Another First for The Museum – Virtual Conferences

Posted on November 3, 2009 by Tim Grove

Astronaut John W. Young, commander of the Apollo 16 lunar landing mission, jumps up from the lunar surface as he salutes the U.S. Flag during the first Apollo 16 extravehicular activity (EVA). NASA Image #GPN-2000-001131

The National Air and Space Museum is holding its first ever virtual conference for educators on Tuesday, November 10 from 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. EST. Since we’re in the middle of the 40^th anniversary commemorations of the Apollo missions, we decided to focus on this important period in American history. Staff from our Division of Space History will discuss some fascinating topics such as the real story behind President Kennedy’s famous speech challenging Congress to send Americans to the Moon; the role of computers—a new technology in the 1960s; the myth of presidential leadership during this time period; the intersections of Ralph Abernathy, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Moon landing; the rise of six iconic Apollo images and how they have been used over time; and the denials of the Moon landings by a small segment of the population and their evolution since the 1960s. They will also explain the complexity behind the Saturn Rocket, the Command, Service, and Lunar Modules and the technique of Lunar-Orbital Rendezvous. Museum educators will provide tips for helping students analyze primary source materials. The program will support the NASA History Advanced Placement and Human Geography Advanced Placement projects and is generously funded by NASA.

As an added bonus, Apollo astronaut John Young graciously agreed to record a special invitation to participate in the conference and answered some of our questions about his experiences in space.

New to virtual conferencing? A virtual or online conference is similar to other professional conferences only you access it online. Registration is free and open to everyone. And since we know people are busy and the conference schedule will not be convenient for everyone interested, all the conference sessions are recorded and archived so you can play them at any time.

Whether you’re an educator or not, we invite you to join us for this free event. And, help us spread the word!

Visit the Smithsonian Virtual Conference web site for more information and to register.

Tim Grove is an education specialist in the National Air and Space Museum’s Education Division.

Fly Now! Making the National Air and Space Museum's Poster Collection Accessible, Online

Posted on October 17, 2009 by The National Air and Space Museum

As mentioned in Dom Pisano’s recent post “From Collecting to Curating,” six interns, including myself, and two volunteers (with our supervisor, enough for a baseball team!) photographed, scanned and catalogued much of the museum’s collection of over 1,300 posters at the Paul E. Garber Facility‘s collections processing unit this summer. It sounds like a lot of posters, but you may not have seen any of them, unless you have a great memory of advertisements you glimpsed in airports over the years while running to catch your plane. Selections from the posters have been published, but the collection is now receiving the “full treatment” by museum staff, interns, and volunteers.

Intern Mark Leadenham prepares to examine posters with a microscope to determine what printing method was used. Photo by Amelia Kile.

Intern Katy Osterwald measures and cuts archival folders to appropriate sizes for housing the posters. Photo by Carl Bobrow.

This marks the first time the poster collection, which includes graphic art published from as early as 1827 up to the twenty-first century, has been accessible to the public as an archive, since the majority of it has remained in storage in Suitland, Maryland. The collection provides a wealth of information related to balloons, early flight, military and commercial aviation, and space flight, documenting aerospace history and technology while providing a window into popular culture. As a student of art history, I found the collection visually engaging and historically significant. As a young museum professional, I gained experience physically working with the objects, recording and organizing information, photographing, identifying methods used to print the posters, and even had a lot of fun!

The “Artbox,” where the unframed art is stored, before the new storage cabinets are installed. Photo by Katy Osterwald.

Contractors, volunteers and interns install all the shiny new cabinets in 3 hours. Thanks everyone! Photo by Ben Sullivan.

Now that the collection is online, scholars will be able to contribute to knowledge, study and discussion of this valuable resource. Working hands-on within a collection that was not accessible to many people, the group working on the project developed the feeling that this was “our” collection in a sense, and it is a thrill to now be able to share it. It is a diverse collection, wide-ranging in terms of subject, country of origin and time period, and thus it will make an excellent educational tool. Photographing and documenting the posters was part of a larger, ongoing effort to provide images and relevant information about the National Air and Space Museum’s art collection to the public, all while preparing the collections to move to the new Phase Two Collection Storage Facility at the Steve F. Udvar-Hazy Center. So, take a look at the collection and tell us what you think!

Amelia Brakeman Kile is an intern in the Collections Processing Unit at the National Air and Space Museum’s Paul E. Garber Preservation, Restoration and Storage Facility.

From Collecting to Curating

Posted on September 14, 2009 by The National Air and Space Museum

The Museum-going public doesn’t often get the opportunity to observe the work that goes on behind the scenes in a museum. The National Air and Space Museum’s poster collection is a case in point. The items in this collection, which range from notices for early aviation exhibitions to commercial airline advertising, were collected over many years. It is only recently, however, that the posters have been curated; i.e., cared for as a collection.

In the early 1990s, Aeronautics Division curator Joanne Gernstein (now London) began to take an active interest in the poster collection. She consulted with a paper conservator at the Smithsonian Museum Conservation Institute, and carried out the necessary preservation measures. She sought out suitable storage at the Paul E.Garber facility. She also had the collection photographed, with an eye toward eventual display online, but also to provide reference images for the collections database. She curated an exhibition, titled Fly Now! Aviation Posters from the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum, that traveled around the country. She also wrote a companion book, Fly Now! Aviation Posters from the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum, which was published by the National Geographic Society in 2007.

A typical post-World War II airline poster by commercial artist Frank J. Soltesz depicts the large and distinctive triple-tail section of a TWA Super Lockheed Constellation in a striking and colorful pose, circa 1952. In the pre-commercial jet transportation era, the airlines often used aircraft as the central image in their posters and emphasized the safety and reliability of commercial flight. With the introduction of commercial jets in the late 1950s, airline advertising began to change. Aircraft were nowhere to be seen. Instead, images of relatively easy travel to distant and exotic places were the norm.

After Joanne left the National Air and Space Museum in 2008, I took over the collection. Working with Collections Processing Unit (CPU) staff, volunteers and interns, I have attempted to continue Joanne’s pioneering efforts. A longtime Museum volunteer, Ted Hamady, has been working on a subject category reclassification, which should make searching the collection easier. Meanwhile, CPU staff members Carl Bobrow and Samantha Snell have received substantial grants to rationalize the collection, provide better storage and housing for it, and prepare it for its eventual move to new collections care facilities in Phase Two of the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. In the most recent behind-the scenes effort, CPU summer interns Katy Osterwald, Hannah Soh, Amelia Kile, Allison Smith, Jeff Nagel, Mark Leadenham, Rachel Goddard, and Carolyn Metcalf worked on a variety of tasks geared toward bring this collection to the public. The result: 600+ posters are now available for public access on the National Air and Space Museum website. Eventually, we hope to place the entire collection of some 1300+ posters online.

Dom Pisano is a curator in the Aeronautics Division at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

One Way Museum Visitors Help Develop Exhibitions

Posted on July 22, 2009 by Tim Grove

A Museum evaluator talks with visitors as they try a new interactive.

Last week we began evaluating the first of four new computer interactives that will go into the upcoming “Moving Beyond Earth” exhibition. Visitors got to test their space knowledge with a simulation of Space Flight Academy, a quiz format that will allow up to fifteen people to play at a time. Over the next month we will give visitors the opportunity to help us test three more interactives: one is a multi-touch table where six people at a time will gather around and design their own space station modules; one allows the visitor to play the role of flight director in a real-life mission scenario; and one matches a visitor’s interests and skills with several fascinating jobs in the space industry.

Visitors try out a new interactive still in development.

Most Museum visitors don’t realize how much work goes into each and every interactive component in an exhibition. Whether it’s mechanical or computer-based, an interactive must have several qualities:
• It must be engaging – visitors must want to do it
• It must have an educational point – yes, we want our visitors to learn!
• It must complement and support the major themes of the exhibition around it
• It must be easy to understand – if visitors are confused they won’t complete it
• It must withstand the use and abuse of millions of hands per year – we don’t want it to be broken constantly

At the National Air and Space Museum, interactives are often designed completely in-house, but sometimes we hire help from the outside. In either case the process combines a tremendous amount of creative energy with accurate and well-researched content. Once we have a solid idea, we then ask our incredibly talented production staff to come up with a plan to build it. Sometimes they come up with the brilliant ideas.

Other interactives in the works will give visitors an opportunity to accompany the Tuskegee Airmen on a mission over Germany, to help Charles and Anne Lindbergh pack for their flight on the Tingmissartoq, to arrange logistics for the Douglas World Cruisers’ round-the-world-flight, and to design an airplane so it will be competitive in the air races. Another one will allow visitors to decode a Morse code message, explaining the process of sending and receiving messages as Anne Lindbergh did as radio operator for her husband’s exploratory flights on the Tingmissartoq.

Interactives make any exhibition a more active experience, and we couldn’t develop them without the opinions of our visitors who agree to test the prototypes. If you visit the Museum and someone asks you to try an interactive, help us out! We want your input!

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

AirSpace

Category Archives: Web & New Media

Another First for The Museum – Virtual Conferences

Fly Now! Making the National Air and Space Museum's Poster Collection Accessible, Online

From Collecting to Curating

One Way Museum Visitors Help Develop Exhibitions