Museum Exhibit Developer

Our newest exhibit, LEGO® Travel Adventure, opened this weekend--and it's been a busy few months getting it ready for you. While we have been developing Travel Adventure for over a year, the days before an opening get pretty crazy!  

Here are a few things we had to do--

• Cut a wing off a LEGO brick airplane with a PVC saw. Many of these models were originally built by LEGO Canada for an exhibit called Wheels, Wings, and Waves--and some of them were just too big to fit into the cases we wanted to use. Luckily, LEGO brick is a high-quality plastic that doesn't flake or crack when you cut through it!
• Create a pond using blue LEGO plates and official LEGO glue. One of our historical scenes had a gap at the back where we removed some mountains--so we turned that space into a water feature. LEGO's special secret-formula glue is mixed with the polymer that LEGO bricks are made of, so it creates a new layer of plastic as it bonds two brick surfaces together!
• Coat the interactive elements in the exhibit with truck bed liner. Yes, it's true--we use the same stuff pickup owners apply to keep their trucks scratch-free!  It's one of the only substances that can survive direct exposure to kid-play for months on end. Fortunately it comes in a rainbow of colors to match our exhibits.
• Put together the giant LEGO brick I-Spy model.  The big city model in the middle of the exhibit is actually made in 10 different parts: 6 base plates that form the deck of the model, and 4 more "mountaintop" pieces which attach to the base.  First, the wires that light up the lighthouse and the spaceship are connected, then the base plates slide together, then the mountain top pieces go on.  Once the structure is built, then all the details are added--cars, boats, planes, trucks, balloons, and of course lots of minifigures!

When this exhibit leaves The Children's Museum of Indianapolis in July, it will head out on a travel adventure of its own--a 5 year tour of other museums in the US and Canada.  Like its sister exhibit, LEGO Castle Adventure, we hope LEGO Travel Adventure will provide a great opportunity for children and families to build, learn, and play together for years to come!

As you probably already know, our Jolly Days exhibit goes into the same gallery where the Children’s Museum Guild Haunted House is during the month of October.  It takes our hardworking Facilities staff plus our amazing Guild Witches 2 months to build and decorate the Haunted House—and it all has to come out of there in a week!  Starting November 1, it’s a scramble to get the Haunted House pulled down and packed away, and the gallery cleaned and re-painted so that Jolly Days can start going in.  So while that’s going on in the gallery space, our exhibits and production team are working hard to get all the decorations in our welcome center and Sunburst Atrium into place. 

The giant tree in the Welcome Center requires a crane to put it in place and decorate it, so we usually do that on the first closed Monday after Halloween so we don’t have to worry about visitors’ safety.  Then it’s about 4 straight days of work to get all the other decorations out of our storage facility, into the building, and arranged on the deck around the tree.  We also have a new resident in our welcome center—the Transformer, Bumblebee!—and he has to be moved several times to allow us to get equipment around the welcome center and hang all the snowflakes  from our ceiling.  Once we’re done with the Welcome Center, the crew moves to start unpacking the rest of Jolly Days!

The Yule Slide—everyone’s favorite holiday tradition here at the museum—takes a crew of four people a day and a half to install and decorate.  The tree in the Atrium has to be assembled and decorated before our collections department staff can put Jingles and his stuffed animal friends into place; they are real artifacts from our Steiff animal collection, and have to be handled with care! The gallery façade (the house, the lights, and the title graphic) takes another day to put up.  Meanwhile, inside the gallery, our paint crew finishes re-painting and touching up so that the exhibit can be unpacked, installed, cleaned, and tested—4 full semi trailers worth of stuff! 

When the walls are in place, the curator brings in the toys and games from our collection that make Jolly Days special—from old board games to stuffed bunnies, even Santa’s antique desk!  The graphics staff adds trees to the walls and snowflakes to our theater, replacing any of our signs that are damaged or dirty, and our cleaning crew washes and sanitizes all the toys from the play areas. Once the lights are focused and the floors swept, the exhibit is finally ready for you to visit! 

So from start to finish, getting Jolly Days ready to open the day after Thanksgiving takes us about 2700 work hours total!  I’m tired just thinking about it… or it might have something to do with the fact that I’ve still got work to do….

Jolly Days is open now through Jan. 8, 2012. It's a great INDOOR winter activity for kids and families in Indianapolis!

Some kinds of frogs make good house pets!  Some don’t.  The important thing to do before considering bringing ANY pet into your house is to DO YOUR RESEARCH.  Find out what is best for that animal, and figure out if that’s going to be do-able for you and your family.  If not, you may need to find some other more suitable pet. 

There are many different kinds of frogs available as pets.  If you do decide you want to look into owning a frog, here are some general things to keep in mind.

·         LIVE FOOD.  Nearly all frogs eat live food. This means keeping a supply of live crickets, flies, or worms available in your home all the time so your frog won’t starve.  This isn’t always as easy as it sounds.

·         MOIST CONDITIONS. Most frogs that live on land still need high humidity to survive. In the winter, air in your house can be very dry—you will need a secure home for your frogs that holds in moisture and keeps them comfortable.  If your frogs are aquatic (water-living) then you’ll need an aquarium with a filtration system and heater to keep their water clean and warm.

·         CLEAN HANDS. Frogs are very sensitive to chemicals—if you have any kind of soap or perfume on your hands when you handle them or clean their habitat, it can hurt them.  Likewise, many frogs carry bacteria that can be harmful to us!  Wash and rinse your hands very thoroughly before working with your frogs, and wash again with soap and warm water as soon as you’re done.

·         DO YOUR HOMEWORK.  There are many kinds of frogs available in the pet trade.  Make sure you know what you’re getting.  Look up the species care sheet online (just google “ *frog species* care sheet” and you’ll find documents that give you info on food, humidity, temperature, and proper housing for that type of frog.)  See if you can find forums or info boards online where you might read FAQs or ask questions of people who’ve got experience with different types of pet frogs.

Frogs can be beautiful and interesting pets--I have three myself!  But like any kind of animal, owning them means having a complete understanding of what they need to be happy and healthy. So do a little digging for info before deciding what frogs might be right for you!

When people hear I’m an exhibit developer at The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, they often say, “Wow, that sounds like a really fun job!” They’re right, of course—I get to do all kinds of fun things in my job, and one of those things is. . . go to museums!

Wait—don’t I go to a museum every day for work?  Why would I want to go to other museums too?  I’m glad you asked!

We learn a lot from visiting other museums. For example, one of my current projects is called CSI: Flight Adventures. We received a grant from NASA to help us teach children and families about how things fly; so we’re creating a multi-media show for our planetarium, a display of model aircraft, and hands-on activities, just to name a few parts of the project. We’re partnering with the American Model Aeronautics Association, so first our team went to their museum in Muncie to see their displays and talk to them about model airplanes!

Later, our curator and our public programs developer went to NASA Dryden Flight Research Center to meet some real NASA researchers and talk to them about our plans for the project. This also gave us some ideas about what artifacts we might ask to borrow from Dryden and other places.

Then it was my turn; I went to Washington D.C., to the National Air and Space Museum to see their exhibits. While NASM is a very different museum from ours, seeing their Wright Brothers and How Things Fly galleries gave me lots of ideas of how to talk to our families here about the science and history of flight.  I got a tour from a member of their exhibits staff, and we talked about the challenges of making a complicated topic interesting and accessible for a variety of ages.  I brought back tons of pictures—and ideas!—for the project team.

Thanks to our partnership with Nickelodeon on our new Dora and Diego: Let’s Explore! exhibit, we also had the opportunity to feature some cool costumes from their hit show, iCarly, in Incredible Costumes from Film and TV.  When I asked our contact at Nick TV if we could have a little additional information about the costumes for the show, I thought I might get a short quote to use on a label.  But check this out—costume designer Kris Dangl gave us a fantastic look at her thought process in choosing costumes for iCarly!  Many thanks to Kris, and all our friends at Nick who made our iCarly costume display happen.

When designing the costumes for iCarly, I try to use layers, long-sleeves and light weight jackets. This reminds the viewer the show takes place in Seattle, but doesn't bog down the actor with too much heavy fabric. I use a lot of bright colors but I like to mix them with neutrals...denim, blacks and greys as well as tans and olives. I like every outfit to have something special about it. Special may just mean something that I like very much or something that reminds me of my childhood. I draw inspiration from music, art, places, and people that have had an impact on me. But these "special" things need to blend and be harmonious with the whole scene and every actor and set involved. I like it when I'm the only person who know what is special about that outfit.

Carly's black and hot pink costume worn in "iStart a Fan War" is a pretty classic example of the "Carly" silhouette. Skinny jeans tucked into boots, a feminine top, and a light weight jacket. Because this outfit was for a special occasion I punched up the color contrast. The silk of the hot pink blouse contrasted against the studded black jacket is kind of quintessentially Carly. She is soft and feminine as well as cool and rock n roll. Carly is a very practical, hard working girl but she's very sweet and romantic. I try to cut every soft, flowy, romantic element with quite a bit of a practical, denim, tomboy egde. When Carly first steps into the Webicon entrance she is surrounded by colors and graphics, but she is the only person in the whole scene in THESE colors.

Sam's classic Penny Tee and cargo combo worn in the opening scene of i"Space Out" is also a classic example of the "Sam" silhouette. Sam is always holding or revealing things ie: food. Thats why I love using cargo pants on her. They are part of her survival gear. Her top half is layered for the Seattle flavor. I always use a very fitted bottom layer so that the layered tops fit smoothly to the body and don't bulk up the actress. This thermal happens to have umbrellas on it which also reflects the weather in Seattle. The Penny tee's were designed by the show's creater, Dan Schneider. He and the writing staff come up with random sayings and I have the shirts made always with contrasting trim and a penny on the left sleeve. Occasionally the saying on the Penny Tee will have a slight reference to the subject matter of the script but mostly they are just what they are..."RANDOM". Sam almost always wears sneakers...again part of her survival gear. Sam is mostly up to no good or she is lounging, sleeping or eating. Her costumes need to be relaxed and get-up-and-go.


If you're looking for fun family vacation ideas this spring break, the Incredible Costumes from Film and TV  exhibit is at the museum March 12–May 8.

We’re very excited to be featuring a great piece of pop culture from our textile collection in Incredible Costumes—an outfit worn by Penny Marshall on the iconic 1970s TV show, Laverne and Shirley!  As I was researching the show, my coworker Eric Olson mentioned to me that he happens to know the Marshall family from his work in film.  I thought, how great would it be to get a quote from Ms. Marshall herself about Laverne and her trademark “L” monogram? It would add even more to the extraordinary family learning experience! So Eric emailed his friend Kathleen—Garry Marshall’s daughter, and Penny’s niece—and asked if we might be able to get a little information about Laverne’s costumes.  Kathleen responded very graciously, and a week or so later I had a great quote from Penny Marshall herself to feature on my exhibit label.  How cool is that?  Here’s the full uncut story, with many thanks to Eric, and Kathleen and Penny Marshall:

Director and actress Penny Marshall remembers how Laverne first got a cursive “L” on her sweater in the pilot episode of Laverne & Shirley:

When you start a television show the key is to get the audience to remember the names of the characters and their occupations. So an actress ends up saying her name and job many times during the first few episodes of any sitcom. When I first read the pilot script of Laverne & Shirley, it had us saying our names and that we were bottle cappers every other page. So when I went to try on my wardrobe, I remembered the fact that I would have to keep repeating my name and it might get pretty boring. I was looking for a short cut as I sifted through the vintage clothing that the wardrobe department had collected from the 1950s. I came across a sweater with an initial sewn in the upper left corner. It suddenly dawned on me how I could save time. Make the initial an “L” and then everyone would remember that my name is Laverne.  The wardrobe department took my suggestion and quickly changed the letter to an “L” and the rest is history.  Many people ask if I still have some items of clothing in my closet with the Laverne “L” on them and my answer is yes. I’m saving them and if I ever need some quick cash I can always sell them on ebay or craig’s list.


If you're looking for fun family vacation ideas this spring break, the Incredible Costumes from Film and TV  exhibit is at the museum March 12–May 8.