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By Janna Bennett, Curator of the American Collection
While the rest of the museum was focused on Skeletown and Polar Bears to Penguins, I have been thinking about the next exhibit, Jolly Days. There are scarves to unpack as well as sleds and stuffed animals to gather to get ready for the November opening of Jolly Days: A Winter Wonderland.
Last year you might have seen our tree next to the Water Clock with lots of oversized presents. With these presents were five Steiff stuffed animals from the museum’s collection: Polar Bear, Elephant, Walrus, Giraffe, and Kangaroo. The back story is that our polar bear Jingles, the mascot of Jolly Days, needed some friends. So the exhibit team voted based on selected animals that I chose from the collection.
Then our graphic designers Susan Hoopman and Eric Danner drew characters of these five stuffed 
animals. We liked them so much we put them everywhere—on the “wow” wall in the welcome center, on the façade into the exhibit, and around the exhibit. We hoped that they would become the ambassadors for the exhibit. So that’s just one example of how objects from our collection can become larger than life!
