Office of Exhibits Central

Working Together on Dig It!

OEC's Model Shop is working on two components for the National Museum of Natural History's new exhibition, Dig It!: The Secrets of Soil -- a topographic model showing the layers of soil under the surface and how they affect the land on which we live, and a cast of a tree trunk for the entrance portal of the exhibition.

As an editor, my work is pretty solitary and quiet. I am always amazed and a bit envious when I go back into the shops and see how the people in Fabrication and Model Shop have to work so closely together and how much daily collaboration and communication is needed to just get the job done -- and done well.

The time-lapse video below is an extreme example as almost everyone in the shop lent a hand in putting together the fiberglass and rubber mold for the tree trunk cast.

Dig It!: The Secrets of Soil opens July 19.

More photos of the production of the topographical map and tree cast.

Busy Summer at OEC

Everyone is really busy here at the Office of Exhibits Central. This September, all three shops plus our offices are moving for the first time in 30 years! During June and July, we are finishing several projects, so that we can pack tools and offices, archive old files, and move materials and heavy equipment in August and September.

Above, Rob Wilcox, our project manager overseeing all aspects of the move, tours the new facility with Sarah Drumming, civil engineer with Smithsonian's Office of Engineering Design and Construction. Before we can move in, much work needs to be done, including the installation of new ventilation and electrical systems.

Back at OEC, the design, editing, and graphics shops are working on the Summer School exhibit, which opens June 20 at the Archives of American Art. Below, designer Alicia Jager checks the colors on a map to be sent to our graphics shop for final printing. And graphics specialist Kathleen Varnell laminates a digital print with a protective film.

In Fabrication, we're building components and planning the installation for Going to Sea, a temporary exhibit to open with the National Museum of Natural History's Ocean Hall in September.

Modelshop is constructing a diorama for the new exhibit Dig It! The Secrets of Soil", which opens July 19 at the National Museum of Natural History. Below, exhibit specialist Natalie Gallelli adds a mixture of epoxy and maché to give the sides and edges naturalistic texture.

Journeying with Journey Stories

The process of creating Journey Stories has been a journey in itself. The traveling exhibit, in development since October 2006, will hit the road in 2009 in Illinois, Kansas, Mississippi, North Dakota, and Oklahoma. OEC is producing this exhibition for Museum on Main Street (MoMS), a collaboration between the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) and the Federation of State Humanities Councils.

Journey Stories focuses on the mobile elements of American society. Regardless of their cultural backgrounds, all Americans have a story to tell of their own personal journeys or of their ancestors. The exhibition tells the story of migrations (both voluntary and forced) into and throughout the United States, the tenacity and creativity of transportation workers, and of development of the methods of transportation that our desire to explore demanded. The exhibit highlights people’s stories about picking up and moving somewhere else and of fun and frolic on the open road. Methods of transportation may have changed from the wagon to the train to the car, but Americans keep on moving.

OEC editor Angela Roberts and OEC designer Tina Lynch have been involved with the exhibit from the very beginning of the project. William Withuhn, curator of Transportation History at the National Museum of American History (NMAH) and curator for this exhibit, is writing the script, while the team from OEC and MoMS works to customize this content-rich exhibit for the needs of cultural organizations in rural communities. Our “journey stories” are told through audio and text quotes, compelling historic photographs and artwork, and reproduction objects and maps.  MoMS staff have been researching and gathering the components, as well as obtaining rights and permissions to use photographs from collections around the country.

Designer Lynch has converted several of the black and white photographs into colored duotones. This change from the original image gives visitors a new way to look at something familiar. Several of the photos used in the design Lynch obtained using connections through friends of friends, which was a pleasant surprise in the design process. OEC graphics specialist Theresa Keefe works with Lynch to prepare the final high resolution images for printing.  Using Photoshop, she cleans up the images and makes corrections in the final color output.

OEC mountmaker Howard Clemenko is hard at work bracketing objects , and our crating specialist, Harry Adams, has made the necessary calculations to safely ship the entire show within strict shipping parameters.  Other modelmakers are experimenting with methods for encapsulating or replicating different materials, such as barbed wire and tobacco twists.

OEC has a long history with MoMS.  We’ve designed and produced all of their exhibits since 1994, starting with Produce for Victory and its award-winning design. 

The Art of African Exploration

Starting in December 2008 visitors to the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) get the chance to view rare illustrated books highlighting European explorations of Africa in the 1800s. The Smithsonian Institution Libraries (SIL), through a donation from the Folger Foundation, is building and installing two exhibition cases in NMNH’s lobby that will showcase the Libraries’ vast collections of books.

Damage from light is an important consideration when deciding how to exhibit rare books. Light damage is both permanent and cumulative, so the exhibition will display volumes on a rotating basis. The exhibit will also include works on paper and manuscripts that relate to African exploration. Members of the OEC Design/Editing unit met with the Libraries in March to view the books in person and start planning the exhibit.

Lynn Kawaratani, Bart McGarry, and Alicia Jager are the OEC designers working on this exhibition. Jager is designing the graphics while Kawaratani and McGarry design the three-dimensional layout with small-scale paper models of the cases and books. Kawaratani stressed the advantages of using the paper models to design this exhibit instead of a computer, such as the ability to verify the book rotations and easily present the vision to the client.

photo: McGarry and Kawaratani arrange books in the scale model.

Orchid Conceptualization

Elegant Evolution. Orchids through Time. New Finds: Ancient Orchids. Darwin’s Orchids.

These are all proposed titles for Horticulture Services Division’s orchid exhibition, opening in January 2009 in the special exhibits gallery at the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH). NMNH’s Department of Botany is working with Horticulture to craft an exhibit that displays both the beauty of the orchids with information about the biology behind them.

The central part of the exhibit will feature fossilized pollinia from a 10 – 15 million year old orchid preserved on the back of an extinct species of stingless bee encased in amber. The fossil was found in the Dominican Republic in 2000 and is the first orchid fossil ever to be discovered, which is integral to scientists who study orchid evolution. Charles Darwin’s work on orchid reproduction and evolution will be featured in this exhibition, in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the publication of his The Origin of Species and his 150th birthday.

This exhibit is moving from the conceptualization phase to the design and scripting phase of production. In March, both the initial design concept and draft script will be ready for review.

A challenge of this exhibit is that OEC is moving into new facilities this summer, when our shops would normally be busy building the exhibitions components. Horticulture will then be moving their greenhouses to a new site after the exhibit closes in April 2009.

photo by Ariel Ressler

“Green” Desks for the Castle Officers

OEC employees have been hard at work designing and building new officer desks for the entrances to the Smithsonian Castle. OEC exhibit designers Bart McGarry and Lynn Kawaratani interviewed the security officers, who are currently stationed at tables, to figure out how the new desks could best meet their ergonomic and functional needs. McGarry and Kawaratani designed two desks with enough space to store wheelchairs, two with lockboxes to provide a space for confiscated items, and two planters to open up the space and provide a place for Horticulture Services Division to display some of their plants while limiting access to the Great Hall to only the security entrances.

In the Fabrication department at OEC, Stoy Popovich is building the desks and planters out of walnut. Part of the wood used is recycled from an old Smithsonian Institution project and the rest is walnut veneer over recycled medium-density fiberboard (MDF). These materials were used as a part of the effort to make this a green project by conserving resources and using environmentally safe products.

After Popovich cuts the wood, makes the decorative moldings, and sands it to a smooth finish, Walter Skinner, OEC’s finisher, is in charge of staining and finishing the wood. He is using Fuhr Industrial water-based products that emit no odors and no gasses; the strongest products possible that are still environmentally safe. The finish consists of a conditioner, the stain, a sanding sealer, and two to three layers of a clear top coat. Each process requires a day of drying time.

In two to three weeks, Popovich will install marble tops on the desks and they will be ready for use by the guards at the Castle.

top photo: Popovich working on the molding for one of the desks.
bottom photo: Skinner finishing the staining process on parts of a desk.

More photos

Framing the Dance

The spirit of dance is a difficult thing to capture on film, but photographer Rose Eichenbaum has undertaken that challenge in The Dancer Within, a new traveling exhibit produced by Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES).

The exhibition’s first stop will be at the Ypsilanti District Library in Ypsilanti, Michigan beginning April 2008. The show will finish traveling around the U.S. in April 2010.

OEC Graphic Specialist Nancy Post is matting and framing forty-eight of Eichenbaum’s photos. To create a mat for a photograph, she first cuts the outside of the 8-ply mats to fit the 24 by 28-inch metal frames. Then, because the size of the individual photograph varies, an inside “window” is cut in the matting to the dimensions of the photograph.

Each photograph needs two mats to display a photograph: the first with the window to display the photo and the second to hold the photo in place with adhesive. The two sheets are then attached with linen tape at the top to make a hinge to keep them from moving around in the frame. Post puts acrylic on the front to protect the photograph and corrugated plastic on the back to protect it before placing the matted photograph into the frame and tightening the attached wooden brace to hold it in place.

Once the photographs have all been matted and framed, they will be packed into crates to prepare for travel.

photo: Post secures a photograph in its frame.

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Sunfish Joins the Ranks

The third sea creature to be featured in our series on the National Museum of Natural History’s Ocean Hall’s big models, the Mola mola (ocean sunfish) has been completed and is ready to be put on show. This life-size model measures an impressive height of six feet from fin to fin.

Instead of sculpting a giant sunfish for molding and casting, OEC modelmaker Natalie Gallelli sculpted a smaller version from clay, called a maquette. The maquette was then sent to Direct Dimensions, a company based in Maryland, who digitally scanned the sunfish and sent the information to another company to be machined out. A life-size reproduction made of dense, urethane foam came back to OEC. Gallelli then sculpted a thin layer of clay over the foam model so that it could be used to make a mold.

One side at a time, Gallelli made a plaster mold (called a “waste mold” because it is broken off in chunks and not used again) from this foam and clay model. The final model was then cast in fiberglass and polyester resin which Gallelli painted using a combination of techniques.

top photo: Gallelli and her ocean sunfish
middle photo: Gallelli sculpts the ocean sunfish.
bottom photo: Two ocean sunfish: foam and clay (red) and the fiberglass cast (grey)

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Oarfish Coming to Life

For the last six months, OEC modelmaker Carolyn Thome has been hard at work creating the model of a ten-foot-long Regalecus glesne (oarfish), an ocean-dwelling creature at times mistakenly thought to be a sea monster by the rare few who see one in nature. This is one of the four life-size models that will be displayed in the National Museum of Natural History’s Ocean Hall, opening in September.

Unlike the mold for the Giant Japanese spider crab model, which was made using a real crab specimen, the mold for the oarfish model was formed from a clay sculpture Thome shaped based on photographs of the silver-colored oarfish. The final product is made from fiberglass, as is the crab. A steel channel was set lengthwise inside the model so it can be mounted to the wall. The model will be displayed vertically, much as the fish actually swims.

Once the fiberglass model was cast, Thome airbrushed a water-based glue onto the model, before applying aluminum leaf one square at a time with a soft brush. A clear coat then set the aluminum before Thome airbrushed natural-looking blue and black markings onto the model with a stencil she made.

The oarfish model will be completed in a couple of weeks, when the red dorsal fins and large crest have been attached to the body.

top photo: The ten-foot-long oarfish in the model shop
bottom photo: Thome uses a stencil to paint spots on the oarfish with an airbrush.

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Giant Crab Nearly Complete

In March 2007, we ran a story about how we acquired a Giant Japanese spider crab to make a life-sized reproduction for the National Museum of Natural History’s Ocean Hall, which opens in September 2008. Since then, OEC modelmaker Vincent Rossi has been hard at work.

His first step in creating the model was setting the pose of the frozen crab in a position that would balance showing off the crab’s size while still keeping its pose natural. To preserve the crab specimen for NMNH, it had to be stored in OEC’s freezer when Rossi was not working on the model. The legs were cut from the body to fit in the freezer.

To make the molds, Rossi supported one half of each leg with plaster and then coated the other half with silicone rubber. After the rubber set, a sheet of fiberglass was molded to the outside. Then, the mold was removed and he went through the same process with the other side of the leg. The shell of the model was created by brushing a polyester resin/milled fiberglass mixture into the mold. Rossi placed steel rods inside the outer shell of the body and legs for support along with a dense, expanding foam to fill the inside of the model. After Rossi paints the model, it will be ready to be mounted and displayed.

The Giant crab is one of four life-sized models that OEC is making for the Ocean Hall exhibit. Stay tuned to see stories and pictures of the other models.

top photo: Vince Rossi glues locator pins in place to provide a template for the mount makers.
bottom photo: Silicone rubber molds for the crab body

More photos