Office of Exhibits Central

Developing a Greek Currency Exhibit

Classically Greek: Coins and Bank Notes from Antiquity to Today, the newest exhibit in the Smithsonian Castle, gives insight into the development of the history of Greece through the images on its currency.

The objects used in this exhibit come from the National Bank of Greece and the Welfare Foundation for Social and Cultural Affairs (KIKPE), also in Greece.  Before the artifacts arrived from Greece, OEC designer Alicia Jager used images of the objects to design a layout and panels for the display. She used gold and silver hues to maintain a classic tone throughout the fourteen panels used in the exhibit.

OEC writer/editor Rosemary Regan rewrote the script for the show sent from Athens from a larger exhibit, which presented several challenges. The original exhibit was more specific about modern Greek history, so Regan reworked the script to present a broader view of Greek history to be more accessible to a non-Greek audience. Regan also had to add some information about figures from Ancient Greece and Greek mythology that the average visitor in America might not know about, but which did not need explanation in Greece.

The team at OEC worked with the numismatic collection staff at the National Museum of American History and the organizations in Greece to confirm details about the exhibition.  Ellen Dorn, OEC director of Special Exhibitions, has collaborated with teams from other countries in the past. Dorn described that two of the biggest issues with working internationally are time differences and shipping issues, but then explained:

All in all though, there’s not a huge difference in dealing with museums here or outside of the US…[e]ven though there are some differences when dealing with lenders in other countries, the safety of the objects always take priority, no matter if they're coming from a lender within or from outside of the US.

This exhibit can be seen in the Schermer Hall of the Castle and will be on display until June 10, 2008.

top photo: Jager puts the finishing touches on a label.

bottom photo: Graphics panels and display cases containing Greek coins and bank notes

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SI Community Art

Smithsonian Institution employees are used to working behind-the-scenes, but they have a chance to show off their own artwork to the public at Artists at Work: The Smithsonian Community Art Show 2008. The exhibit opened on March 27 and will be on display through May 18 at the S. Dillon Ripley Center Concourse.

Over 170 Smithsonian staff, volunteers, interns, and fellows submitted over 170 entries to a jury who picked 71 final pieces for exhibition. The entries include art of various media from fabric to clay to photography. Once the pieces were selected, OEC designer Bart McGarry came up with a layout for the gallery using the preliminary measurements supplied by the artists. OEC fabrication specialists Robert Perantoni and Richard Gould did a final measurement of the pieces and installed them in the Ripley Center.

This staff art show is sponsored by the Smithsonian Community Committee (SCC). Throughout the year, OEC collaborates with the SCC on various activities, including a photography contest and a summer picnic.

top photo: Gould, McGarry, and OEC project manager Betsy Robinson decide on the placement of a photograph.
left photo: Perantoni makes sure a piece of art is level.

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Interview with Harry Adams, OEC Specialist in Artifact and Exhibit Packing

Q: What do you do here at OEC?
A: I make sure that the various parts of exhibits, including artifacts, are packed safely and securely. I design, layout, and build the crates that will be used to pack exhibits for travel.

Q: Have you had a favorite project so far?
A: I once had to figure out how best to pack an 8-10 inch sandpiper. The box I made folded up around the bird like a lily and supported the body from underneath. Then I made a cap that went on top to secure everything.

When I had just started working at OEC, I impressed my supervisor by finding an innovative way to pack a set of powder-filled glass vials that were placed upside-down into a board. George Washington Carver made this display in order to hold some of the compounds he had synthesized. Instead of just cavity packing it (embedding it in foam), I made a box with a double box lid similar to a tackle box or doctor’s satchel. The bottom plate holding the vials sat embedded in foam in the bottom of the box and the two parts of the lid closed around the vials, giving them support.

Q: Your most challenging project?
A: The First Ladies exhibit was challenging because it required packing many different types of artifacts. We built crates with foam-filled drawers in order to handle the variety of objects. The crates were so nice they almost could have been furniture!

Q: What is your favorite part of your job?
A: Besides the variety of projects that I get to work on, I enjoy finding solutions to the challenges of artifact packing. It is always challenging because the objects vary so much, from large to very delicate.

Q: How did you get started in this business?
A: I graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in Philosophy, but I took several courses in woodworking for fun while I was in college and high school. After college, I was apprenticed at a cabinet shop and then I got a job teaching woodworking for a couple of years. When I came to OEC in 1990, I was assigned the specialty of packing where I joined a team with two other packers. Here, I received my initial training. Now, I am the only packer and I do roughly the same amount of work as all three of us did before.

I’ve taken several graduate courses at George Washington University in registrarial work (caring for museums), and several courses given by the Smithsonian in packing and artifact care. I also look at what other packers do to see what works and what doesn’t.

Crating Elements

The exhibitions that OEC designs and produces need to arrive at their destinations safely. This is especially crucial with traveling exhibits, like the ones we make for Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Services (SITES), because these objects are handled more frequently than those in permanent exhibits.

SITES registrars Ruth Trevarrow, Cheryl Washer, and Juana Dahlan were at OEC recently packing up Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes and The Dancer Within. One of their main goals is to ensure that objects travel safely and are easy to remove from the packing. This includes thinking about whether the person unpacking the objects may hurt their back by bending over too far to remove a heavy object and also making the process to remove an object simple and easy-to-understand.

Harry Adams, OEC specialist in artifact and exhibit packing, uses the crate specifications document sent to him by SITES to design and build crates for the objects and accompanying labels or cases. For Beyond, Adams made what Trevarrow calls “the Cadillac of crates.”

To protect the large, heavy framed photographs, Adams made crates with felt-lined slots the photographs could easily slide into. The photographs are so large they need to be stored vertically so the crates will fit through the doors of all the exhibition venues. The photographs used for Dancer are smaller and due to the manner in which they are mounted, they need to travel lying flat. They are placed in foam trays that are then stacked on top of each other in the crate.

Collaboration and good communication between the registrars, designers, and the crate makers is necessary to produce crates that will be easy to use and best protect the objects inside.

top photo: Trevarrow slides a Beyond photograph out of the crate.
middle photo: Packed Beyond crates
bottom photo: Adams arranges foam trays made by Tim Smith.

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