a great soft spot in our hearts for our Jenny.  When the opportunity to put it on display in the Mall museum presented itself with the building of the new commercial aviation exhibition, America by Air, a few years ago, I was delighted to make it available to the curator of the new gallery.  When the exhibition opened in 2007, it was a great success and the Jenny looked fabulous on its perch, drawing visitors toward America by Air.  A museum favorite finally was center stage for all to enjoy.

Damage to Curtiss JN-4D Jenny tail fabric. Photo by Dane Penland, Smithsonian, National Air and Space Museum.

Sadly, last week, our beautiful Curtiss Jenny had to be removed from America by Air.  Being completely original with fabric more than 80 years old, the Jenny is one of the most fragile aircraft in the Museum’s collection.  Even a gentle bump can puncture or split the fabric covering.  Mounted on stands displaying it out of arm’s reach from the floor of the gallery, we thought our treasured Jenny would be safe and sound.  What we didn’t anticipate was the “attack” from the air, from the second floor balcony above.  The vast majority of our visitors could not be more well behaved, and treat our collections and displays with the reverence they deserve.  But with several million visitors a year passing through our exhibits, you can’t avoid a few bad sorts with destructive tendencies.  It seems this tiny percentage of disrespectful souls had taken to using the Jenny for target practice with everything from coins to hard candy.  As a result, the airplane now has more than a dozen holes in it from objects dropped or thrown from above.  The situation had gotten bad enough that the aircraft had to be removed from display.  We were facing a “death by a thousand cuts” situation.  It pains me to have to take such an historic aircraft off display, and deny our visitors to America by Air the chance to see this beautiful example of this true classic.  But as the old saying goes, sometimes a few ruin it for the majority.  To preserve the Jenny, it had to be taken out of harm’s way.  It will be relocated to the Udvar-Hazy Center and placed in a more secure setting.  So visitors will still be able to see it.  Just no longer in the rich context and attractive setting of the America by Air gallery.

Curtiss JN-4D Jenny at Udvar-Hazy Center awaiting reassembly for display. Photo by Dane Penland, Smithsonian, National Air and Space Museum.

Peter L. Jakab is the National Air and Space Museum’s Associate Director for Collections and Curatorial Affairs, and Curator of the Early Flight and World War I Aircraft collections.