O Say Can You See?

Yes, we really do think about everything...

The new chamber that we’re building to display the Star-Spangled Banner is intended to be a permanent home for the fragile flag. So we’ve put a huge amount of thought and work into designing every inch of the space. This will give you an impression on par with visiting one of our neighboring monuments—we want you to leave feeling like you’ve had a personal experience with a national treasure.

Artist's rendering

Early on in the exhibition planning process, we decided that we wanted the words of Francis Scott Key’s poem to be visible while you look at the flag in its soaring 45-foot chamber. We want you to connect the words that we all sometimes forget, or just don’t really consider, to what was really happening when Key wrote them. Those “bombs bursting in air?” That’s not just an abstract poetic image…those were real British cannonballs exploding on Fort McHenry. The peril was real for the citizens of our young nation—still struggling to fully realize its independence. We thought one of the best ways to make this connection between the song, the history, and the object was to have the first stanza of the song visible.

No problem, right? Just paint the stanza on the back wall. Done.

Well…it’s a little more complicated. When you come to visit the Star-Spangled Banner, one of the things you’ll notice is the vantage area called the “viewing chamber” is pretty dark. Light is one of the major causes of deterioration in textiles. Over its almost 200-year lifespan, light has caused a lot of damage to the Star-Spangled Banner, and controlling the amount of light the flag is exposed to is a huge part of our ongoing preservation effort. The light level in the flag chamber is very low—technically, one foot-candle. And the space around the flag will be even darker, so that the small amount of light illuminating the flag will make it the only thing you see.

So, if we silkscreened the stanza on the back wall the way we might do any other museum label, we’d have to light that area so you could see it. That extra light would be harmful to the flag and would also detract from the flag by drawing your eyes to the pool of light on the back wall. So how do you put something on the back wall that you can actually see?

Our first solution was to develop a wall-mounted light box with back-lit transparent letters, so that the words would glow in the space above the flag. The problem? In order to protect the flag from the risk of damage from fire, the chamber has been designed without anything that might cause a spark. No electricity, no wires, nothing. All of the lights that will illuminate the flag are located in a separate “light attic.” Installing an electrical light fixture within the chamber would be too risky. The architects then developed a way to have the “guts” of the light box live in a connecting room, so that none of the electrical equipment would actually reside inside the chamber. But this solution was expensive and would necessitate a hole in the firewall that surrounds the chamber.

In museum work, the principle of Occam’s razor holds true—sometimes the simplest solution is the best one. We finally decided that a good old projector could do the job. Though we were initially worried that we wouldn’t get the monumental feel we were looking for, it turns out that projectors really have improved since the elementary-school filmstrip days of my youth. And the best part is, if we decide we don’t like it, we can always just turn it off.

So now that’s settled, and we’ve moved on to the next round of details: to capitalize the all letters or not, what font, where …?

Megan Smith is an Education Specialist on the Star-Spangled Banner gallery team.

Don't try this at home

When I try to build things, it usually involves a lot of trial and error. If you are a fellow amateur do-it-yourselfer, you probably know what I’m talking about. Whether it’s lack of skills, or planning, or patience, there is always some piece I put on backwards, or something that doesn’t quite fit, requiring me to backtrack and do over (usually accompanied by yet another trip to the local home improvement store).

Grand staircase under construction

That is why I’m in awe of the skills it takes to accomplish a construction project on the scale of our current renovation. From the outside, it’s nearly impossible to tell what has been going on, aside from those occasions when they have used cranes to lift large, heavy pieces into the building. But inside, amazing things have been happening. They have cut a huge hole through three floors up to the roof for the new skylight. Another enormous hole was cut between the first and second floors for a new grand staircase. Top-to-bottom shafts have been carved out for new elevators and other equipment.

How do you spend months cutting and hacking and chopping and carting away debris, and in the end all the holes line up perfectly, and all the new surfaces are straight and smooth? I know people do this every day for a living, but still I’m impressed. And maybe just a bit envious of their know-how.

My only consolation is that many people think what I do (creating Web sites and other digital products) is “magic.” Like any job, it’s mostly about knowing how to use the tools at my disposal, together with a little creativity and a lot of persistence. But still, when I make a mistake, usually I can fix it by hitting the delete key on my computer. No such easy fix when you have just cut a hole through a building! So my hat is off to our construction team, and maybe when they’re done they can come over and help me with a few projects around the house.

Matthew MacArthur is the museum’s Director of New Media. He sits at a computer all day and is rarely allowed to play with power tools.

      

Wag more, bark less

I saw that slogan on a bumper sticker this morning on my way to work and I thought it was a pretty great description of the changes we’re making to our public programs for reopening. We’re calling our new programmatic focus “Conversational Interpretation,” which means: “we want to talk less at you and give you more opportunities to talk back.” We want to wag more, bark less.

This isn’t an entirely new concept—we’ve always had a tremendous group of docents who are terrific at having great conversations about history with our visitors. But now, you’re really going to see this idea reflected in all of our programs. Instead of focusing on panel discussions and lectures that happen periodically, we’re planning more interactive programming out on the floor every day. When you visit the museum, we want you to have multiple opportunities to touch something, listen to live music, participate in a theater program, or just talk to one of us.

What’s been your most memorable visit to a museum? What did you enjoy most about it?

Megan Smith is an Education Specialist. She wishes her beagle Baxter would also wag more and bark less, but that’s a story for an entirely different blog.

It’s taking shape before our eyes - but what is it?

The "Bird's Nest" National Stadium in Beijing?  A new death-defying roller coaster? 

Frame being prepared by the fabricator, Frontier Technologies (Gardena, CA). TriPyramid (Westford, MA) has overall responsibility for the abstract flag’s fabrication.

When I first saw these photos it took me a minute to realize what in the world I was looking at.  I knew they had to have something to do with the bustling construction taking place outside my office door, but my first guess—the latest in high-tech indoor plumbing?—wasn't correct either. 

No, the elegantly undulating steel "ribbons" are actually part of the structural support system for an innovative and dramatic abstract flag installation that will mark the entrance to the new Star-Spangled Banner gallery.  The frame is currently being prepared for shipment and will arrive at the museum before the end of the month.  Later, 960 “pixels” of mirrored polycarbonate will be attached to the backs of the vertical truss members.   

For months I've been eyeballing architectural renderings of how the completed abstract flag will look.  I've also pictured it in my mind's eye, soaring in the central atrium and greeting millions of visitors each year.  But none of those images beats these photos of the real thing taking shape before our eyes—especially once we understand what it is we're actually looking at!

Dana Allen-Greil is the museum's new media project manager and this blog's managing editor.  Working on technology projects in front of a computer all day means she likes shiny new things—but she probably also needs a new eyeglass prescription.

Olympic feats

Jim Thorpe. Gertrude Ederle. Sonja Henie. Bobby Morrow. Muhammad Ali. Michael Jordan. Brian Boitano. Bonnie Blair. Kristi Yamaguchi. Dominique Dawes. Mia Hamm.

You probably already know what these names have in common: they were all famous Olympic athletes. They all broke physical and cultural barriers of one kind or another. What you may not know is that they are also all represented in the collections of the National Museum of American History, along with other important sports figures from the past. Many of them are featured on the site Sports: Breaking Records, Breaking Barriers.

Gertrude Ederle designed these goggles for her 1926
swim across the English Channel.

Over the past few weeks, the country has been transfixed by the achievements of another Olympic great, swimmer Michael Phelps, who set the record for most career gold medals (14) and most gold medals won at a single Olympics (8). Four of his races in Beijing set individual world records, and he and his teammates broke three more relay records.

If you have been following Phelps, you know that his goggles have also made headlines. But check out the goggles pictured here, worn by Ederle in her historic swim across the English Channel. Phelps can at least be thankful he didn’t have to contend with these suckers!

Goggles are one of the few pieces of gear used by swimmers, besides suit and cap. It makes me wonder, what artifact would best tell Phelps’s story to future generations?

Matthew MacArthur is the museum’s Director of New Media.