OMCA Advisors Meeting 2010

National Science Foundation Advisors Meeting

Oakland Museum of California October 21 & 22, 2010

The Story of California. The Story of You. Oakland Museum of California 1000 Oak Street Oakland, California 94607-4892 510.238.2200 telephone www.museumca.org

This unpublished document is intended to be a faithful synthesis of the presentations and discussions at the National Science Foundation Advisors Meeting for Hotspot California, held at the Oakland Museum of California on October 21 & 22, 2010. It is meant to serve as a resource for This meeting was made possible with a grant from those who attended and for the Oakland Museum the National Science Foundation staff. It does not necessarily reflect the views of the Oakland Museum of California or individual Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this meeting participants. material are those of session participants and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. Participant comments have been paraphrased and the sequence of participant remarks have been reorganized. These are not exact quotes, rather they are an attempt to capture the content and meaning of the ideas presented.

Cover: OMCA Koi Pond

Right: Dan Rademacher inspecting prototypes in the Natural Sciences Gallery ii Participants

National Science Foundation Advisors Scott Sampson, Ph.D. Lindsay Dixon Research Curator, Utah Museum of Natural History, Chief Preparator Doris Ash, Ph.D. and Adjunct Associate Professor, Department of Mary Faria Associate Professor, Department of Education, Geology and Geophysics, University of Utah Evaluation Coordinator University of California at Santa Cruz Lisa D. White, Ph.D. Lori Fogarty Stephen R. Beissinger, Ph.D. Professor of Geology & Associate Dean, College Executive Director Professor of Conservation Biology, of Science & Engineering, San Francisco State Barbara Henry University of California at Berkeley University Education Curator Rick Bonney Douglas Long Director of Program Development & Evaluation, Chief Curator of Natural Sciences Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology Invited Guests Evelyn Orantes Richard Bugbee Dan Rademacher Cultural Arts Developer Associate Professor of Ethnobotany, Cuyamaca Editorial Director, Bay Nature Magazine Lauren Palumbi College, El Cajon, California Jennifer Stock Exhibition Assistant Christopher Cogan, Ph.D. Education and Outreach Coordinator, Cordell Bank Suzanne Pegas Assistant Professor, Environmental Science and National Marine Sanctuary Natural Sciences Program Coordinator Resource Management, California State University Nicole Ardoin John Perry Channel Islands, Camarillo, California Assistant Professor, School of Education; Center Exhibit Project Manager Carolyn Finney, Ph.D. Fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment, Christopher Richard College of Natural Resources, Department of Stanford University Associate Curator of Aquatic Biology Environmental Science, Policy and Management, Oakland Museum of California Mary Jo Sutton University of California at Berkeley Lead Developer/Designer Kirk Johnson, Ph.D. Carson Bell Carolyn Rissanen Vice President of Research & Collections & Chief Curatorial Specialist Registrar Curator, Denver Museum of Nature & Science Rebekah Berkov Natural Sciences School Programs Coordinator Peter Kahn, Ph.D. Project Consultants Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Amy Billstrom University of Washington, Seattle, Washington Interim Natural Sciences Interpretive Specialist Cecilia Garibay Gail Binder Principal, Garibay Group Matt Matcuk, Ph.D. Preparator Exhibition Development Director, The Field Museum, Catherine McEver Chicago, Illinois Tisha Carper Long The Bureau of Common Sense, Documentation Exhibit Developer Kathleen McLean Norman L. Miller, Ph.D. Dorothea Crosbie-Taylor Facilitator, Creative Director; Staff Scientist and Adjunct Professor, Climate Community Liaison Principal, Independent Exhibitions Science Department Berkeley National Laboratory, Geography Department, University of California at Dirk Dieter Berkeley Exhibit Designer Contents iii

Introduction ...... 1 Midpoint Reﬂections ...... 85 About this Session ...... 1 More Immersive Experiences ...... 85 The Larger Context ...... 1 Making the Science More Approachable ...... 87 The Notion of Place ...... 85 Hotspot California Overview ...... 4 Hotspot California Presentation ...... 4 Community Partnerships ...... 92 Hotspot California: Comments and Questions ...... 23 Introduction ...... 92 Overview ...... 92 Diorama Literature Review Round One Q & A ...... 94 and Research Projects ...... 32 Local Primary Criteria ...... 95 Literature Review and Research Presentation ..... 32 Round Two Q & A ...... 96 Research Discussion ...... 43 Six Places Primary Criteria ...... 97 Partnerships: The Edgy Examining prototypes in the gallery Prototype Review Aspect and the Beginning Process ...... 98 Prototyping Overview ...... 47 Round Three Q & A ...... 99 Post-Gallery-Visit Discussion ...... 50 The Seven Places ...... 102

Small Group Discussions ...... 68 Palm Desert ...... 102 Introduction ...... 68 Tehachapi ...... 103 Participatory Experiences ...... 70 Yosemite ...... 105 World View: Oakland ...... 106 Culture and Natural Science Tension ...... 72 Cordell Bank ...... 108 Deep Time ...... 75 Sutter Buttes ...... 110 Place ...... 78 Shasta ...... 111 Climate Change ...... 82 Deep Time Intermission ...... 113 iv Contents

Dioramas and Habitat Cases ...... 114 Sense of Place Research ...... 126 Walk-around Cases ...... 114 Focus on Relationships ...... 126 Drawbacks to Habitat Cases ...... 114 Coolness Potential: An Interdisciplinary Approach ...... 126 Using the Cases Successfully ...... 115 Messy, Edgy, and a Examples of Immersive Dioramas ...... 116 Genuine Dialogue with the Community ...... 127 About Using New Technology ...... 116 Humans IN Nature ...... 127 Untangling the Diorama Issue ...... 116 Plants, Plants, Plants ...... 127 What’s the Emphasis? Ecosystem-based Management as Focal Point ..... 128 Human Interaction? Natural Science? ...... 117 Narrative Threads and Conclusions ...... 128 Rethinking the Habitat Cases ...... 118 Engagement via the Human Element ...... 128 Cross-Fertilization of Galleries ...... 121 The Native American Take on Reaching the Youth Audience ...... 122 Carolyn Finney in the gallery. Interaction with Nature ...... 129 Strengths of Habitat Cases ...... 123 Next Steps ...... 129 Same Accessories, Different Story ...... 124 The California Connection ...... 124

Closing Thoughts ...... 126 A Call for Closing Thoughts ...... 126 Late Addition: Advising on Introduction 1

ABOUT THIS SESSION preparing for the opening of the Art and His- Kathleen McLean, Independent Exhibitions tory Galleries as well as additional spaces, and that opening occurred on May 1. This is At the last advisor session a year ago, we asked the first time that the Oakland Museum of you to talk about what your passions are and California has undergone any major reworking Bringing the Advisors Up to Speed what you are interested in. In this session we or enhancement to its facility in its forty year are going to be talking a lot about what we history. • Is part of the agenda for today to give us an have been doing on this project to date. We overview of where you stand in terms of the are at a point in this project where it is very The museum opened in 1969 with very in- design process? • Matt Matcuk novative landmark exhibitions for that time. open and fluid, the most open and fluid it will • Yes. We struggled with this because a good be because we are starting to narrow down and The museum has a long history of community meeting is one where the agenda is diverse and make decisions. We want you to speak your engagement and strong community program- you all get a chance to talk. We have so much mind, be critical, and push us. ming as well as an active exhibition program. push content to bring you this morning because This was the first time the museum had the we have to bring you up to speed. We apologize So these two days are a sort of problem solving opportunity to think about the facility and ad- for the one-way format, but I think you’ll find session. We are going to tell you what we have dress some of the challenges that we face now it interesting. • Kathleen McLean been up to, we are going to tell you what our as museum in the 21st century. concerns are and what we’ve been grappling with, and we really want you to give us your There was an action plan in 1999 that primarily advice and opinions so that we can make good dealt with the facility and the infrastructure, addressing some of the physical limitations of decisions. the facility. In 2002 we received bond funding from the City of Oakland, and the focus of that THE LARGER CONTEXT funding was about making the museum acces- Lori Fogarty, Executive Director, OMCA sible to the people of Oakland and telling the diverse stories of California. At that point it Most of you are already aware of the big shifted and became much more than a facil- picture here at the Oakland Museum, but I ity project and was about making the museum will remind you of the highlights. We are in more welcoming, open, accessible and rel- the midst of a sixty-two million dollar renova- evant to the community. tion and reinvention of the museum. When you joined us a year ago we were closed and We began in earnest on this project in 2006 with the design of the galleries, working with that has been described in the past as resem- 2 our architects at Mark Cavagnero Associates. bling the subways of Paris. We are redoing the The project is being done in phases and we corridor and lecture rooms and all of the com- have increased the goal for this project three mon spaces on this level. times. We have now actually met the fund rais- We have learned a lot from this process to ing goal, but we are going to continue to fund date. All of you who have been through major raise because, of course, there are additional renovations know that when you think it’s the elements to the work we are doing on this finish line, it just becomes the new starting facility that we would still like to accomplish. gate. We have had great public response to The first phase, completed on May 1, included the Art and History Galleries. We have done the Art and History Galleries. We also added extensive evaluation of the Art Gallery in the new Oak Street entry, which for the first particular with Randi Korn and Associates, as time gives us street presence and visibility well as general visitor surveys from the Morey from the outside of the building. We also Group. We are finding that people are staying added the canopy that connects the three a really long time in the Art Gallery. Beverly levels of the museum and did a lot of work Serrell talks about the saturation point being involving visitor amenities, including our store, twenty minutes, and that being the average our restaurant and our theater space as well length of time people spend in an exhibition. as a new ticketing hub. There was also a lot Our tracking studies so far show double that.

Lori Fogarty of infrastructure work. Again, this structure Morey showed an average of 56 minutes in the hadn’t been touched for forty years, so the gallery. work involved everything from electrical and We are seeing that the addition of the new in- data to a new wireless system and a new fire terpretive materials and technologies and the alarm system. interdisciplinary connections are very effective We are now in the midst of the second phase in keeping people in the gallery. People who of the project. The main focus of that is the use the interpretive materials are staying three Natural Sciences Gallery, but it includes all of times as long as people who don’t. We have the work that is happening on this level. We also focused on seating and visitor comfort in are reconfiguring the 10th Street entry to be the galleries, which has been very effective. the primary entry for school groups. We have So we have had great public response and very about 50,000 school kids who come to the mu- high ratings in terms of educational value and seum each year on field trips, so we are adding overall experience. prep rooms and locker space. There is also a In the History Gallery we have done some long corridor with lecture halls on this level evaluation. The History Gallery was deliberately, or semi-deliberately, opened as a work You will hear from Douglas and other staff in progress. We are still adding a good deal to members about a lot of the work we have done 3 the History Gallery. There are two sections in to date in terms of developing the research particular that are yet to be fully presented, and evaluation, the interpretive plan, the Work under way in the Natural Sciences Gallery and we are continually updating and adding to design, and the community partnership aspect. the presentation in the History Gallery, so we In the meantime we have all of the physical haven’t done a full evaluation yet. That will work as well, which is currently under way. happen this fall. But again, based on anecdotal The gallery is now being used as a prototype evidence from our docents and our gallery space. We will be moving the habitat cases guides as well as feedback we’ve heard from that we will retain in the gallery up to one of the public, people are responding to that gal- our special exhibition spaces after Pixar closes lery very enthusiastically. in January. So that will be a storage space, but we will also have some prototyping happening As you know, much of what we are thinking right there on the exhibit floor so people can about doing in the Natural Sciences Gallery continue to see the work we are doing in the builds on what we have done in Art and His- Natural Sciences Gallery. tory. We will be continuing to emphasize the interdisciplinary connections and making We begin construction in the gallery in Janu- connections between California’s artistic and ary, so there is some demolition work that will cultural history and its natural history. You will be happening. The initial work will involve see lounge spaces and program spaces in the creating a shell in that gallery with electrical, Art and History Galleries and we are planning data, a new lighting system, and upgrading on incorporating the same kind of spaces in the the HVAC systems. That work will continue to Natural Sciences Gallery. Some of the elements September 2011, and then we will begin the that we have in the other two galleries we process of reinstalling the gallery. We are still will be taking to the next level in the Natural looking at a September of 2012 opening of the Sciences Gallery, particularly community cocre- gallery. ation of exhibits, and we will extend the work we have done on label processes, translation, and seating into the Natural Sciences Gallery. 4 Hotspot California Overview

HOTSPOT CALIFORNIA PRESENTATION The working title for the project is Hotspot Douglas Long California. Later, during the prototyping pre- Chief Curator of Natural Sciences, OMCA sentation, you’ll hear why we might drop the word “hotspot,” but we are going to keep the I’d like to give you a general idea of where we concept. For a lot of you this talk will be basic are going with content and what the general information, but for some of you it may be themes and messages are, and more impor- new, so I’ll try to maintain a neutral delivery tantly, the mechanism that we are going to use in terms of specificity of the concept. to set out the gallery and explain what we are doing in the gallery. Basically, a “global biodiversity hotspot” is a term developed by Conservation International as a way of prioritizing protection and conservation efforts in different parts of the world. There are thirty-four different global hotspots that have been identified. Those hotspots combined represent only 2.3% of the land surface but contain at least half of all plant species in the world and more than half of all reptiles, amphibians, freshwater fish, and insect spe- Douglas Long (foreground) and Dan Rademacher tour- ing the Natural Sciences Gallery prototypes cies.

So life is not evenly distributed on the earth and there are beautiful little nuggets where Global Biodiversity biodiversity is at its highest. California is one Hotspots of those. California is the only biodiversity The Diversity of Life is Not hotspot in the US and it is one of just a couple Evenly Distributed in North America.

34 Global Hotspots = 2.3 % What is biodiversity? You can measure it in of Land Surface, 50% of many ways, deﬁne it in many ways, and argue all Plant Species, >50% it in many ways, but for the sake of what we of Reptiles, Amphibians, Freshwater Fishes, Insects are doing in the gallery we are looking at California’s biodiversity in three major con- with the highest highs and the lowest lows in What Is Biodiversity? the Continental US; the greatest extremes of 5 climate in any one state; a fossil history that goes back at least 1.2 billion years; and the seventh biggest economy in the world. There are also thirty-seven million people right now and it is expected to increase to forty-one million by 2020. We will revisit that last point in just a minute.

Diversity = Richness, Total No. of Species Hotspot Endemism = Unique, Found Nowhere Else California: Something to Density = Abundance, Total Biomass Consider... Most Diversity of Habitats 19% total square Most Diverse & Active Geology miles of Lower 48 Greatest Extreme Altitudes 37 Million Humans Greatest Extremes in Climate (41 million by 1.2 billion year Fossil History texts. The first is actual diversity of species, 2020) Biggest Economy (7th in World) the richness of different species, the total number of different species in California. We are also looking at endemism, those species The hotspot in California is called the Califor- that are unique and live only within California. nia Floristic Province, and about 95% of that And we are looking at density, the abundance, floristic province is in California. Some of it the total number of individual organisms living spills up into the cascades of southern Oregon in a particular area. California excels at all of and also into northwestern Baja as well as those. some of the offshore islands off northwestern Here is something to consider about California, Baja, Cedros Island and San Benito Island. California Floristic and it’s going to make more sense when I talk We can look at California two ways, as a Province about the different types of biodiversity in floristic province and as a state. If we look at California. California is only 19% of the total square mileage in the lower forty-eight states. It also has the most diversity of habitats; the One Top Ten Global Biodiversity Hotspots most diverse natural geology, with more rock California Floristic Province: California as a State: 3,488 Native Plant Species 5,418 Native Plant Species types and mineral types than anywhere else 61% Endemic (2,124) 28.5% At Risk in the US; the greatest extremes in altitudes, 53 plant species extinct the California Floristic Province you’ll see that fornia. Of those only two are endemic to the 6 it excludes the great basin and the deserts. state boundaries, but if we look at the floristic Those are areas of very low abundance in province we have twelve endemics. They’re diversity for the most part. Within the floristic called “near endemics” because while they province are 3,488 native plant species, with trickle outside of the state boundaries, they fit 61% endemic to the floristic province. If we within the boundaries of the floristic province. include the deserts and look at California just So in terms of endemism, not very high, but in in terms of its political boundaries, we see that terms of diversity, very high. California now has 5,418 native plant species California Insects and close to 30% of those are at risk, threat- California Bird Biodiversity ened, or in danger, or in habitats that are at risk. Fifty-three plant species are extinct or presumed to be extinct. I say “presumed” 631 Native Species because sometimes the seed bank has a tricky way of sprouting things that haven’t been seen in decades, but overall there has been a net loss of plant species.

It makes sense that insects, which have a close relationship to plants, are also going to be diverse. In California we have 28,000 named species of insects and at the rate of discovery 2 Endemic Species and exploration it is expected that the total number of species of insects in California 12 ‘Near Endemics’ will reach at least 35,000. Nine thousand of 28,000 Species those are endemic to California, and 35% of 35,000 Expected Let’s take a quick look at some other statistics. all known species of insects in North America, 9,000+ Endemic Sixty-eight percent of all North American bird >35% of ALL Known North American Insect (that is, north of Mexico) have been recorded Species in California. And there are at least 1,600 spe- 68% of All North 1,600+ Native Bees cies of native bees in California. Depicted here American Bird Species is a beautiful chrome green Halictid, one of my favorite insects in the world. 283 (45%) of Bird Species at Risk

When we look at bird biodiversity we see 1/3 of all birds in something very different. There are at least North America Hatch in Californias 621 native species of birds recorded in Cali- species have been recorded in California. Of floristic province. We have some rare endem- those, 283 or 45% of those bird species are at ics. In this case it’s the Shasta Salamander, 7 risk. Almost half of the native bird species in found only in a few remote limestone outcrop- California are at risk. One of the most surpris- pings. Its closest relatives are in China, Korea ing things I have read recently is that a third of and France, so it represents a distributional California Deep Time: Long-Term Evolution all the birds that are hatched in North America pattern probably since the Cretaceous. We are hatched in California. So in terms of a bio- have the Arroyo Toad, threatened because it mass, California is a bird factory that supplies lives in southwestern California in Orange, L.A. the rest of North America. and San Diego counties. Eighty-percent of its habitat is gone. The remaining habitat is so If we look at other organisms in terms of fragmented that the populations cannot ge- endemism, we find that endemism is very high netically mix any more. Then we have a major in amphibians. We have the Rough-skinned invasive amphibian, the Bullfrog, which has Newt, native to California. It’s not restricted to been eating or competing with native species California but fits within the boundaries of the and contributing to their decline. Of those amphibians, 61% are endemic but 60% are at risk. California Amphibians How did we get to this incredible biodiversity? 65 Species, 40 (61%) Endemic, 60% at risk One of the major factors is time. California has been a land mass for at least 500 million years, 80 Million Years Ago even though in many cases the majority of land was under water. We had submerged and ex- posed land for a while. But as a continent, the major factor in terms of time is that California Rough-skinned Newt (Native) was a refuge during the Ice Age. During the Ice Age, or Ice Ages, much of the central US was under a mile-thick sheet of ice, which basically obliterated a lot of life in that area, and most

Shasta Salamander of the East Coast and Gulf Coast were under sea water. California was relatively spared, so we see that in some areas where species and habitats were bulldozed by ice or smoth- ered by the ocean, California went relatively Arroyo Toad (Threatened) unharmed. As a result we have many archaic species, and a lot of time has elapsed during 3 Million Years Ago Bullfrog (Invasive) the evolution of those species. 8 Biodiversity by the Numbers We also have the complex habitats and ecosystems that are a major part of this. Because we Complex Landscapes + Long Time Varied Ecosystems & Diverse Species have such diversity in altitude and climate and geology, we have major diversity in the plant communities, or plants that are especially adapted to certain rock types like serpen- tine, which comprise a major endemic group of plants. So we have diverse ecosystems, and each of those ecosystems has its own unique evolutionary pressures, which creates evolutionary dynamics that are very different in different parts of the state. We have evolutionary factors that are quite diverse, and a long period of time for that evolution to happen.

A hotspot isn’t just about biodiversity, a hotspot is also about the threats that biodiversity faces. In California we have major issues of land loss due to urbanization and agriculture. At least 75% of California’s original habitats have been lost or very severely degraded.

A Hotspot Also Means Amount of Habitat That is Lost or Threatened

75% of California’s Original Habitats Have Been Lost If we look at biodiversity by the numbers in species are another major threat, organisms California, we can look at a couple of ways in coming in without their normal predators or 9 which biodiversity can be measured. We see herbivores or parasites that control them in that California exceeds all of the states and their native land. They are now here, basi- California Extirpations earns its title as a biodiversity hotspot. If we cally disease-free, taking over the habitats look at total number of species, California and either eating or out-competing the native reigns supreme; if we look at total number of species. Then there is pollution—water pollu- endemics, California is the highest; and if we tion, air pollution, particulate pollution—which 1820 look at species at risk, California is the highest. is also a very serious threat. There is hunting, We come in third for total number of species poaching and trafﬁcking. California’s diverse that have gone extinct. Hawaii is the highest reptile population is hotly traded as black and I was surprised to learn that Alabama is the market commodities throughout the US, as are second highest. bear gall bladders. We have the highest rate of bear poaching of any state. There is also What are these threats to biodiversity? They global climate change, which is going to be a are many. Primary is habitat loss, fragmenta- major spanner in the works that will obviously tion and degradation, basically the loss of 1860 have impacts, but trying to predict how those places for these organisms to live. Invasive impacts are going to affect biodiversity will be very difﬁcult. And then there are also laws that What Are the Threats to Biodiversity? are on the books, but sometimes those laws are not enforced, so lack of good management or enforcement of regulations poses another threat.

What have we lost in California? There are 1922 some charismatic megafauna that we have lost, including bison in 1820. Jaguars used to live all the way up to Grapevine and Tehachapi and were gone by 1860. We lost our grizzlies in 1922, more or less, and our gray wolves in Habitat Loss, Fragmentation, Degradation 1924. These are extirpations, however. We’ve Invasive Species lost them from our state, but they still exist Pollution of All Types Hunting, Trafﬁcking, Incidental Killing elsewhere. 1924 Global Climate Change The major problem are those less charismatic Poor Management & Enforcement species that are gone for good. We have a number of species, the Thicktail chub for We have a commitment to reuse the dioramas 10 example, which have now been completely because each one of these dioramas has been eliminated. Here in the Bay Area we’ve lost the meticulously created with, in most cases, the Berkeley kangaroo rat. actual stuff: the plants, the animals, and even Lesser Known California Extinctions the dirt and the rocks from very speciﬁc places in California. These can be used as beautiful Pitikin ways to illustrate biodiversity in terms of the Marsh Indian species, the habitats, the communities in Cali- Paintbrush fornia. We have a commitment to reuse these as part of the story we are telling, as part of the content we are communicating, and as part of the visitor experience.

So What Are We Doing? Antioch Dunes Shield Retain Dioramas that Depict Real Places, Back Katydid Using Real Specimens

So what are we doing to present this information in the gallery, and how are we doing it, and what are our goals? What we want to do is be able to explore the beauty and diversity of California’s nature and biodiversity in exciting Thicktail Chub and engaging ways. That is a goal.

Exploring the Beauty & Diversity of Santa Barbara California’s Nature in Song Sparrow Engaging, Exciting Ways

So we are going to use these dioramas but in new ways. We might overlay new types of tech-

Berkeley nology, new ways of visitor interaction, new or Kangaroo Rat deeper levels of content to make them more relevant to current day stories or current day issues and ongoing and real science. We are going to increase our diversity of Creative Re-Use Makes Dioramas More experience by adding new elements. In our 11 Relevant & Accessible discussions we have identiﬁed habitats that we really need to add that are major examples of biodiversity in California.

We also want to be technologically savvy. The main goal is not to have the technology compete with the dioramas or compete with the content. We New Technologies, Interpretations, and Visitor want new technologies to be Contribution Allow for Deeper Engagement seamlessly integrated and used as vehicles to communicate the content and bring out the beauty and diversity in the exhibits.

Exciting New Elements Increase Our We want the gallery to be ﬂex- Diversity of Experiences ible and changeable. We want to be able to respond to crises that happen, to new discoveries, to questions that communities are asking us.

A Flexible and Changeable Gallery Presents Current Issues and New Discoveries We’re going to feature real science and cur- We want to foster connections with nature 12 rent research in the gallery because we want within and without the museum and within to be able to show people that the biodiversity people’s lives. However they connect with in California is this wonderful aspect that is nature, we want to be able to strengthen those Featuring Real Science & Current Research being investigated, that there are new dis- ties. coveries, there are new species. There are conservation issues, but there are also new ways that scientiﬁc research is being used to address those or even remediate those.

We want to be able to show not just the environmental crises that are happening, but those Instilling a Sense of Place environmental stories that have been major successes, such as the tule elk shown here.

We are also going to rely very heavily on the communities being involved in what we are doing and being able to provide content, provide Showcasing experience, provide interpretation. Not just Environmental our local Oakland communities, but communi- We want to also instill a sense of place. That is Issues and ties in the different regions in California that something we really noticed when we did some Conservation we are going to be depicting in the gallery. early testing about the gallery. When people Success Stories looked at a diorama they wouldn’t necessarily look at the plants or the animals. It would give them a sense of a place they had been before, Participatory Exhibit Co-Creation & or a place they want to go to, or a part of their Contribution Connects with Communities childhood that they remember. We want to re- Throughout California ally communicate that sense of place and that sense of belonging in some way.

We also want this gallery to also offer ways to explore nature outside the gallery. We are not going to be able to recreate nature perfectly inside the gallery and we shouldn’t be able to. What we want to do is inspire people to go out and explore more and do more. Fostering Connections with Nature We are also going to feature major links with Providing Access for Your Own 13 Experiences in Nature art and history in the gallery because the history of California is the history of the exploitation of these resources. Most of the conservation issues we are dealing with now have Links with Art & History a historical basis, and it is the beauty of California that inspired so many of the artists. Most of those artists were immigrants to California and were so overwhelmed We also want to inspire a sense of action, of with the beauty and diversity hope, of participation and responsibility, to get that they had to sit and paint people organized to do something as simple as thousands of pictures of Mt. a beach cleanup or voting for the right politi- Shasta or Yosemite Valley. cians, or identify simple changes in the way This is one of the ways that 8th & Madison: 1869 and Today that they live their lives so that they are living we are going to use art as a more sustainably and have less impact on vehicle for understanding. nature. This is a mashup that Christopher made using a painting called 8th & Madison that was painted around 1869. He superimposed the painting over a photograph of that very spot today, and Provide Accurate Natural that location is just a few blocks from here. Sciences Educational Content for All Ages When we did prototyping and showed visitors the painting and then a photograph of the place now, that was a real light bulb that went on. Most people said, “Oh, Oakland, I get it. Oakland was a land of oaks.” This is a beautiful way to demonstrate the changes over time using the resources in our art collections.

Inspiring Action, Responsibility and a One of the major goals for me is using the Sense of Hope gallery to provide accurate natural sciences educational content for all ages, not just for cases the people who are living in these regions 14 school groups. We are going to be able to have that sense of place and are really striving provide information on a variety of different to protect those areas. levels for people with a variety of different So we’ve got what looks sort of like the South- backgrounds and levels of experi- ern Cross. We’ve got most of California covered Featuring Seven Real Places in California ence and expertise, and provide from north to south and east to west. The each one of those groups informa- areas of content for these places are broken tion that they are going to ﬁnd up into general categories. We’re going to look interesting, informative, rewarding, at natural systems and interactions: climate, and intriguing. geology, maybe tectonics, maybe fossil history How are we going to do this? The in some ways, water, whatever is going to be previous iteration of the gallery was a dominant factor in these areas. We’re going called “A Walk Across California.” to look at the habitats, the communities and It was a basic transect that went the species that represent the biodiversity. We from the coast, up over the Sierras, are also going to look at historical and human To Show the and then took a sort of fork in the perspectives of the region. We want to have Biodiversity and Tell the Real road and went either up to the cold Native perspectives, we want to have historical Stories deserts in the Great Basin or the perspectives from the 1700s, 1800s and 1900s, southern deserts.

What we are going to do, instead of Areas of Content for the ‘Places’ having a more general approach, is actually feature seven real places that depict the habitats, the biodiversity, the conservation, the science that is going on, and the stakeholders in those regions who can help tell • Natural Systems and Interactions part of the story. The cheesy analogy that I like • Habitats, Communities & to use is that biodiversity is this beautiful gem Species Biodiversity of California and each one of these is a facet • Historical & Current Human of that gem that reflects that biodiversity. Perspective of the Region Each one of these is very different from the • Going Forward: Threats & Opportunities others, and each one has a different signature in terms of the look and feel, in terms of the geology, the plant communities, the animal communities, the way of life there. In many we want to have the current perspective of humans have adapted to the natural environ- these regions. ment of the Bay, but also how animals are now 15 dealing with that. What are the survivors, what We also want to look at what are the threats are the success stories, but also what species and the opportunities. I think this is important are we losing? because there are a lot of depressing stories about what is happening to California. I think We also want to feature Oakland for its bio- those depressing stories give you an opportuni- diversity. There are at least a dozen different ty to find solutions to fix or solve the problems. habitat types going from the mud flats all the So going forward it is identifying the threats way up to the top of the hills where we have but also identifying the opportunities to deal redwood forests. We are going to talk more with those threats. about the content in each of these areas when we go through the interpretive framework. Here is our first place, Oakland, with beautiful- ly diversity of topography. This is where we are Heading north there is Mt. Shasta, an iconic going to feature the urban-wild interface. We volcanic mountain. When we were working on are going to be able to tell that story of how

OAKLAND

Oakland: Where Urban Meets Wild Oakland: a Surprising Diversity of Habitats the interpretive framework we were stuck on because this volcanic soil doesn’t retain water 16 the idea this was a volcano. When we really very well, is very, very dry. One of the pic- started to think about what Shasta means in tures [below] shows the vista facing its sister terms of diversity, we came up with the story volcano, which is the Medicine Lake islands. It Mt. Shasta: of water because it’s the volcanic nature of is a twin volcano but a very different type of An Iconic Volcanic Mountain Shasta that really helps to shape the funda- volcano. We are going to feature both types of mental ways in which water is manifest in volcanism and also the human history. During the environment—everything from the coldest the Modoc Indian Wars, this was an area where cold springs in California to hot springs. We’re the Modoc hid out in the volcanic tubes. Those looking at glaciers, rivers, lakes, ponds. We are tubes are also very important to the story of also looking at how underground rivers have water because they are where the water ac- been able to carve some beautiful and diverse cumulates. caves. Below is one of the caves. This is a mountain We’re also looking at water in a climatic way. born of ﬁre, but it is also where we get the With Shasta you have a wet side with Klam- beginning of the Sacramento River, so we are ath on the western facing slope. The eastern going to be able to look at creeks, rivers, facing slope, because of the rain shadow and streams and different aspects of the story of water.

MT. SHASTA A Mountain Born of Fire, and a Major Source of Northern California Water Klamath

Shasta: The Story of Water

Facing sister volcano Great Basin Sutter Buttes is an interesting volcanic pock- the human interaction and the competition for mark in the Sacramento Valley. It is an island, water. It’s not just competition between use of 17 literally and figuratively, in the Central Valley. water for nature and use of water for agricul- Below is a beautiful Google map of the topog- ture, but even within agriculture, competition raphy, where you can see the buttes sticking between the rice farmers and the orchard up over the valley floor. It is an isolated area farmers, competition between municipalities that has agriculture all around it. This is a very that need water, competition between com- Conservation interesting area we are going to use in that it mercial fishermen and recreational fishermen Science: is mostly private land and those private land and native needs for the salmon in these areas. Ringtails holders understand the importance of this as a These are very complex stories that we are go- David Wyatt, wild system. ing to be able to bring out. It’s also the largest Sacramento City College migratory flyway in North America. It is also a microcosm of the Central Valley. All of the habitats we find in the Central Valley We got a chance to meet Dave Wyatt. He’s are found here, so it’s “a small world after going to be one of the researchers that we will all” habitat. It’s also where we can take the be featuring. He did a study on these ring- water story to a different level and talk about tails. Sutter Buttes has the highest density of

SUTTER BUTTES

Sutter Buttes: It’s About the Oaks Sutter Buttes: Competing Needs of Water and Land

Sutter Buttes: A Microcosm of the Central Valley ringtails anywhere in North America, and it’s biodiversity, with the highest number of mam- 18 because of that ﬂyway and because it’s one of mal species recorded and the highest number the areas where the oaks have been preserved. of bird species recorded in North America and Migratory birds stop for the night and are something like forty-three different vegetation nabbed in their sleep by these ringtails. communities; and it was the birthplace of the conservation movement. We are also going to tell the story of oaks here. There are more species of oaks in California We also wanted to feature it because people than any place in North America, and oaks are have that belief that because an area is pro- one of the major keystone species of these tected, it is protected, when in fact even a habitats that provide food or shelter to liter- protected and well loved place like Yosemite ally hundreds of different species of animals. is under threat in a variety of ways. It is being California’s Most Iconic They have been of major importance to Native loved to death. Natural Landmark groups and are still of major importance to a This is also a place where we heard great pre- variety of human and nonhuman organisms. sentations from people at UC Berkeley about We picked Yosemite for a variety of reasons. It the Grinnell Resurvey Project. For those of you is the most visited place in California; it is the who don’t know, Joseph Grinnell was the head most familiar to people both inside and out- of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. He was side California in terms of its natural beauty raised in the Midwest on an Indian reservation and its iconic landmarks; it has unparalleled and got to know animals very well. He was a

YOSEMITE Birthplace of the California Conservation Movement

And In Danger of Becoming Loved to Death

Unparalleled Biodiversity Further south we are going to feature the Tehachapis. People scratch their heads be- 19 Conservation cause they have no idea where that is, but if Science you’ve ever been over the Grapevine and I-5, Grinnell Resurvey Project & Climate as I suspect most of you from California have, Change you’ve gone through the Tehachapis. Millions of people a week drive along that corridor.

It is a very interesting place where you have this mashup of the Central Valley, the Coast Ranges, the Sierra Nevadas and the Mojave Desert, and there are little fragments of the Great Basin, little relics from past times in which the climate was different. This is where we are going to feature California as a Medi- terranean climate, with the chaparral habitat Coastal Chaparral Yosemite Valley 1911 featuring prominently in this area. This is a Dry Summers, Mild Winters, community ecosystem that was designed to Evolved to Burn burn. The problem is, we have tampered with that and have prevented a normal burn cycle to the point that now, when there is a burn, there might be seventy years of fuel and the ﬁres are so great that they actually destroy the ecosystem. Yosemite Valley 2003 TEHACHAPI MOUNTAINS respected naturalist at a very young age and took incredibly detailed records and collected multiple specimens. His records are so good that researchers have been able to go back revisit the places he sampled and photographed and sketched and have been able to see major changes in those habitats that are largely due Tehachapis: The Future to climatic change. Yosemite is one of those of California areas. Because it is a Mediterranean climate it is also 20 a place where people want to live, not realiz- ing that historically, at least for the last three million years in terms of palynology, where Tehachapis: Progress & they are living has gone up in ﬂames. Protection We are also looking at Tehachapi as the future of California in two ways. We had a great lecture from Michelle Koo from the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at UC Berkeley, who looked at where evolution is happening in California. PALM DESERT She looked at areas where you have these mashups of habitats that are creating new evolutionary dynamics, where relatively young species are evolving.

We are also looking at the future of Califor- nia in terms of how we are able to work with and protect biodiversity. A case in point is the Tejon Ranch, which is 270,000 acres and the single largest land holding in private hands in California. How are people, institutions, organizations and corporations going to balance the needs of the environment with the needs of Oases of Water, and of Life human development?

It is also where we are going to be able to talk about the tule elk story. Down to less than Palm Desert is at the southern end of the sixty, they have now been relocated to at least state. Palms are very iconically Californian. Tejon Ranch: 270,000 Acres twenty-two areas in California and number in This is where we are going to tell the lack of the thousands. Largest Private Land Holding in water story, how organisms are adapted for life California, Mostly Pristine Land without water and how we have very unique habitats, like the sand dunes in the Coachella Return of the Tule Elk Valley. There are 127 endemic species just in those dunes, and only 5% of those dunes are protected. because those are now homes for relic popula- 21 Coachella Valley Dunes tions and organisms, they are seed banks, they Saving Habitats to Save Species are also corridors connecting migratory routes for animals, and we want to tell those stories.

Lastly we have Cordell Bank. This is our un- 127 Species derwater realm. It is a big granite mountain Endemic to Dunes that is under water. It’s very dazzling in terms of its beauty and diversity. Most people are surprised to ﬁnd that we have these incredible coral reefs in California. Jennifer Stock sent us some of these pictures last week, showing the dazzling beauty of the place combined with a Cordell Bank: A Dazzling Reef total pea-soup-abundance of organisms. On an Underwater Mountain

This is where we have coastal upwelling, a phenomenon in which nutrients are brought up from the bottom to the surface, kick-starting 5% of Dunes are Protected a food chain that attracts organisms from all over the world to feed here.

CORDELL BANK

Cordell Bank: Coastal Upwelling We are also going to talk again about the human story. This checkerboard shows lands distributed to either Native groups and either mining groups or the railroad. We see development on the privately held lands. The Native lands turn out to be very important, however, We are also going to bring in some research And ﬁnally, we have a number of partners we 22 about seabird tracking, and then try to tie are working with, many of whom are repre- that to some of our other areas, like the urban sented here today. Oakland area, and talk about plastics getting washed into the bay and out to sea where they are picked up by albatross in the Paciﬁc, brought back to their chicks on Laysan Island, and the chicks starve. So we are looking at global stories with local connections.

Conservation Science: Seabird Tracking

Some of Our Partners

Albatrocity: Global Conservation Stories, Local Connections

An Abundant Underwater Food Resource Feeding Animals from Around the World HOTSPOT CALIFORNIA: • Exactly. So they can expect it and look for it. • Doris Ash 23 COMMENTS AND QUESTIONS Size and Scope Reminder An Organizing Matrix Using a Matrix: The History Gallery Example and/or Cross-cutting Themes • Just a reminder that each of the galleries here • I too have these twenty-eight things in mind, is at least 30,000 square feet, which is bigger Wayfaring via Cross-cutting Themes which may be a lot and may not. Yesterday I than many medium-size museums. This Natural • I see that you have these seven different hot- spent a couple of hours in the History Gallery Science Gallery is not an exhibition. Early on a lot of our museum colleagues were telling us, spots and these four themes that cut through and really liked it. It really worked for me. “You need one story. Keep it simple.” In fact, the middle: natural systems, species, history So many of the things we’ve talked about this is like designing an entire mid-size muse- and future. That means you’re dealing with for so many years are in there. The question um that might have ten different galleries and that I have is, as a visitor I was not aware of twenty-eight things, right? Does that ring ten different topics. This is the whole story true—you have this double matrix with the any matrix, nor did I need to be. Was there of California nature, and we might even think seven hotspots and the four themes going one, and if so, can you tell us what that was of it as different exhibits within that mid-size across? • Doris Ash so that I can think about how you pulled that museum, that 30,000 square feet in the Natu- off and how that might translate to this? ral Sciences Gallery. • Kathleen McLean • It’s not across, but yes, we are going to deal • Rick Bonney with those things within those places. • Kathleen McLean • The History Gallery was designed chronologi- Striking a Balance cally. All three galleries are different and • I too am intrigued by the seven places that • And each feature might not be covered as I think one of the interesting things is that you’ve selected and I think they represent a much in each place. Some features might be rather than making them all the same, we great balance geographically and environmen- more prominent, such as tectonics, geology, are making them all different. Here, it is re- tally and they seem to offer something for everybody. Like Doris, I hope that it doesn’t and so on. • Douglas Long ally thematic: people, place and wildlife. In become too overwhelming in terms of what History it is really the chronology. The orga- you decide to highlight in each of those places. • If the people walking through it could get nizing theme there is “Coming to California,” In some regions geology might rise to the top starting with those who have always been those four things in their minds somehow— and be the first thing you’d engage the visi- natural systems, species, history and future— here and going forward into the future to tors in. In another place it might be a specific that could be a mindset that people have. who is going to come tomorrow. That is the type of ecosystem or the biology. So there’s You’re covering a lot of different places. If organizing element and it moves chronologi- the need to strike a balance and fit it all in people could expect to see those themes in cally, which a lot of people don’t get. Here it the space that you have, but I love the seven each of the places it could really help. is going to be around these real places. places. • Lisa White • Doris Ash In both the Art and History Galleries the content matrix is not apparent. The content • A mental map. • Kathleen McLean matrix in history is about who was already here, who came, and what were the conflict- Deep People Connections to Place 24 ing values and culture clashes over time and • In the Sutter Buttes area there are people throughout the course of history. who have lived there for over a hundred Here, we are also going to be dealing with years and have these incredible connections. Enabling Personal Interpretation history. Pulling history and art into the sci- In fact, all of these places have people who • Something I really enjoyed in the History Gal- ence gallery is a pretty innovative thing. So have these deep, deep connections. Not just lery is the exhibit where you walk in through there is going to be the history story and the ecologists, but the farmers. We very much the purple haze [Forces of Change Gallery] and want that interpreted through farmers or see people’s different interpretations. I think art story as well, looking at it through differ- ranchers who have those deep connections to one of the things I enjoyed about that was how ent lenses, as you saw with the 8th & Madi- these places. • Mary Jo Sutton you were completely left to draw your own son painting example. It is kind of mushy and interpretation and pull your own experience all over the place and just as complicated as Projecting the Self Into the Scenario, from that. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen that nature is. • Kathleen McLean work in a natural history gallery before, but it Creating an Eighth Place was so powerful. I wonder if there are ways to • What really worked for me in the History Personal Stories, think about that in this case. Gallery was that I was able to project myself Interpretations, Relationships I know from reading through your documenta- into a lot of those different spaces. I’ve tion from last year that you do want to try to Relationships and Change never really thought that much about Holly- feature different voices from these different • I agree with everything Rick just said and wood before, but when I stood there read- places. In the Everglades National Park there I’m going to have to think a little more ing about the attraction of California to the is a very effective exhibit, in my estimation, about that. When I was looking at everything Hollywood film makers, I could think and say, about water use. You get the story of sugar Douglas was sharing with us, I was thinking “Yeah, I get it. If I were a film maker, I would cane told from the point of view of, say, Teddy Roosevelt, saying sugar cane is destroying about relationships. For me it was really want to be here.” That happened in a few everything. You also hear the voices of farmers about relationships between everything that other parts of the gallery as well. I was able whose whole livelihood depends on that. I’m is in the natural environment, as well as the to project myself in there somehow and you just wondering if there’s an opportunity to built environment, as well as people, as well were really effective with that. I was finding bring that sort of element in, letting people as wildlife. I don’t know if there’s a way to my own personal story in that gallery. make their own choices in natural history emphasize relationships as well as change interpretations as well. • Rick Bonney I’m trying to think how you get people to because all of these things change over time. find their personal stories in the Natural Sci- To me, that’s what was implied throughout ences Gallery, especially for people who may your whole presentation, and I don’t know not be that familiar with being outside. The if that would get at what Rick was talking slide during the presentation that really hit about in terms of those connections. I have home for me was the one where the painting to think about that more over this next day of the old oaks was superimposed over the or two. • Carolyn Finney photograph of development several blocks away from here. I was thinking about that. was that other than Oakland, you could do I’ve lived in the same house now for almost a dozen versions of seven different spots in 25 thirty years. When I first moved there, there California. I’m sure you had many struggles One Global/Universal Issue: were no neighbors. Now we do have some with which seven. I think the visitors would Encroaching Development neighbors. Some of them came in a few years also have some of that reaction. Why Sutter • Following up on what Rick and Norm said, Buttes? Why not my favorite neck of the ago, and when those houses first came in I when I saw that slide of the land encroach- hated them, but now I don’t see them any- woods? But I believe from what I saw and ment with the checkerboard, where you saw more, they’re just there, and my kids don’t from past visits, the way through that is to the white section and the settlement there, remember them not being there. use those as examples of ecosystems and it is exactly like flying over Florida. If you fly keep it flexible enough that yes, this stands across Florida from east to west, it looks just That slide that superimposed what used to for these twenty other spots in California like that. You can see it all disappearing. The be over what is was very effective in snap- that have similar issues biologically and land is white and the developments are all ping you. But there is still a “So what?” different colors. That picture is a universal ecologically. Especially for a kid who hasn’t really thought iconic symbol. I’m sure it looks the same in that much about him or herself in nature. Then we can talk about changes through other areas where there is encroachment on I’m trying to figure out how you get the time, shifting baselines, and all of those any kind of natural area. Just the picture itself personal story interjected into that change other topics that they stand for, rather than is iconic. Flying over an area, seeing the land, seeing the encroaching development, seeing over time. The only thing I’ve thought about get too focused in on Sutter Buttes for the the bulldozers, is such a powerful view. That’s so far is an eighth place. The eighth place sake of Sutter Buttes. It’s much more power- certainly a global issue. • Doris Ash is what you come out of the gallery with. It ful that way. And with Cordell Bank there’s a may not be your own personal place, it may whole bunch we could say about marine eco- be your way of thinking about these places, systems off From left: Norman Miller, Richard Bugbee, Rick Bonney but it’s something personal that you take out California, of there. But I think you’d have to orient the and obvious- visitor from the beginning toward helping ly one spot them think about what that’s going to be at isn’t going the end, which is a huge challenge. • Rick to cover it, Bonney but it could stand for Why These Places? Issues many issues. of Relevance, Interest and Appeal You also A Place as an Example mentioned of Wider Ranging Topics, Issues, Ecosystems the idea of • There was some really great stuff in that pre- flexibility, sentation. One of the things that grabbed me being able to respond to current events, things like the of the major ways that exhibitions function 26 Gulf oil spill. How does Cordell Bank sud- is, as you say, their synechdoche. You look Lasting Impressions, Take-Away Messages denly shift for a few months to respond to at this example of one kind of dinosaur, one an intense focus of public interest? As long ecosystem, and hopefully you’re intrigued by • How do you want the next generation to walk out of this museum and feel inspired? What as it’s the ecosystem, then that door is open that enough that you’re interested in fol- take-away sets of lasting impressions do you but as soon as it’s the place, the door is lowing up on some of those processes and want them to have, other than a lot of dif- closed. • Christopher Cogan digging a little more. There’s an art school fuse pieces of information? There needs to saying that goes, “To make it more univer- be something that really pulls it together in The Appeal of Specific Places, sal, make it more personal.” The idea, of different ways for different people, but some- Stories and Personal Reflections course, is that the better you are at coming thing that has a solid set of common messages • I think the challenge with that though is that in and really exploring that thing and making that are really clear and crystal. One that people tend to respond to specific stories it come alive, the more likely you are to hit I see is the shift in various types of natural of specific people connected to specific one of those touchpoints, and we can only phenomena and how it is connected here. But histories. Even if they are not my history, regarding the art part, I have to walk through guess at what they are going to be for the this and understand it better. To me that is the there are human elements there that I can visitor. • Matt Matcuk most intriguing aspect. • Norman L. Miller identify with. I think that’s a challenge. Maybe one way to do it is, as you are focus- The Global Connection From left: Rick Bonney, Scott Sampson, Kirk Johnson ing on specific places or people, you pull out those bigger themes or ecosystem types, • In thinking about what I heard in the presen- but then also ask the visitor, hopefully in tation, what strikes me is the large global multiple different places and ways: If this perspective that lends itself to California. We isn’t your favorite place, how is it similar to see these big changes going on throughout your favorite place? What is the story of your the world and we see flavors of that here. I favorite place and do you see it reflected in would suggest drawing connections between this or not? that as you go and not just “Here’s seven examples and here’s how they connect to other If they don’t go for Cordell Bank, they may examples in California.” go for Sutter Buttes and think it’s similar to an area they know and they can reflect back, At some point in the presentations, it’s im- hopefully in a specific way, their own stories, portant to always drop back to the planetary so you get both the general and the specific. view and how it is seen in other regions as • Dan Rademacher well as here. There are many, many examples that are simplistic enough that it can Synechdoche and Personal Touchpoints be done, I think. There is a new intergovern- • I was thinking about the point Chris made mental panel on biodiversity and ecosystem in terms of the separate places. I think one services that is going to be announced in about a month. This is very similar to the and sad. But kids coming along don’t have climate change panel. There are hotspots that experience, they just see that as nor- 27 throughout the world that are bubbling up mal. I think having that as the focus is criti- and being talked about. For example, the cal, but then there is the “So what?” issue. dropping water in northwest India, parts of That’s where I see connecting it with the Away from Universal Messages China and the Central Valley is one common to Building Personal Meaning focus on relationship that Doris and Caro- issue that we are seeing in many places, lyn and others mentioned. I think you’ve • What Rick said made me think again about including California. How that ties into the focus on relationship. I was listening to got that embedded. You’ve got the natural climate, how that ties into biodiversity and Norm talking about scale and the relationship science parts and I think Douglas was high- fragmentation, population and other stress- between planetary changes and statewide and lighting the natural science side, and yet ors is a common thread in problems that are local issues. What I would steer away from is you’ve got a huge social science side, but trying to create a universal narrative. They local as well as global. • Norman L. Miller I’m not sure if they’re as well connected as are going to look at any of those places that they could be. As a metaphor for connect- Douglas showed us and you’re going to get five Social Science: Shifting Baselines, ing them, Douglas’s talk was so focused on people with five different experiences ranging Environmental Generational Amnesia, the biodiversity on the natural science side. from fantastic to terrible. By universal I mean and Human Interaction What if you just flip it and ask, what is the one way to talk about all of these places in California and one way to talk about the hu- • I already knew I love California, and Douglas, biodiversity of human interaction with all man-environment relationship in California. It’s of these environments, and start trying to you helped me understand how. The shift- going to be different for everybody. Mary Jo ing baseline is something we talked about characterize what those interactions are that brought up a few examples. There are farmers, last year. It seems like it’s on the map now people are experiencing? It is a little bit of and there is the perspective of Native people. for what you guys are doing. Rick just posed a different twist than just saying, “What’s I’m thinking about people’s personal stories the question, “So what?” I think that’s a re- my story about this?” or “What do I love?” also because they have to have ownership over though often within that are accounts of the ally important issue. It’s one of the critical it, but they also have to know what it is. So mechanisms or explanations for why we’ve nature of those interactions. again, how does the museum create that possi- gotten into the mess we are in. I spoke about Part of what we are trying to protect is not bility for the visitor as soon as they come in so this last year. I see it as cutting across gen- that they can say, “This is who I am in relation just this stuff that is important out there, erations so that each generation constructs a to this,” and kind of work their way through we are trying to protect and preserve the new baseline based on what they’re expe- the exhibit? • Carolyn Finney richness of our own individual interactions. riencing. The crux is really at that genera- That’s the connection to the shifting base- tional shift as the younger generation comes line and what I’ve talked about in terms of of age. environmental generational amnesia. It’s We’ve all had that experience that Rick not only what have we lost and what can we described, where we see stuff destroyed and analytically understand about what we’ve we lose track of it or we get disappointed lost, but also what do we want to preserve, not simply at the natural systems level but in want to preserve. 28 terms of the human interaction level? That then leads to that question regarding For example, you could imagine asking the action item. Part of the action item is parents and grandparents, “What would being able to characterize what it is we love most want your child to have in terms of the in an interaction and what it is that we want interaction level that you’ve had in your own to protect. So it’s a social science version of life that you’d feel so sad if they lost it?” what Douglas just did on the natural science That’s the connection between the shifting side. • Peter Kahn baseline and what has been lost, to trying to project out into the future and what we Just-In-Time Learning, Non-functional Meta-narratives, and Nested Sets of Synechdoche

Thinking About This in View of Leiserowitz’s “Six Americas” • I was trying to pull up an article on my computer that I just read last night. It’s a study • Douglas, that was a fantastic presentation is a volcano, and this is the Cordell Bank. Are that a guy has done over the last twenty and we all clapped really hard. Most of us are there another seven ways of looking at this? years, looking at shifting epistemologies, scientists and natural historians. I’m going to I’m not sure if that’s what Peter was trying say this and then duck under the table, and I’ll to get at or not. Going way out on a limb, are how people learn differently now than they say it in two ways. The first is, at the Lab of there seven kinds of people? Some of you may did before. The major thrust of his work Ornithology I have fought a twenty to twenty- be familiar with the work of Tony Leiserowitz indicates that we are moving towards an era five year battle with scientists who want to at Yale, who is the Director of the Yale Project of what he calls “just-in-time learning,” the present to the public who we are as an institu- on Climate Change, and his work that resulted parallel to just-in-time manufacturing. In the tion, versus the vision that the public doesn’t in identification of the “six Americas,” in which same way today that you can say that you he characterizes different ways that the public give a damn what we are as an institution, they want to buy a Dell computer and Dell doesn’t want to know what we can do for them. So our has of looking at climate change, from the even start soldering until your purchase Web site used to say, this department does this alarmists to the dismissives. comes in, this is now more and more how and this department does that. Now the Web Are there different segments of visitors here site says, here’s what you can do: You can join people are approaching learning. They do who would think about these environments in this project or take advantage of this opportu- not go into any situation attempting to me- different ways and would want a completely nity. And because our gifts are going up and our thodically collect a storehouse of data that different presentation about the different membership is rising they finally acceeded. they will then piece together and use all the parts of California? This is where I climb under time. They don’t do that. They get only that I’m wondering, if you made this presentation to the table because I think you’re pretty far a bunch of nonscientists or people who didn’t along with your seven places, but I think a information that they need just in time for think about diversity and biodiversity, if they marriage of the two ideas may be possible. when they need it, whether that’s a traffic would just think, this is a mountain and this • Rick Bonney report or a fact about history. There are a couple of things I’d like to grand meta-narratives, if we ever had them, throw out for the team to think about that are basically nonfunctional today. What we 29 are independent of any ecosystem that you have is a change in the scale of narrative. depict. The first is, in my experience we run Now people like my father look and this and into problems when we try to take a nar- say, “People today have no attention span. Just-In-Time Learning rative structure that applies to media that Everything’s got to be shorter and shorter.” as Inspirational Nuggets play out over time, such as turned pages or Yeah, it’s true, and I don’t know that it’s • You have to have a realistic goal for a museum film frames, and apply that structure onto a necessarily a bad thing, but it’s something exhibition. You’re not trying to create natural physical place. By and large, people do not that we absolutely need to contend with historians in one fell swoop. As I edit a nature perceive their movement through space as when we are constructing an exhibition magazine, I find that just-in-time learning is being equated to any sequential narrative, experience. not necessarily a terrible model when you’re much less the accumulation of knowledge trying to inspire people with those digestible So if you can imagine your exhibition as con- into some kind of overarching theme. nuggets of character or fact or story that are tinually nested sets of synechdoche I think most inspiring. This was what I was talking about last time your chances will be better. By all means, I still remember when I suddenly had an insight in terms of this grand meta-narrative. The sure, create a grand overarching narrative that the paleobotanist up at the UC Botani- for the space. No one will get it, that’s okay. cal Gardens could look at the same landscape Matt Matcuk But every major zone is a seventh of your ex- I would look at and see all that was lost or all hibition. Put your narrative arch there, and that was no longer there. I don’t know what for this portion of that section, and for this any of those things are, I didn’t memorize the case, and for that label. At every level that plant list, it was just this sudden flash of in- you go down, you need to imagine the exact sight that he sees a totally different landscape than I do, and it has inspired an ongoing curios- same story arch. It’s not the same story in ity about paleobotany that I probably wouldn’t every place, but it’s the same dramatic func- have had, and yet I still don’t know much of tion. Then you can be sure that people who anything about paleobotany. But I feel like that construct meaning at all different scales of was a useful insight on a personal level that narrative will get it. • Matt Matcuk you could get with a narrative about the way that this particular individual researcher sees Problems with the Just-In-Time Model for the landscape without having to memorize Biologists and Natural Historians facts or anything really. • Dan Rademacher • There’s an often discussed dichotomy between biological science and physical science, and it’s usually stated that the highest point of a physicist’s career is his dissertation. It’s a young man’s game. You’re hard wired for a specific insight, you think a certain way, you grab aspects of the nature The Best of Just-In-Time and Nuggetizing, 30 of the universe, and boom, there it is. Versus but Highlight Synthesis and Integration biology, where it is late in people’s careers • Lauren made a good point, and I think that they assemble a big enough body of Christopher’s point is also really important. I data, a big enough mind map of biologi- think making a distinction between biologists cal systems so that they can make the big and physicists is unnecessary. It may be true integrations that then produce the gems of Capitalizing on Younger Generation’s and it may not be true, but the larger point insight. In the context of the change that Penchant for Just-In-Time Learning and you’re making is crucial. I do think there’s an Networking you’ve just mentioned about the just-in-time issue, whether philosophical or ideological, learning concept, what does that bode for • If you’re talking about fostering people who that needs to be resolved. Matt was say- are interested in biology and want to become biology/natural history, which to me does not ing kids are moving into that world and it biologists in the future using that style of fit so well with the just-in-time data acquisi- may or may not be a good thing, but I think just-in-time learning, there’s also the fact that tion model, or whose needs are not met by one needs to commit. Probably something is people have a greater sense of network and the just-in-time data acquisition model? gained by it, but is something lost? a greater sense of connections. So you could • Christopher Richard foster that within the gallery. Say you have a The value of Christopher’s point is that I do connection to this place and somebody else Timeline and Overarching think something is lost. I think he’s right has a connection to a different place, and you Segments as Cohesive Factors about that. I don’t think we want to just can collaborate and connect with each other. • I hope my career didn’t peak twenty-some- give ground. I think we want to capitalize on I think that’s a way that science might move thing years ago. It’s a little discouraging to the best of what the technology and just-in- forward in general from now on for people in think there’s such a difference. I think things time learning and nuggetizing of information younger generations. So make those connections and give those opportunities for some- are continually evolving. One of the things can give. We want to capitalize on that and body to say, “Look at all of those cool things that stuck with me from last year is the leverage it, but we don’t want to do that at that other people are doing, here’s what I can concept of having a timeline moving through the expense of what Christopher has nailed offer.” That may be the way to go about it. everything as a cohesive factor. I really like because the problems that we have are big, There are these short little bits of learning the idea of having these separate, clear, integrated, synthetic problems and if we that everybody has and it’s when you bring it overarching segments that were brought can’t get that across, we are not going to all together that it really makes a difference. up for each of these areas, so whether the solve the problems by nuggetizing. How that • Lauren Palumbi viewer knows it or not, there’s something co- translates into an exhibit is difficult, but I hesive in each of these things. I don’t really think as a large, overarching view, one needs want to say much about the difference be- to hold that out as a vision, and then you’re tween a biologist and a physicist other than highlighting this notion of synthesis and inte- that there has been a lot of work recently to gration, and that needs to be embedded into bring these varying disciplines together and this vision of a museum space. • Peter Kahn it has been very successful. • Norman L. Miller Meta-narratives and Personal Reality Reality,” Teachers College Record 80, no. 1 31 • I’m a learning scientist. I look at learning (1978): 34). I want us to think about that. for a living, and I’m just laying that on the To be able to think about that, we need to table. I do take exception to the fallback of talk with more social scientists. There are just-in-time. People do know meta-narra- a lot of people out there who deal with this tives. We know from all the research and all business. I don’t know who they are right the learning that people can be taught meta- now, but I totally agree with the idea of skills and strategies. I’m hoping Peter will wanting people to be in the space. The best back me up on this. I don’t want to fall back exhibits do that. You imagine yourself in the to “lite” learning. We can do some of both Mojave Desert and you see that rat or some- but we can’t just descend to just-in-time thing, that little piece of transcending time because people like to do networking. I think and space. It’s something besides the physi- you can use networking well, but it’s not cal stuff of signs and colors, which we always the only thing going on in town. People can talk about at these meetings eventually. get meta-narratives and they can be taught. Someone always brings up signage. I don’t Please remember that. want to do that. That’s not where I want to Another thing is, I am really struck by this go. I think you want to find a way for people to actually inhabit that space. You want whole notion that a number of people have Doris Ash mentioned of personalization. I teach a them to see the things around them. Peter’s course on learning right now and I’m very suggestion about identifying the things that struck with the notion of your personal you wouldn’t want to give up is a good way reality of where you are vis a vis learning to do that because then in your mind you (for me, learning and teaching). I want my can see that grocery store, you can see those students to locate themselves in the world animals. • Doris Ash I’m asking them to inhabit. It’s like a personal mandala. You surround yourself with all of the things that really inform you. For me it’s being informed about learning and teaching. For someone in the museum it would be about the place and those meta-narratives. There is an article about personal reality that is not related to this kind of work at all but to teaching, by Maxine Greene (Maxine Greene, “Teaching: The Question of Personal 32 Diorama Literature Review and Research Projects

will emphasize that we were really looking at LITERATURE REVIEW outcomes. In other words, if a visitor has an AND RESEARCH PRESENTATION experience or a group has an experience, at Cecilia Garibay the end of the day what can we say they took Principal, Garibay Group away from that experience?

What I’m going to present is not so much the Here is some of the literature we looked at. evaluation piece but the research component As you can see, it was all across the board. We that is embedded in the project itself around looked at a lot of the published literature and the broader question of dioramas in general. a lot of the gray literature, which was essen- This particular research thread had a couple tially evaluation. What we were looking for of phases. The first was a literature review here was, what do we know about the specific to try to find some comprehensive informa- outcomes and what is the strength of those tion, regarding the question: What we can say outcomes?

Cecilia Garibay are actual outcomes of visitor experiences at dioramas? Literature Reviewed

Literature Review

What do we know about the outcomes of museum visitors’ experiences with dioramas and how those outcomes are achieved?

If we go to the next slide, what we essentially There is a lot of literature out there, but it found is that there are four major buckets, if hadn’t come together in any specific way. I you will, of outcome types. been added. Sound, for example, was fre- Outcome Types quently an added element, or maybe there 33 were things you could touch and feel outside • Emotional of the diorama itself. You can see that the • Attitudinal farther down the list you go, the less evidence • Cognitive there is of a particular outcome. For the ones • Other at the top, the literature shows fairly strong evidence across the board that that outcome is achieved. The ones in the middle section are those for which there is some evidence, but it is unclear how much of that is true. There is an affective component, there are some pieces related to attitude, there are We expected that what we would see is a high, some that are the more traditional, cognitive a medium, and a low category, but what we take-away, and then there is this bucket of found is that there is a high, a medium, and a “other.” We have copies of the actual litera- “not really studied” category, which are the ture review that runs to some eighty-plus pages ones at the very bottom. Even though people that you may peruse. There is also a second have made component, which I’m not going to go into in claims about detail. dioramas from these What you can see [at right] is that we took perspectives, all of these different studies and developed a we didn’t see coding scheme for these four buckets. So, for evidence in example, any outcomes that related to having the literature a sense of psychological flow and immersion in terms of would be referenced with a code that you can any kind of see. We have one called “understanding” that true measure would be in the cognitive bucket. We indicated of outcome. the different levels, though that doesn’t show up very well on this slide. This helped the team in We looked at the relative strengths of these a number particular outcomes in both traditional diorama of ways. I halls and those that had been renovated, think it really meaning that some sort of interventions had synthesized the literature for them regarding what the view was this gap. We think the dioramas elicit 34 specific outcomes are that we know are strong a sense of place and foster ideas around that, in current dioramas and what implications that but it is not clear. What we have developed is might have for this project. a study that looks at that particular question. What is it that we can say about the ways in There was also an appendix, probably the which dioramas contribute to the visitors de- same size as the literature review, when we veloping a sense of place, and what are those looked at the literature and sliced it according dimensions of place? to what we know about different components of dioramas. For example, what was the func- When we look at the sense of place literature, tion of labels? What was the function of im- what you will find is that there are two camps. mersive-type experiences? What was the func- There is what we may call the very simplified tion of sound? That was a completely separate way of thinking about sense of place, which is piece that the team can use as reference. If that it is about attachment. But a lot of the Q: So you were studying both evaluation studies and research studies? • Doris Ash you’re trying to develop different interpretive literature about sense of place talked about it strategies or ways to develop a project, what as a fairly complex concept. A: Yes. It was everything that we could find that might that tell you? was out there. I’m sure that there are pieces One of the folks whose literature inspired us that we missed, but we put a call out there So that was phase one and I don’t want to quite a bit has agreed to be an advisor on this and Mary Jo was instrumental in getting so spend a lot of time on it because I think the project. Nicole Ardoin is at Stanford and has much of that coalesced in some kind of cohe- next piece is the most pertinent to you. After done a lot of work on sense of place in terms sive way that we could then take a look at. we did the literature review the question on of physical places where people live. Most of • Cecilia Garibay the table was, where are the gaps? What is her research is actually about living in a partic- it that we maybe don’t know? Where is there ular ecology or place. You can see that the way some evidence that dioramas may lead to she describes sense of place is a fairly complex certain outcomes, but we are not really clear concept. It incorporates a number of different if it’s true or not? dimensions including cognition, affect, and some sort of relationship to place. “Develop a sense of place” was one of the potential outcomes that we looked for. There was Research Question some evidence in the literature that was true, In what ways and to what extent do but not enough that we could say yes, that is Sense of Place traditional habitat dioramas contribute to a definitive piece. This became our research “Sense of place describes the complex cogni- visitors’ developing sense of place? Which tive, affective, and evaluative relationships dimensions of sense of place are they most question. This is something that was discussed people develop with social and ecological apt to contribute to? and honed with the team. Essentially, what communities” we were beginning to look at with the second Ardoin, 2006 phase of this research after the literature re- To develop this research study we have been Another is this notion of place dependence, looking at a lot of the theoretical constructs which is when you have some sort of associa- 35 around development of a sense of place and tion between yourself and a particular place. what that means. Another construct, place familiarity, is just as it sounds. How familiar are you with the place and do you have positive memories of and atti- Sense of Place Model tudes about a particular environmental area or Hammitt, Kyle, & Oh (2009) place? Place belongingness is one of the other • Place identity — individual’s personal iden- constructs that Hammitt et al. pulled from tity in relation to the physical environment the literature. Do you have a sense of affilia- (Proshansky, 1978). tion with a particular place? Often it is talked • Place dependence — perceived strength of association between a person and a specific about as a sense of bondedness with a particu- place. (Stokols & Shumaker, 1981). lar place. Then there is this notion of place

• Place familiarity — pleasant memories, at- rootedness, which is really a sense of being so tribute and cognitive meanings, and envi- rooted that you feel comfortable. ronmental images. (Roberts, 1996; Stedman, 2003). Now remember that most of these constructs • Place belongingness — feeling of affiliation and sense of place models come out of stud- with place, a social bond where people feel as ies that have been done with people living in though they are connected and hold ‘membership” with an environment (Mesch & Manor, a particular place. For example, with Nicole 1998; Milligan, 1998). Ardoin’s work, she interviewed and did a lot of • Place rootedness — strong and focused bond work with people living in the Galapagos or in that “in its essence means being completely Chesapeake Bay. So a lot of these constructs at home” (Tuan, 1980; Hammitt et al., 2009). are done with people living in a place, which is important to know because we were trying to figure out how to take these concepts and The one that we found that is the most com- apply them to a museum setting. prehensive and has looked very specifically at What we did is look at different sense of place the literature was Hammitt et al.’s work on scales, most developed by Hammitt et al. They what sense of place actually involves. You can validated them in a number of different ways. see that a lot of it has to do with these five You won’t be able to read most of these, but I different constructs. There is the notion of wanted to show them to you. Again it is place identity. In other words, part of your personal familiarity, belongingness, identity, depen- identity is related to the physical environment dence and rootedness. They developed several in one way or another. instruments. The first was an in-depth instrument that had tons of questions on it. Then of constructs that we are finding in the litera- 36 they did what they called a medium, where ture. Second, we wanted to pilot two differ- they pulled some questions out and tested ent kinds of methods to see how they were that. Then they developed what they called working, and it was important to us to have About the Parsimonious Model their parsimonious model, which was even both a qualitative and quantitative measure. Basically what Hammitt et al. did was begin with an extensive questionnaire with shorter. After testing them they came to the So that first phase was pretty much a testing different subsets, and then they kept scaling conclusion that the parsimonious model was ground, figuring out whether this was working that back to see if the shorter version with just as good as the extensive instrument, so and whether it gave us the kind of data we less questions still got them fairly good data. They found that it did, which is good for us that is what we based a large part of our study might expect. Phase two will be a much larger because we want it short and sweet. on, taking this particular instrument and seeing sample at Denver. The sample questionnaire [sidebar, page 35] how we might adapt it to a museum setting. gives you a sense of the way that it’s set up, One of the things you will see when I get into though a few questions were removed before Our challenge, of course, was to figure out how some of the very preliminary results from the they reached the parsimonious model. to adapt this kind of scale in a museum set- Field Museum is that they are two very differ- ting, where you are talking to visitors from a ent types of institutions. The Field Museum’s lot of different places with a lot of different dioramas really cover a range and aren’t really experiences that aren’t necessarily rooted in set in terms of doing interpretations of a very that particular place, which is where a lot of particular bioregion. There are some that have the sense of place work has been done. But we to do with the Midwest, but you also have Af- did do it, and I’ll share that with you. rica Hall, the Amazon, and so forth, so it’s not a cohesive space in the way that the Natural First I’ll share our research design. Once we Sciences Gallery here is or is planned to be. looked at a lot of the theoretical constructs and figured out what some of the validated Kirk can describe Denver. Research Design instruments were that had been used over time Two Phases and felt pretty robust, we then had to figure Dioramas at the Denver Museum of Natural History • Pilot: Field Museum out what the research design looks like. What • Phase II: Denver Museum of Natural History we came up with is two phases. There is a pilot • There are several halls about Colorado that are based on exact spots. You can go back and Methods study that we have been doing at the Field stand in those spots now and see that exact • Observations (intact group) Museum and are still in the middle of, and then view, even though the dioramas were installed • Interviews (adult and child – separate) in 1938 • Kirk Johnson • Survey (adults) a phase two that will be done in Denver.

Our phase one piece at the Field Museum is That was one of the reasons for using Colorado allowing us to do several things. It is allowing as the larger research piece. It has more simi- us to test these instruments as we’ve adapted larity to the Oakland Museum in that there are them to see if we are getting any data that a lot of place-specific dioramas that we will be feels reliable and allows us to pursue the kinds able to look at. The methods that we have use for the pilot remind you of a place that you’ve been to study include observations of intact groups. before?” After they circle it we ask them why 37 What that means is whatever the social dy- or what kind of place. We have a fairly open- namic of that group is. Often it’s families, ended question at the beginning where we say, sometimes it’s two individuals who know each “What do you call those places?” That is just so other or couples. A team of two researchers we use the terminology they might use rather work with each group. They are instructed to than a more technical term for a type of place. go through what we call a nature walk, and Again, we are right in the midst of all of this basically we are doing observations in this very research and what I’m presenting to you is very discreet area. It is cued and the participants preliminary. The sample size at the Field Mu- are miked with wireless recorders so we can seum is fairly small. We are doing about eight capture their conversations as they are going to ten groups, mostly to try to get a range of through the gallery. different people. They are actually recruited. After they go through that space they are They get an honorarium, free admission to the asked to complete a survey, which is essentially museum, and parking. that sense of place scale, and then they are We’ve had really good luck, and what we’ve interviewed. The interview is a very important been doing is trying to select a sample where piece for us, and again that is recorded. So we we get very different social configurations. can look at what we get from the observation We have also tried, through our network, to data and the recorded conversations there, recruit people who seem to have very different and what we get from the interview that may kinds of experiences with and relationships to Kirk Johnson scans the phase one literature review help us look at parallel conversations, what we nature. For example, we might select a group heard, what visitors talk about in the course that we know does a lot of outdoor kinds of of the visit, and what we didn’t see during the things, so their relationship to nature is the observations but may get as we interview visi- outdoors in an urban setting. It doesn’t mean tors and ask them to reflect on their experience. they don’t do nature-specific things within that We do interview both adults and children, but urban setting, but it would be very different separately. The adults get the survey, which from the family that we chose that has a cabin is the sense of place scale, and then we go in northern Wisconsin and goes there three or through a fairly standard, semi-structured four times a year to a fairly rustic nature area interview. With children, we actually give where they fish and so forth. The idea was to them photos of the dioramas we’ve selected get that kind of range so that we could see and use those as prompts to ask questions. For how the instrument was working with very dif- example, a question might be: “Which of these ferent kinds of groups. Here is a peek at the instrument that we And nine, eleven and twelve are the identity 38 developed. There are a couple of questions dimension. I can give you more detail about that we added. For example, number one: this later if you’d like, but this is really more “Do you recall seeing this diorama during your about giving you an overview. walk?” We wanted to make sure that they had When visitors get the questionnaire, there is seen that particular diorama. The one thing a photo of the diorama at the top of the page I should mention is that when they are cued, and then these questions they are asked to they are told they are going to be in this area Note: The survey instruments shown here are answer. They do that for all five dioramas, so still under development, being shared for pur- and this is the only area we want them to be poses of discussion during this session. we are working with five pages. in. They can go anywhere they want but are asked to be sure to stop at specific spots. They are given a sheet of paper that has all five Nature Connectedness Scale dioramas, each with a small color photo. What we are finding is that even though they have been cued, people don’t necessarily go to all of those places and they don’t necessarily methodically go to each of the five. Some people do, but some people wander and maybe make their way to three of them. It has been really interesting. So the first thing we want to know is, did they see this particular diorama. In addition to that, the survey instrument also has what we call a Nature Connectedness Items two to six represent Scale, which is adapted from Mayer et al. The that notion of familiarity, reason for this is that while we had the sense so it’s about “I know this of place scale, what we couldn’t find within place,” “I’m familiar with this the construct of that scale was something that place.” Seven, eight and ten helped us understand how people self-identify are adapted from Hammitt’s as being part of nature or being connected to belongingness dimension, so nature. So again this has is based on a vali- it’s about “I feel somehow dated instrument and we pulled the questions connected to these places.” that seemed strongest and most adaptable to strong reactions that we wanted something a museum environment. So they also answer similar. Relationships Among 39 these questions, and what we anticipate we Sense of Place and Dioramas This shows you that Ham- will be able to do is then disaggregate the data mitt scale again and different by this kind of thing. ways that you can think about This is Nature Walk [below], the area of the it. Some questions are about study, and the different dioramas. Some of visitation: I have been to this these depict more local places near Chicago, place, I know this place. There but we also tried to pick some places that were is this notion of familiarity: I not nearby but were somehow iconic. For ex- am familiar with this place, I ample, for some people the Amazon Rainforest connect with it in some way. might be an iconic spot. The reason we did that And then the last is place bond- was because while these places may not be edness, which is also about the close to home, people might be familiar with connectedness piece. This is them. In our front-end study we found that Yo- the survey, and then the inter- semite is such a strong iconic spot that evokes view probed these concepts.

Fox Lake, Illinois Iron County, northern Michigan

Rio Branco, Brazil Grand Canyon National Park Deep River, Indiana Lake Michigan, near Chicago Amazonian Rainforest Kaibab Plateau What I am going to show you are very, very bonded you are to it. You can see again that 40 preliminary pieces from about ten adult “Prairie” falls well below the line. What is respondents, just so you can see what we’ve interesting, if we look at “Rainforest” and at been doing. We took these three dimensions: “Woods,” is that they fall well above the line. visitation, familiarity and place bondedness. It’s interesting to think about. What does that mean? It seems to be that you can actually cre- You see here, with familiarity and visitation, ate place bondedness with places that you’ve that the line is what we would expect. What not visited before. The reason why would be you can see is that we chose dioramas that we interesting to ﬁnd out. Some of the researchers hoped had a range of familiarity, a range of that I have heard talk about it have ventured visitation, and even bondedness, and that is that perhaps places like rainforests have got- true, you do see that. There ten such play in the media and so forth that does seem to be almost a Familiarity and Visitation you actually feel potentially very connected to linear relationship, but you it, even if you do not go there. If it works for can see that “Prairie,” for ex- rainforests it might work for Yosemite. ample, is well below the line. What is interesting is that This is Chicago and I want to point out that prairies are visited, but they “Lakefront” is high on the scale. I want to high- don’t seem to have that same light that because I feel the contextual piece is level of familiarity. important.

Next we have place bonded- Again, these are very preliminary, but I wanted ness and visitation. This is to whet your appetite a little. If we go to how often you visit and how the place bondedness and familiarity, which involves ques- Place Bondedness and Visitation Place Bondedness and Familiarity tions regarding how familiar you are with a place and how bonded you feel to that place, we can see again that “Rainfor- est” is above the trend line. “Marsh,” however, is well below. I don’t know with the rainforest. With the rainforest, and a what that says about marshes. little bit with the Grand Canyon, you see that 41 a place can evoke that bondedness even when What About the Prairies? The piece that I don’t have time to go into familiarity or visitation are not one-to-one. • It’s hard to get Illinois people excited about is some of the rich qualitative data from the the prairies. The reason I think it’s more interviews. What we are finding is that it Aspects of Place Connectedness familiarity than bondedness is that every kid matches pretty well with what you see on has to take a field trip to see the prairie, these graphs. What you don’t see here is the • Personal place – Memories of places person but it’s fragmented, it’s tiny, it used to be has visited/spent time. amount of emotional things that come out in everywhere and now it’s gone. The kids are interviews, memories for example. One of the • Shared place – Memories of places group has like, “Okay, it’s grass. When do we go to been to together. interesting things that we’ve learned is that MacDonalds?” • Matt Matcuk the conversations that are happening between • Community place – Members of a community enjoy this place regularly enough that it be- visitors during the observations are not neces- comes shared by a larger group (e.g., Chicago Keeping Mum on Metacomments area residents and Lake Michigan. sarily reflecting what is happening with visitors • You’re saying that the metacomments they internally. You get a lot of conversation about • “Touchstone” places – Members of a larger make during interviews aren’t being shared shared memory of a place, for example, but if community – a state or a nation– share this in the conversations they have with their place in certain ways, even if they have never you have an individual memory or attachment, been there (e.g., Amazon Rainforest and companions? • Doris Ash Grand Canyon). you’re not necessarily sharing that with the • Yes • Cecilia Garibay rest of your group. • Ecological place – Place that looks and feels familiar because it reminds a person of other This shows you all three variables. It does show places she has spent time in (e.g., similar Habitat and Place you that there is a fairly specific relationship plants, landscape, animals). between all three constructs, except maybe • It seems like it’s confusing habitats and place. The Grand Canyon is a place; all the rest of The last piece I’ll talk about those are habitats. • Kirk Johnson Comparison of Mean Scores for All 3 Variables is a few of the other things we are finding. Not surpris- • We gave these habitat names on the graphs, ingly, memories come up a but in the dioramas they have very specific place names. Just to make sure that didn’t lot though as I mentioned, get lost we took the place label, put it on a they’re not always shared in big sheet of paper, and stuck it on the diorama conversation. We find that itself. What we’re finding though is that personal place memories people don’t really pay attention to that. are shared more in inter- • Cecilia Garibay views whereas shared place • People having an affinity with “the woods” or memories are shared more their woods is a pretty different thing. • Kirk at the group level. Johnson There is also this notion of members of a com- call them “cultural places,” meaning part of a 42 munity enjoying that space, which is really shared culture. The notion is that as a larger about something you do as a larger group or group, as a country, as a state, as a city, you as part of a community you belong to. We saw seem to relate to places in a certain way. The that a lot, for example, with the Lake Michigan Grand Canyon might be one of these. As Ameri- diorama. It’s a scene of the lakefront in winter cans you have this notion of the Grand Canyon and you heard over and over people sharing as a particular touchstone place. Finally, there this idea of the lakefront. There seems to be is one that we are toying with and are not one data coming out about communal place. hundred percent sure about that we are naming “ecological place.” These are places that Then there are these places that, for lack of look and feel familiar because they remind a better word, we are calling “touchstone someone of another place that they’ve spent places.” We wrestled with whether we should time in. This is where they might talk about those animals or those plants and so forth. And A Cultural Cross-section of Interviewees sometimes it’s not the specific place in the diorama, but it elicits ideas about their famil- • Are the people you are going to be interviewing do with the museum going experience. Most iarity with a particular type of animal. both at Denver and here a full cultural spread evaluations studies are totally skewed in the of people, including those who wouldn’t nor- other direction. • Doris Ash There is much more I could say, but we would mally visit a museum? • Doris Ash • That is an important dimension in this project, like to have time for conversation. We are • Yes. In the Chicago study we purposely sampled which is partially why, as we recruit families, wrapping up the Field Museum study in the to get a range. In the Colorado study we’ll we are paying them $100 a shot to come, next two weeks and go to Denver in early De- need to figure that out for the survey piece in on top of the free parking and so forth. But cember. We have been doing preliminary data particular because that might involve just the we are asking for about two hours of their analysis and will do another deep dive, and visitors on-site, but for the qualitative study we time, total. They’re not spending two hours then revise some of the instruments as needed will be able to do more specific recruitment. in the gallery, but by the time they get to the before going to Denver. What we are planning • Cecilia Garibay museum, walk in the door, get oriented and so for the Denver study is something similar to forth, it’s about two to two-and-a-half hours. • Can I just give a little background on why that’s • Cecilia Garibay this, where we have huge groups that come in important? Most evaluation studies in museums and do a sort of deep dive with them. Then, have classically been done with people who go • But back to the question: Are you tapping non- because we are finding that the survey instru- to museums, so it will be the white European museum-going families? • Doris Ash ment is fairly robust, it means we can poten- museum-goers who go three to four times a • Absolutely. That’s an area I’m huge on. Most of year. Most of us who are doing this kind of work tially use that instrument with visitors who are my research involves non-museum-goers. are trying to change the balance on that and walk-by visitors—in other words, as they are work with bilingual families or recruit from dif- • Cecilia Garibay leaving a gallery—so we can have a fairly high ferent community programs and see what they end for the survey and then a smaller end for the qualitative piece. RESEARCH DISCUSSION Now it connects to discussion that Matt and others had on the nuggetizing of information. 43 Sense of Place and Global Connections There is a similar structure of the argument that is happening. In that account, sense of • It’s great seeing this work. My sense of the place is important, but many of the people sense of place literature in the research field coming in are potentially saying, “Sense of is that it has traditionally been quite weak. place isn’t that important to me because we The concept is very provocative and you are in a global world and all of my friends want good research out there. It hasn’t been live all over the country or all over the world there, and it’s hard to know what to make and we’re IMing and texting.” It’s like, “Who Sense of Place: A Story in Motion of the literature that is there, so it’s nice to cares?” if we’re talking about the younger see this and the way that you’re working the generation and the shifting baseline and the • I’d like to spin off a little on what Peter said. Part of how I think of sense of place is not qualitative and quantitative to address these younger generation constructing knowledge just connectedness to a natural place but sorts of issues. and saying sense of place isn’t important. connectedness to a story that you tell. The When I try to connect it to the dialog I heard If it’s true and there’s a commitment to way people feel belonging is often related earlier about how important sense of place it, that sense of place is important and it’s to the story, and that changes and there is is to what is happening here at the Oakland part of human flourishing, but visitors aren’t motion in that. Part of what might break us out of this issue of sense of place becoming Museum, one meta-question I have is, why necessarily recognizing it, it’s partly because static is thinking about it being in motion and is sense of place important? I’m trying to there needs to be this new integration. In the thinking about the story that we are telling. understand the answer that the Oakland same way that we are trying to integrate the I’m thinking about a book that won an award Museum has to that question. nuggetizing of information on the one hand in Australia a while back called My Place, by When I spin it, I’m thinking two things. First, with synthesis and integration, I feel there’s Sally Morgan. She is part aboriginal and part it’s part of the sustainability story. Having a need to integrate the importance of sense white Australian, and it’s about gaining a sense a sustainable global and local society and of place with this reality that in order for us of who she was and connecting to how she discovered what her place is. • Carolyn Finney world is potentially connected to having a to solve problems we are in a new place, a strong sense of identity to sense of place. global world. Just a sense of place focus is Then on a more psychological or social sci- not going to solve the problems. ence side, I think of it as tied to an account The exhibit commitment needs to be about of human flourishing. I wouldn’t go quite as how to draw out sense of place and connect far back as Scott goes (billions of years), but it globally. I think you’ve got some ways. from an evolutionary standpoint, we have You’re doing it bottom-up almost, from the always had very deep sense of place, and data, and you’re starting to see it emerge that has changed quite recently in human from the data. What I would suggest is con- evolution. tinuing to work that, but to also work the top-down from a philosophical or conceptual the edge of the prairie and the mountains, 44 side. • Peter Kahn but I would bet that a lot of people are unfa- miliar with both of those kinds of landscapes. Reflections from Denver Dioramas They’re going to be familiar with the urban, with the ash tree, elm tree, city park kind • We have 104 dioramas, one of the largest col- of place that has grown in the last hundred lections of dioramas in the country. It is both years. a treasure and a challenge because it takes What really struck me about Cecilia’s presen- The Power of Popular Representation up literally 200,000 square feet of space. A lot of them are based on actual spots you can tation is that there is this affinity to certain • I was thinking about representation and why types of places; not places but habitats. As the Grand Canyon and the rainforest strike go back to. We have been trying to relocate primates we kind of like forests. We’re really a chord with people. I think it is absolutely those spots. Thirty-four of them are in Colo- because they have been represented in rado, and most of those are places that are rooted to climbing on stuff, and there’s not movies, in music, in popular culture. I hard to get to, so relocating them is a real that much difference between the Amazon wouldn’t underestimate the role of popular challenge. forest and a forest to a primate. It’s a place culture in exposing people, particularly where you can go and get some nice apples the younger generation, to these places. What I was thinking about when we were and stuff. I’m really curious. I’ll bet when Yosemite is going to be on Oprah’s show next talking about this exhibit and these seven all of the data is pulled apart, it’s skewed week because she just went camping there. I places is that most of the people who walk unintentionally for a particular type of know one of the park rangers there, Shelton in here will have been to one of those place. One example is our Smokey Mountain, Johnson, who was just on Ken Burns’s show places—at least to Oakland and maybe Georgia diorama. It’s a beautiful forest, but about Buffalo Soldiers. Not to use that is an Yosemite. We have this scientific concept of oversight, whatever you might think of Oprah it has no animals in it. People will walk by it what constitutes California as a place, but or popular culture. That’s going to get a lot and say, “Oh, it’s empty,” and keep walking. we find in Colorado that most of the kids in of attention, and that’s how I think what So the presence or absence of animals is an “touchstone” means changes over time as the city have never been to the mountains, important element there too. • Kirk Johnson well. • Carolyn Finney for example. You can see the mountains, but they’ve never been to the mountains. A Sense of Place: Then What? I’m processing this as we go, but I think it’s • I just want to make sure I understand the big very curious. These things we are trying to picture. You did the literature review and build people’s love for are actually quite you saw that sense of place was not really remote places to them, even though they’re sufficiently or well explored. You looked right nearby or quite important to our mes- at how these different factors affected a sage. I’m really psyched you’re doing Oak- visitor’s varying degree of sense of place. land because that’s going to hit your audi- I’m missing the rhetorical end point there. Is ence. Our problem in Denver is that we’re at there an assumption that if you do a good job of generating a sense of place in your diora- Action Versus Attitude mas here, therefore—what? An appreciation 45 • Environmental studies have been doing this will occur and therefore an attitude change, for a long time, trying to figure out how at- and from that attitude change...? I’m not titudes and practices are linked. As far as I sure where all of that is headed. can tell from the literature, they are very • Matt Matcuk loosely coupled. There’s no predictor really about how people are going to be acting. An • This goes back a little to what Peter was anthropologist, Dorothy Holland, has some talking about. First, can dioramas and to interesting papers on this, basically making what extent do dioramas elicit that sense the argument that attitude doesn’t change of place. Then there is literature that looks at the possibility that when you have connectedness, when you have attachment, you begin to care more about the place. It’s diffi- Research Goals and the Focus on Sense of Place cult to claim that from an exhibition or from some of you around the table do, there is also a gallery you’re going to turn out a bunch of • In the beginning we essentially said, there’s not much research out there about dioramas at the idea of combining this with social science conservationists, but there is this notion that all. There are lots of people out there making work that is going on to get a better sense, place attachment makes you think about it decisions about whether to get rid of them or about people’s feelings about nature and con- more, makes you care about it more, and not because they take up a lot of room. There nectedness to nature, and what people need in potentially leads you to think about it in a are lots of camps of people who say dioramas order to care. different way, and to think of it as an impor- are our most powerful nature experience in a That is the bottom line. I don’t think we will tant place that you don’t want to lose. museum, and others who say dioramas do noth- get there just with this research, but it is • Cecilia Garibay ing and we need everything to be hands-on. It building a body of knowledge that we can use is very polarized. What we proposed to NSF is going forward. • Kathleen McLean • So that research exists, that’s out there? that we were going to start the conversation. We were going to look at what we know, which • And the literature review is a way to synthe- • Matt Matcuk is some stuff, we were going to look at what we size what we know, at least from the evidence don’t know, and then start in bites and chunks base. You saw that there were quite a range of • There is some of that in the studies, yes. As to look at this more closely. research questions that fell into that medium Peter said, sense of place literature is sort of or not studied range. We could have taken any I think the understanding on this project is that all over the place, but there does seem to be one of them I think, but the reason sense of we are starting this research, we are not ending at least some notion that would be helpful. place made sense is because of the particular it. We are hoping that we get other people, nature of the project and the way that in the • Cecilia Garibay like those of you here, involved to do more, to NSF proposal, there was a hypothesis that es- go deeper, to come up with your own questions sentially seeded the proposal. • Cecilia Garibay and continue this work. Coming back to what participation, participation changes attitude. Marketing Critical Places 46 • Doris Ash • For me, the most interesting thing out of the many findings there is that some aspects Delineating the Borders Using Research to Guide Perspectives of sense of place can be marketed. Clearly and/or Development • One aspect of place that I have never seen the rainforest and the Grand Canyon were mentioned has been a real problem for us • I know you want to get to the prototypes, marketed. One of the things that might mean in our discussions here. How do we draw a but I feel I need an ending here before I’m is that some of the dioramas of certain places border around it? In picking those seven spots, able to do that. I appreciate what you are that are essential to the sustainability of the is Yosemite the national park boundary? Is it saying about this being in some ways the environment in California, but may not have Yosemite Valley? Is it everything you can see beginning of an extended and fascinating a sense of place with the visitor now, can be from Mount Dana? In Oakland, is it the city research project, but I need to know if you, marketed. They shouldn’t be given up on. limits? You’ve got Piedmont situated inside of • Rick Bonney Oakland. Is that part of it? It’s a much broader the project team, have any preliminary con- question than that, but it’s where the rubber clusions or lenses based on Cecilia’s research • Yeah, like save Sutter Buttes! • Kathleen has hit the road for us in development here. that you want us to look through as we look McLean • Christopher Richard at the prototypes. • Rick Bonney

• We are just hearing about this research for • Exactly. • Rick Bonney the first time as well. I don’t know about the Rick Bonney rest of you, but I need time to digest this. We could try to huddle and see if some of the things Cecilia talked about can help to hone questions for this afternoon. From the beginning we said that we don’t know what the field doesn’t know, so we can’t say in our grant that we are going to concretely take what this research does and use it to inform our development work. We hope it does. We hope that what Cecilia and her colleagues find out will help us make some decisions or steer our ship in terms of what we are developing. We are not sure yet whether they will. • Kathleen McLean Prototype Review 47

PROTOTYPING OVERVIEW a lot at hotspots, the term “hotspot,” global hotspots, and what that brings up for people. Mary Jo Sutton Do they understand it or not? We have looked Lead Exhibition Developer/Designer, OMCA at whether people get the notion and defini- I want to share some write-ups with you about tion of diversity and threat in California versus some of the prototyping and then we are go- the term “hotspot.” ing to go into the gallery and look at a few. To Recently we have been looking a lot at habitat follow up on Cecilia’s presentation, when we loss and what there is about habitat loss that did our front-end evaluations a couple of years people can connect to or understand. And on ago, some of those questions actually came up a base level, with our places, what is happen- in the front-end interviews, and it’s interesting with habitat loss that we can communicate ing to hear how it is coming up in some of the successfully? formative evaluations as well. Right now the museum is open on two floors. For a lot of people, California is a fabulous The lower floor is closed. We’ve been snagging place but a little bit mysterious. I think the people, bringing them down to our gallery, Mary Jo Sutton emphasis during this formative process has cueing them, and spending fifteen minutes been to say, “Okay, we have this idea about with them. We’ve been going through differ- this project conceptually. Does dividing Cali- ent rounds of conversation over a period of fornia up into these seven places make sense about three months. to you? Does diving the gallery up into seven places make sense to you?” We have been ask- A few big things are percolating up. One is, ing questions about people’s understanding of if you have prior knowledge about nature, what dioramas are and what nature is in some what you see is completely different than if ways. Sense of place is this very big umbrella you don’t. That is huge. Also, people have behind it. By dividing the gallery into these this deep fascination with how things are seven places, we are hoping to increase visi- made, and the artistry of the cases we have tors’ intrinsic motivation to pay more attention has bubbled up as something people are very to what we are offering. interested in.

I am going to very quickly review some of the Most recently, we are looking at how to link things that we have looked at. We have looked what is in those cases, that megafauna as well as the smaller animals, with these big, abstract ideas of habitat loss and nature as a quite environmentally aware. 48 valuable resource in California. Briefly, we’ve interviewed about 300 visitors, That is a quickie, shorthand version of what and not only on the concept of hotspots. We’ve we have been doing. Tisha has been working a interviewed people about hotspots, we’ve lot with the team, interviewing what Cecilia interviewed people about the idea of seven referred to as “intact groups.” We snag them, places and whether they get that is what we bring them down, and pair each group with an are going for, that we want to show them these interviewer and a note taker. She will tell you seven places. We have the habitat cases clus- a little more about that. tered around signage, so these are very, very basic concepts. Another prototyping session was Tisha Carper Long on “California: Diverse and Threatened,” and Exhibit Developer, OMCA the convergence of those two ideas, without bringing in too much about the idea of endem- As Douglas told us, the idea of hotspots is sort ics because that’s even a little bit harder. of a convergence of three different criteria. One is how diverse species are in an area, the We’ve also talked about some really specific second is the number or percentage of endem- interesting concepts, including the idea of ics in the area, and the third is how much loss upwelling and how that happens. You’re going to be able to see examples of all of these when Tisha Carper Long has occurred in the habitat. For those of you who already knew that definition of hotspots, you visit the gallery in a few minutes. We start- I’d love to know whether any of you have ed our upwelling prototype as a series of pic- walked into your local MacDonalds and tried tures and just about everybody we tested said, to explain that concept to the person at the “Gee, you ought to make this into a video,” so counter. Welcome to our world—this is what we then made it into a sort of animation. Then we have been working on. we found out that the user interface presents its own problems. I have made a comic book about how difficult this is (Prototyping “HOTSPOTS” at the Oak- We then had a full month of prototyping on land Museum of California’s Natural Science the idea of loss: habitat loss, species loss, and Gallery: A Nonliteral Story about the Process the loss of diversity itself. You can see all of of Prototyping with Real Visitor Comments, the loss prototypes in our Oakland section. We July-August 2010). It is a very limited edition, decided to just focus on Oakland because so and is about what it is like to prototype the many of our visitors are from Oakland. A more concept of hotspots with people who don’t detailed report on these prototypes is available have prior knowledge, or even people who are for you to read at your leisure. A lot of people thought it was global warming clearer. It’s a very aggressive schedule and we no matter what you did. People would look at are working really hard to come up with these 49 the map and see these areas in red [denot- prototypes. ing hotspot areas in the world] and ask, “Well Regarding the prototyping teams, we have a what about the polar bears? There’s no red number of staff people who have been trained up at the North Pole.” And, “What about the in prototyping, though we may need a new Amazon?” Some of South America is red, but training session since new people have come for people who understand a map of South on. We also have volunteers as well as some America, the red area is not the Amazon Basin. contract folks who come in. We have hired They kept coming up with questions and we people who speak Spanish as well as Can- kept trying to show them that it was the con- tonese speakers. We prototype in teams, so vergence of these three ideas that makes the there is typically one person who does all of hotspot. the questioning, and both people try to write It became clear that actually trying to com- down as much as they can. After we’ve talked municate the convergence of three difficult to the guests and escorted them back out and concepts may not be the way to go with our give them a small museum gift to thank them, visitors. We can bring those in in all sorts of we sit down and have a discussion between interesting different ways on a case-by-case the two of us about what we have learned. We basis, and we can even talk a little bit about have instruments for doing all of this. In the gallery: Matt Matcuk (foreground), Jennifer the convergence of those, but in trying to in- Stock and Douglas Long (background) We have the backup concept document and a troduce it as a founding idea to the visitors we sheet of questions that were derived from that got a lot of blank stares. “California Floristic concept document. We have a debrief sheet Province” is a strange name for people and it on every single set of guests that we’ve just doesn’t fit the shape of California. Everything interviewed, and we do a debrief on them. At about it was hard for people, which is what the the end of the day the teams come together comic book is about. and talk about the threads that they are pick- I’m going to back up a minute and talk about ing up from guests for that particular proto- logistics. The idea of our prototyping is that we type. would like to be able to try a new singular idea every month, unless it demands more. We prototype every week on Thursdays and Saturdays. We try to come up with something truly new every two weeks, and in the interim weeks we do a tweaking and try to make that concept POST-GALLERY-VISIT DISCUSSION they are a little older you introduce those 50 messages of danger and threat and extinc- Temescal Video: Replicating Local tion and so on, so you don’t scare them and Perspective Videos for Other Places depress them. Dealing with those two issues is a tricky thing for me. How do you do that Challenges and Questions • That video is really cool. I was wondering while telling some of the stories you want to • The prototypes speak for themselves, so rather whether it would be possible to do a video tell? • Matt Matcuk than having me talk more about them, I would like that for each of the seven places. Maybe like to hear your questions and comments. A not from the first-grader perspective, but lot of thought went into them and what we certainly from a local perspective where you Modalities for Storytelling want people to get out of them and whether have: This is how we understand it once was, • What do you see as the major modality for they are getting what we intended or not. this is now, and this is what we imagine in telling a story in this space? We saw one in There are a number of challenges. The that Temescal video, but how do you see challenge of having outdoor nature indoors the future. But possibly it could be directed is still on the table. The challenge of how to a little more to creative solutions, not just those stories being told? • Scott Sampson connect to habitat loss and what that means the jet packs on the animals. • Rick Bonney for the future is still on the table. • I don’t think we’ve talked a lot about that yet. We heard about that video through one The prototypes that you saw are not final. They The Human Connection and of our educators and because we thought are obviously rough, and we are trying to go Timing Delivery of Depressing Facts it was so rich and because it tells some of into places and figure out the interpretation • The main thing that I was looking for was the and the approach. For example, the Temescal the story that we want to get at about that human connection, and some human connec- video [in the Oakland section] was a piece place, we used it. I did notice that when this tion other than “Boy, we really screwed stuff done locally by a school. It talks about the whole advisor group went into the gallery, up.” We are doing an exhibition right now past environment being not so developed, the like the visitors, you focused on the habitat on conservation and our scientists, who are current environment being familiar, and the cases first and then went back to the boring, future being a time when maybe people can mainly biologists and anthropologists, go out flat graphics. So I don’t think we are neces- do things to make a difference so that, for and do these rapid inventories. They are very sarily going to develop those flat graphics. example, not all of the trees are gone. big on reinforcing the idea that humans are a That wasn’t the intent behind those studies. The questions we are asking are still very part of nature. It also depends on the difficulty of the story. broad for this project. Do they understand I’m also mindful of the research that was certain things that we think are core to this A lot of this talks about change over time, done a while ago now, probably a decade, in- project, which is really about changes in this and there has to be some sort of way to show dicating that the last thing in the world you environment over time and how people relate that change. • Mary Jo Sutton want to do is show children how endangered to the environment and those changes? • Mary Jo Sutton everything is. You start them off by show- • So what are you thinking? • Scott Sampson ing them how beautiful it is, you make them care, you get them excited, and then when • Certainly animations can help do that, certainly things that are on a slider of time can help do that. Then there is the mashup ing baselines historically, but the question that we saw of how one place has changed that came up this morning is, well so what? 51 over time. I think as the image morphs from How does it move towards the future? One one point in time to another, people will get way to do that is to ask us to imagine the that. It doesn’t have to be a collage with one future, and I think that’s what the Temescal image, it could be a transition between two video was starting to do. It was successful to images. • Mary Jo Sutton some extent, but how can it go further?

One way it can go further is to build on the Imagining “What If” Futures: idea of modeling. During last year’s advisor UrbanSims and the Human Connection session Mary Jo and I talked about involve- Peter Kahn (foreground) and Matt Matcuk in the gallery. • While we were in the galleries Peter and I ment I had with UrbanSim, which is a land were talking about the idea that the future use transportation modeling software devel- isn’t set. If you can imagine the future being oped by Paul Wadell and Alan Borning. Paul a certain way, how people visualize that in was at University of Washington, but he is now at Berkeley and could be somebody to the gallery can be very powerful. • Mary Jo think about contacting as well. It is a system Sutton that has been used in many major transpor- • What I was initially talking about is a type of tation land-use decisions on very large levels visualization they have now that is used with and on city levels internationally. faces: Here is your face now and here is your The software is kind of value neutral. What face twenty or forty years from now. When it does is say: If you put in this freeway, I first heard about that I thought, imagine here are the outcomes and this is what it an exhibit that said: Here’s your face, and is going to look like. It isn’t saying do it or if you have this lifestyle, here’s what you’ll don’t do it. And then what are the outcomes? look like twenty or fifty years from now. If That is where you have to ask, who are the you smoke and eat at Wendy’s and so forth, constituents and what sort of outcomes do here’s your face. • Peter Kahn you want to project out? It’s very powerful because most people think, put in a freeway • They do that at the Denver Museum. • Scott and it solves the congestion problem. Well, it Sampson doesn’t solve the congestion problem and it opens up a huge host of other problems, • It’s going back to the discussion we had this morning with the shifting baseline. I think it’s So it’s a technological tool for imagining the very important to be able to establish shift- future. What if we take that concept and connect it to the shifting baseline that we’ve talked about and environmental generational urban environment. It is the discussion on 52 amnesia and how to correct for that? We that level that is part of the imagining of say to visitors, here are different choices the future and connects the natural science and if you make these choices, here is what and the social science. • Peter Kahn the future looks like based on modeling and Missing: Engaging with scientific expectations. Cordell Bank: Visualizing Upwelling via the Environment Through Work

Then you try to connect it back to the Video Using Numerical Simulations • Again I am hearing the idea of connecting human part rather than just the natural sci- the natural science of a place to people’s • I particularly liked the offshore Cordell ence part. The oak thing that Christopher experience of that natural environment and Bank exhibit. The reason is that it triggered what they think of it. I’d just like to open did is really beautiful, but now you imagine something very closely related to what I am that up. In my opinion we use two frameworks the future. The question is, at what level doing. There may ways in which exhibits like when we think about human-environment do things change at the interactional level? that can offer viewers the opportunity to relationships. One is recreation and leisure. It’s not that I simply don’t get to see an oak drill down further and get more information That is the primary way we often talk about tree. That’s sad if I don’t get to see it, but that is not in words but in a visualization. the way in which people engage. The other it’s pretty passive. Kirk mentioned earlier One of the things that we have completed, is the natural environment as a supermarket that we are primates and we climb trees. interestingly enough, is “Numerical simu- of resources that we use. The problem is that Well, climbing is an interaction pattern. It sticking with just those two frameworks is lations of Future Climate and Upwelling has been with us for a very long time, kids limiting. Processes.” It’s a paper we are just getting love it. Well, imagine if you don’t get to out right now, but you can easily take all of One whole other way that people engage climb trees. That is one very small example, these kinds of numerical outputs and make is through work, and we don’t talk about but it is one that is trying to take it from a videos in API or MPV flavor and transfer it that enough. There are plenty of people passive viewing standpoint to what is the who understand our natural environment into something that could be put into that as story: Tell us a story about you climbing through work. It’s a very different way of an embedded piece. That would be some- understanding and of engaging. They are not trees. thing to think about. • Norman L. Miller necessarily thinking about climbing trees or When I interviewed inner-city African Ameri- how you’re going to use the fish from the river, can children in Houston, one of the questions Drilling Down: How Deep? they’re thinking about it differently. I don’t we talked to them about was their interac- know how we would get to that, but I think Opportunities to Drill Down and Pursue it’s really important. It may also lead us to tions, and climbing trees was a big one. a Topic via Links to Other Resources Sometimes they couldn’t, and why didn’t some more innovative and positive ways of • I don’t know if you’re aware of a report that thinking about what the future may look like they climb trees? They didn’t climb trees came out about the emerging storm of our in terms of that natural environment and the because there is glass and stuff underneath K-12 education being so far behind other relationship people have with it. • Carolyn the tree and they’re afraid they’re going nations. We are something like fortieth, Finney to fall. Now we have an interaction pattern compared to Finland, which is first, and that has been taken away because of a harsh most of the Asian K-12 equivalents. It seems to me one of the main functions here is to is much more interesting than the simplistic try to create opportunities for people to do stuff that tends to get distilled down into a 53 the opposite of dumb down their experience. simpleton statement. • Kathleen McLean There may be places where you can give a spectrum of opportunities for a viewer to be The Museum Can’t Do It All: Juxtapose Community and Scientist Views The Value of Good Introductory Experiences able to go further and further and find places • I appreciated the video with the students talk- where they can go after here to get more • There is something I’m struggling with, and I ing. What would balance that is a part with information. know that’s why we are all here, to share our scientists talking: Here is what we have been impressions and experiences. I keep coming doing, here’s how we do it, here’s what needs That said, there are all kinds of opportunities back to this point that we can’t do every- to be done, here’s what you can do. This is the for understanding the fragmentation/ thing in a museum. We can’t do as much as next generation’s needs and where it needs to biodiversity/climate change equation. we’d like to do in a single experience that go, and here’s where you can find that infor- Right around the corner, there is this new mation. • Norman Miller an individual or school group or family has. Biodiversity and Change Initiative that we We certainly can’t hope to close the achieve- have now and it is up on the Web and can ment gap by making one part of the exhibit be linked to this very easily. That would be more scientific or opening up opportunities one way to do it, create those pieces of to drill down more and find out some of the information that would drill down further science behind the exhibit. I’m not sure for those who are interested, so your typical what my summary point is here, but I don’t K-12 experience would have maybe a K- want us to overdo or overthink how deep we Carolyn Finney in the gallery. 12+ experience (or a K-10 Finland-style should go with each exhibit. experience). That would be the way that NSF could look and say, your outreach is working. I think there is a lot of value in just making • Norman Miller the introduction to these places and allowing the individuals or groups that are using the • You’ve hit on something really important. museum to make their own connections. We For most museum programs, both the exhibit always know that through the book store or people and the education people tend to through a docent or teacher who might be think they’ve got to create something from leading them through an exhibit, questions scratch. In fact, the stuff from scratch is usu- might come up that call for a lot more in- ally not as compelling and interesting as the depth science than can be done, but I don’t data that scientists are working with, which know that the Oakland Museum should be is why there has been such a willingness in responsible for all of that. • Lisa D. White the last five to ten years for people to think about citizen science programs at all because the data coming out of the scientific world Thoughts About Drilling Down and the to has described to me as their first experi- 54 Importance of the Spark Experience ence with science.

• We looked at this issue of drilling down a I believe it was Julie Johnson, during the last lot. One of the problems that you get in a advisor session, who described an experience museum environment is that whereas in a she had in childhood in biology class. They book you can have a large volume of printed were dissecting a cow skull and the biology material and people self-select through using teacher got fed up and threw an eyeball at the table of contents or whatever, in a physi- some kids who were talking and it stuck on cal environment when there is a whole lot the ceiling, dripping this viscous goo. Anoth- of information there the visitor doesn’t say, er teacher in the room started vomiting into “Okay, let me see how deeply I want to go the trash can, the other kids were all grossed here,” and work their way through it. They out, and she looked at it and went, wow, get intimidated and they’re not sure what that’s so cool, and why am I not grossed out they should invest their time in, and they by that? And she went on to study science. get this very limited amount of time in the I was in Cambridge a couple of weeks ago. museum. It costs money, it’s a special time The Encyclopedia of Life folks asked me and place, the parking meter is running, dad and a bunch of other people to talk about Richard Bugbee touching bases with a favorite species wants to get home to his baseball game. in the gallery how the Encyclopedia of Life might be used They need help and they are looking for that in an exhibition medium. Our basic answer kind of thing. We’ve addressed this many was, it wouldn’t. You created a product and ways. Do you put that material in a kiosk? My now you’re looking for a consumer rather experience is that a museum is not a place than the other way around. We launched the where people drill deeper. Yes, you can make meeting by going around the table and hav- all of that available. It should be available ing each of the scientists pick their favorite as part of your education curriculum, as part species. That was the get-to-know-you ques- of school curriculum. But if we try to create tion: What is your favorite species and why? too much richness of messages we run the Let me tell you, none of those scientists had risk of losing them completely. I made a note a really complex, coherent, well thought to myself earlier: “We don’t want to reach out, theoretical support for the thing they the future scientists in our museum, we want liked the most. It was: We picked these ﬂow- to create them.” The way we create them ers when I was a kid; this animal reminds me is through the kind of spark experience that of so-and-so; this guy was just funny looking every single scientist that I have ever talked so I liked him. There were all of these points of connection that our visitors make as well. If we can make those points of connection, resources, objects rather than subjects. we will hope to spark that ﬁre that will get 55 Obviously this transformation is a gargantuan those kids to go deeper into science of their task, arguably the biggest challenge human- own accord. • Matt Matcuk ity has ever faced. Yet I think natural history museums have an important role to play, in The Role of the Museum particular through communicating two key as We Go to Hell in a Handbasket concepts: place and story.

• I’m going to take the opposite view. It comes I asked Douglas, “What are the four points down to the question: What are museums you want to get across in each place in the for? I know some people are thinking, oh god, gallery?” Very quickly they were: 1) systems, are we still asking that question? If museums how they work today and where they come are just for starting sparks, okay, that’s one from; 2) biodiversity and habitats; 3) the hu- thing. But if museums are about something man story, both past and present; and ﬁnally bigger, a larger meta-narrative, well then 4) current issues and future solutions. I think that’s something else altogether. that all of this can be condensed into two I think you have to ask, what is our is task themes. I’m going to use the iconography at this moment in history? The way I would of a cross, which may offend some people, though I hope not.

answer that is ﬁrstly to say that we are go- EVOLUTION PLACE ECOLOGY ing to hell in a handbasket. All of the best First is the theme of place, which makes up indicators say that civilization as we know it the horizontal axis. What is this place? How

could collapse within a century if we don’t

IME does it work? How does if function? Then you T radically change our behavior, and we’ve have the vertical axis of time, which is story. got something like a generation to turn this The horizontal axis is can be thought of as around. ecology, whereas the vertical axis is evolu- So we can’t do the same old thing, and to my tion, change over time. Right now, people mind it isn’t sufficient to get a few “sparks” in this society are alienated from both place going. Instead, we need to play our part in and story. I think if you can re-attach people changing things. Most importantly, humanity to those two their native places and deep must shift its perspective of being outside of time stories, you then have a shot at trans- nature, and of treating nature as resources, forming their view on nature and actually and turn things around so that we see our- seeing themselves as embedded inside it. selves as embedded fully within nature, with Can museums do this? I think so. Consider the the natural world full of relatives rather than present themes you are considering: systems, biodiversity, the human story, and the future. give money, say to stop a genocide some- 56 My suggestion is to condense this into the where, the worst thing you can do is give sta- primary pair of axes: ecology and evolution, tistics. The same is true for climate change place and story. Communicate how things or anything else. You can talk about the hun- work in each of these places today and build dreds of thousands of people killed and few the awe and the wonder about these places, people will help . But if you tell them a story But every instance also tell the deep time of a single young girl and her family, money story of how that place came to be. The ge- starts to pour in because you are tapping into ology story should mix with the biology story, people’s emotions. which in turn should mix with the human Each of the seven places in California to be story. It’s not separate, it’s all one thing. And featured in this exhibition can be thought the past should go right off into the future, of as a metaphorical little girl. We need demonstrating that this story is unfinished, to engage people in these places, even if that every decision we make has an impact they’ve never been there. The reality is, on the future. most visitors will not have been to most of People currently don’t feel invested in the these snapshots that you have around the places they live, and until they do see them- state. That’s okay, because you can still Scott Sampson selves as part of a narrative, they are never engage them with the stories of these places, going to care about the future. Why would including how they got to be where they are you ever care about the future if you don’t today and therefore where they may be go- see yourself as connected to the past? ing in the future. And make sure that people get that dual sense. Every time visitors enter So my suggestion is to start this entire a different part of the gallery, they are go- gallery off with an introductory video. We ing to learn about how that place works, need to tell our common cosmology story, how that place came to be, and where it is the universal scientific story of the earth’s headed. • Scott Sampson history that we all share, from the Big Bang to the present day. The introductory video • So it’s a sense of time as well as a sense of ends where each of the seven snapshots in place. • Mary Jo Sutton the gallery begins; each of the seven places then becomes a sub-plot of the larger Epic • Absolutely, we need to foster a sense of both of Evolution, the Great Story, taking us up to place and story. And they are inter- related, the present day and considering what may able to feed back on each other in positive happen in the future. ways. Indeed I think the sense of place aris- Studies show that if you want somebody to es in part from this interplay. I would argue for this strongly and would actually say, if we do you see? One, two, three, four.” There is are not here doing that level of work then no frame for being able to get into the space 57 what’sthe point? We may as well pack it itself. up and go home. We don’t have time to get What we found in our research is fascinat- sparks going, we have to take it beyond that. ing. Often the family coopts the curriculum Visitors Making Meaning of Their Own I don’t know if we accomplish this goal. I and totally makes it their own. I’m thinking • A family in our museum was looking at a case know it’s a great challenge, but it needs to you should do some of this with nondominant of meteorites in this really dry, dusty display be done, and who better than natural history populations here before you set everything from the 1960s filled with text but no mean- museums to take on this role of synthesizing in stone because things happen that you just ing. A family of visitors from Indiana stood the science and the culture? These museums can’t anticipate. I’ll give you an example there in front of it dutifully for five minutes, silent, just desperately grasping for a point represent some of the only institutions on from the Museum of Science and Industry of connection. Finally the mother says, “Oh! the planet that have anthropology and biol- in Tampa, with an exhibit about how you’re Look at this Billy, this meteorite here, it fell ogy and paleontology and geology all under supposed to put teeth in a dinosaur’s head on your birthday.” If you don’t create a really one roof, so we need to be the voice that according to carnivore, omnivore, herbivore. graspable, coherent message for them, they’ll synthesizes these diverse threads. We also One family came in and said, “Oh, this is create one of their own. They’ll do that even need to engage with the education system, about dental hygiene, and if you don’t do if you do create a coherent message. • Matt K through 12, to give them classroom-ready this your teeth will fall out.” Matcuk materials, since much of this work is beyond It was a perfectly good curriculum for that the capacity of most science teachers, many family, but it wasn’t the curriculum that the of which lack formal training in science. Norman Miller in the gallery museum had in mind. What happens some- • Scott Sampson times is a hybrid of what the museum wants and what the family wants. If you don’t see Studying Exhibit Use by Nondominant that or look for it and that’s not part of your Families from Mixed Urban Populations mental framework, things happen. • Doris • I’ve done a lot of research in informal learn- Ash ing settings in the last ten years. The last round of research was with nondominant Emphasize Beauty and Diversity, Clarify families from a mixed urban population in Endemic and Threat, More on Coastal Tampa. What we found was that the families • I agree with Scott’s ideas, but my goals first had to figure out what it was that was would be much more modest because I don’t going on that they were supposed to be do- believe we can solve all of our problems in ing. There isn’t necessarily the cultural norm this small space. My goal would be to have of doing museums that European Americans people walk through and recognize how have, where the dad says, “How many teeth incredibly diverse and beautiful parts of Cali- people need to focus on some of the natural 58 fornia are, how threatened or changed some environment around them. For example, if of those parts have been, and wouldn’t it you’re working in an office building, take a just be nice to maintain what we have. The moment and focus on that mountain range Beauty v. Doom and Gloom hotspots idea kind of goes to that. ten miles away. That’s something I think • That brings up something that we are going to about in terms of these spaces, being able to What I saw in there was the idea of diversity. try to tackle a little later in the day when we get people reconnected to that sort of envi- Maybe you can’t use the word “endemic,” break up into smaller groups. We spent some ronmental thing. • Dirk Dieter time looking at what are our questions or ten- but idea of endemic needs to somehow come sions. One of the biggest ones is this beauty across a little better than it does. Threat is • One of the big challenges is that we are in versus doom and gloom story, and people actu- not clear either. If you don’t want to call it the gallery, we are not in those places. I ally characterize it as that polarized though “threat,” call it “change.” think sense of place happens in a real place it actually isn’t. It is something we need to And finally, I like the seven places. The part with people who have real relationships to grapple with. • Kathleen McLean of California that is actually a biodiversity those places. What we are doing is a version- hotspot is not all that well covered. It is the ing. There are aspects of what is measurable Mediterranean environment, the coastal area as sense of place. But I’d say there are pieces The First Stage with Far More to Come that includes the Bay Area and Oakland and of what people have in real places that is dif- • One of the things we should have mentioned runs down the coast. That is really where ferent from people who haven’t been there. to you is that the prototyping is just getting our biggest collision has been with endemic I worked on an exhibit on the Amazon with started and what you see in the gallery isn’t species and development by people. Oakland a curator who had never been there but had representative of what’s planned. It’s the can definitely fit into that and those ideas read a lot about it. I will never believe that is first piece, one piece of something like thirty can fit into the Oakland piece, but it’s not the same as being in a real place. No matter pieces that are going to get added over time to get to the complexity of stories that we are currently picked up in there in the same way. what can be measurable in terms of aspects, talking about. We haven’t fleshed out all of • Stephen R. Beissinger reading about Paris is not the same as having the ways that we are going to be incorporat- been in Paris. What we are doing is not the ing narrative and story and scenarios about Staff Thoughts on Recreating the Look real place, we are doing aspects of it. How how things are threatened. That is all coming and Feel of a Place v. Sense of Place we translate is a trick of the project. • Mary up. What we are really looking for you to help Jo Sutton us with are directions to go in or things to • In our conversations about look and feel I remember. What we haven’t shown you is our always hear stories from people about what • And one of the things we are saying is that intentions, and with many of the things you it’s like to be in that place. Everyday when we are not going to try to be literal about it. are talking about, we have some kind of inten- I go home and go over that hill and I see the Dirk was one of the designers on the History tions, but have characterized them in terms of ocean, it brings me back down to earth. I Gallery as well, and one of the things we also dilemmas we are facing—which way to go on was reading a message this morning in my tried to do there was not to be so literal. But these issues. • Kathleen McLean e-mail from a Zen blog about the idea that inside the habitat cases and dioramas it is About the Layout, Adjacencies, Sequencing, Look and Feel 59

• Can you tell us more about the entry experience One of the goals is to try and distinguish each and the floor organization? That seems like it’s of the places from each other. We are also con- really important. • Anon cerned with the look and feel of these places. They have to be really distinctive. We are also • We have a floor plan here and we’ve just been Gallery floor plan considering the look and feel within each place. doing look and feel and sequencing, what hap- How close is the look and feel to the real place? pens first, second and third. It’s still in its bub- How literal are we in the translation of the ble concept stage. We haven’t really nailed it in quality of that real place? Those are the begin- terms of exact experience. • Kathleen McLean ning conversations we’re having. We haven’t • We have spent a lot of time looking at the gal- thought through how to bring out the content lery space and considering the shotgun layout using which modes yet, and we haven’t gotten of the space and asking what is going to be next to where the cocreation pieces are going to be, to what. We also spent a lot time trying to hash but we know we want them. through whether these places we’ve chosen In the floor plan you can see the entry on the are going to be adequate to cover the stories lower right, with entry experiences. Cordell is we want to cover. Are these the right places? the first space that you come to as you enter We are about 90% settled on these being the the gallery. Considerations regarding the layout right places. Right now we’ve settled on the include thinking about what spaces you can see adjacencies, which might not seem like a lot from the overlooks above, what places we think but required a lot of conversation, and the idea will need the ceiling height, what places need of how to sequence the experience as you go to be bounded by three walls so that we can through the gallery. It is not like a walk across control the light in a certain way, and what’s California but more like, who are these birds near the windows. • Mary Jo Sutton that go flying from place to place? • We are dealing with the logistics right now, Right now the entry experience will really be given the bubbles of the idea of the places about California superlatives: the incredible and the constraints of the building. • Kathleen diversity that Douglas talked about, the big- McLean gest trees, the oldest trees, the highest elevation, the lowest elevation, the most amount of • A lot of what is driving the interpretive organisms. There will be a lot of superlatives framework is that we have this collection pointing to why California is amazing in terms of with these pieces, and we are trying to retain natural science, and a little bit of an overview the lion’s share of those. Most projects don’t of the systems that make it that way. We are necessarily have that as a big given, so it is a also looking a little bit at the history of Cali- constraint and an opportunity. We are trying to fornia in terms of how it came to be so diverse see how much space they take up. We are on topographically. the threshold of how we are going to express 60 About the Layout, Adjacencies, Sequencing, Look and Feel - continued

the human element, the ghost of Christmas hearing a lot of commitment to it and I like past, present and future of each place, but that challenge. it is very much going to include the story and Another thing that hasn’t been mentioned history of the place. It is the intent to have The importance of boundaries between places involves the path that you see in the floor plan. that nexus articulated in each area. • Mary The idea is to get enough separation between Jo Sutton the different areas so that we have that op- • One thing I keep hearing during our meetings portunity create a real difference. When you as we talk about design and the look and feel visited the gallery you saw the dotted tape on is that there is a pretty strong feeling about the floor. That was a reaction to some visitors recreating the look and feel of being in that not getting the groupings that were happening space, in that environment, though that is in there. It was a really simplistic way of saying difficult. I think there is a major intent in here is a bubble and here is a bubble, but from development to create areas that are really what I understand it made a huge difference. distinctly different from each other, and That is what we are trying to do with that trail. conceptually right now the design intent is to It also gives us a little distance from bubble to create really different areas within the build- bubble so that we can have real differences in ing that give you a sense of some of those lighting and other elements. • Dirk Dieter environments. It’s a dream right now, but I’m

very literal. Maybe that’s where the literal place. Maybe we can spark that idea that needs to stay. That is the kind of thing that the place is fabulous, or the idea that if that we are grappling with. • Kathleen McLean place is fabulous, maybe my place is too. But we haven’t done much sense-of-place testing • Correct me if I’m wrong, but part of the goal at all. • Mary Jo Sutton is to also have visitors reﬂect on the experience and think about it so that there is the • But we are waiting for Cecilia. This is the possibility that they may say, “I’d like to go ﬁrst step and we will be doing that. • Kath- to that place.” • Cecilia Garibay leen McLean

• The hypothesis for the project really is, is Beyond Objects: Immersive Images to love of place transferable? In a certain way, Create Sense of Place books and poetry and the art of exhibition can do that. There are fabulous place-based • What struck me was that I really loved exhibits that give a magical sense of the Douglas’s presentation with a lot of fabulous photographs of these places. You walked into seeing that huge whale hanging from the 61 the gallery and you see objects, you’re not ceiling, and it was so outside of my reality. Wonder of Human Stories seeing places so much. So one thought was, I was just thinking about what is missing (e.g., Discovery of Cordell Bank maybe use big photographs in there. There and about listening to that little girl on the • That video [Temescal video in Oakland section] is a piece of public art in Denver that I really video talking about animals with jet packs. is the thing that transfixed me in the whole like. It is actually in an elevator in the Hyatt This is where I think the natural scientists in gallery. Was it the content, was it the cute- Hotel. A photographer framed a photograph the room are going to hate me. Isn’t there ness, was it just hearing human voices and and it’s really a video, so when you get on some space in the gallery to be imaginative, their sense of reality? At lunch we were talking the elevator you see that there’s actually to evoke that sense of wonder instead of about a very different human story about an individual diver, who discovered the richness movement, the grass is blowing, and you’re focusing so much on place? I think Mary Jo of the Cordell Bank in the seventies. Hearing in that place while you ride the elevator. It’s is right, if you don’t actually go to a place, that story about some random dude from Wal- it’s never going to be the same, but you can not a live feed camera from the place and nut Creek who decided to go scuba diving in a it’s not a still photograph, but you really feel capture that sense of wonder. very challenging environment and discovered like you’re there. I also agree with Scott. We should be focus- a very rich and unknown biological frontier gave me a sense of wonder. This story hap- That’s what is really missing here. Animals ing on everything with that kind of inten- pened just thirty short years ago, right nearby sity and we can at least have the intention aren’t place, glass boxes aren’t place. I think off California, in my lifetime. I think that’s the you’re asking way too much of visitors to of that behind everything. So it’s not just kind of wonder you could communicate—not associate a place with a group of objects. about a sense of wonder but understanding in a cookie cutter fashion, but differently for You need to give them some big, anchoring, that what captures somebody is something each place. • Dan Rademacher immersive experience, be it a true diorama outside of their experience, outside of the with a curved wall or a floor-to-ceiling literal. And it’s a museum, you can do that, photograph that is as gorgeous as the ones and why not? • Carolyn Finney Dan Rademacher in the gallery you already have on your PowerPoint presentation, or something innovative like the People’s Stories and Opportunities example I just cited, which is not a video or for Going Deeper via Involvement a photograph, it’s both, but it actually puts you somewhere. • Kirk Johnson • The seven places really worked for me in the gallery. I felt I was right back with Douglas’s PowerPoint. But building on what others Sense of Imagination and Wonder were saying here, People Magazine outsells • I was thinking about what Mary Jo said about Audubon. I am a scientist and a natural his- love and what gets somebody when they go torian, but what I want to hear is the people to a museum. I was thinking about my per- and their stories about these places. I think sonal experience at the Museum of Natural if there was a jet pack video [i.e., Temes- History in New York as a kid. I remember cal-type video] in each of these seven places it would be really powerful. I didn’t happen your dioramas should be loosely interpretive 62 to catch the story that Dan related about the versus highly literal is a difficult one to sort diver, but I would bet there’s a story like that through, and you may not want the same or multiple stories like that in all of these answer in every instance. We do know that places. the higher the degree of verisimilitude, the higher the marks are in terms of what visi- Half an hour ago we were talking about how tors like. They like that literalness. deep you go. One way to go deeper is to empower people to believe that they can get Now to address that issue about not actually involved in that story somehow. That can be being there in that place. A lot of people done through some version of citizen science have done research about this borderline of or participatory action research in any one seeing something with a high degree of veri- of these different habitats, even if you don’t similitude but knowing that it is artificial. live there, but especially in the Oakland area Japanese gardens are built off of that con- if you do live there. cept. You can also think of it occurring when you think of miniaturized dioramas. We both So it’s trying to find stories that are involv- simultaneously love their verisimilitude and ing. It could be scientists telling their story. at the same time we know that it is HO scale Richard Bugbee and Peter Kahn in the gallery It could be non-professionally-trained scien- (the scale of model trains and slot cars). I tists who have had an impact on understand- think you have to acknowledge that is where ing the natural world telling their story, so visitors’ heads are going to go. people would feel that they can get involved in that as well. Or maybe it’s a beach clean- But while I was arguing that in my head I up, maybe it’s not exactly science investiga- was thinking about Bertolt Brecht. He was tion but something that they can do later a German playwright whose plays were all on. It would allow you to go deeper without ham-fistedly rhetorical. He is the guy who having to go deeper. • Rick Bonney said, “Art is not a mirror to reflect reality, it is a hammer to smash it,” or something Degrees of Verisimilitude like that. He also said people attending a play ought to be able to smoke cigars in the • We know from lots of visitor testing that balcony because no one smoking a cigar can visitors love two things most: one is immer- get totally sucked into what is happening. He sive experiences, the other is objects and didn’t like the sucked in, the verisimilitude. specimens. Dioramas are successful because What he always wanted to do in every play they give them both in one package. The was to create this thing called Verfremdung- very complicated question of to what degree seffekt, the estrangement effect. He wanted his plays to look like this is a thing happen- The whole interactive component that shifting on the stage, so don’t get too caught up ed is really tied to a constructivist view of 63 in the drama because I want you to learn education. If that’s the case, then you need something from it. The Verfremdungseffekt to understand that the mechanism for devel- Visitor Research/Testing with is not popular in practice these days. There opment from a constructivist standpoint is Verisimilitude v. Looser Interpretations is good theoretical argument for it, it’s a dif- disequilibration. This goes back to Piaget and • Are you planning on researching the litera- ficult aesthetic decision, but think carefully is throughout his work. With disequilibration ture on this question of visitors’ thoughts on about how far away from verisimilitude you and with the edginess connected to disequili- verisimilitude versus looser interpretations? Or do want to go. • Matt Matcuk bration, where are the problems that people maybe Cecilia has already done that. • Matt are facing that forces them to reorganize Matcuk Edginess, Disequilibration, and restructure their information and their • We did a literature review on the front end, Constructivism, and Unpacking Key current world view to construct a more but as it related to the NSF proposal. There Exhibit Problems adequate and comprehensive world view? It were a few things along the lines of people is basically problems and problems are good loving the immersive quality. There was at- • In robotics there’s a phenomenon called the things. tention around the idea that these animals “uncanny valley.” As you make something are real, but they’re dead. There is this whole more and more lifelike, if it doesn’t also When I’ve consulted with colleagues of mine question of where the museum got the ani- have the properties that you associate with in zoos, like Carol Saunders at the Brookfield mals, the whole trajectory that you all know lifelike, at some point it gets very, very edgy Zoo in Chicago, we’ve had long discussions well. There is this tension where they kind of like it because it’s this really cool scene, but and people kind of get creeped out. That’s and arguments. George Rabb, who is direc- there’s something about it that makes them a the uncanny quality. It’s a classic phenom- tor of that zoo, says that zoos need to be little uncomfortable regarding how this came enon in human-robot interaction (HRI). the conservation center of the world and are to be. • Cecilia Garibay going to change everything. My reaction was, There is another way to think about exhibits, “Wow, you’re aware that you have this huge • And just the degree of suggestiveness though, and I’m sure you’ve done this, but it would problem because you have captive animals, like a more abstract framework versus a real- be interesting to understand how you’ve and part of the problem is that we are domi- istic backdrop? That would be a great thing to worked this and the potential for it. That look at. • Matt Matcuk nating these animals at the very point where is, to get edgy. Where are you edgy? I’d be you are saying you are going to teach conser- • I think we are going to test that. I will say, interested in hearing that. vation. How does this work?” though, that the strength of dioramas is their immersive quality. Clearly the more life-size Connecting that to a basic view and maybe a Basically, the zoo tries to hide that. My they are and so on, the more immersive they different view of child development, instead proposal to them was, don’t hide it, bring it are. They seem to have an emotional quality of seeing it as an exogenous account of social out. It’s a problem that zoos have. Everyone to them, and I think we are going to have to or cultural learning with the museum trans- who works in a zoo knows that’s a problem deal with how we don’t lose that amidst ev- mitting all of this stuff to passive individuals, and they try to hide it. Bring it out into the erything else that is going on in that particular there is this much more constructivist view. public and that becomes a powerful place area. • Cecilia Garibay that they can just own it and move forward or the challenges. In the Art Gallery we did 64 with it. things as simple as having the curator talk in the first person voice, which is almost Museums don’t have that problem, thank unheard of in an art museum. You have these goodness, but I do think Mary Jo was ar- texts and labels with the curator talking Enabling Visitor Imagination, ticulating a form of that, at least one form Engendering Appreciation for Places from on high, so it is like it is coming down of that. That is, a place you have here is from god, what this painting means. Instead, • I think that we need to really try and experi- not the place out there, and reading about we have the curator say, “This is why I like ment with this. We tend to have all the fun in Paris isn’t being in Paris. That whole thing museums. We get to use our imaginations, we this,” or “This is how I relate to this,” or is, in fact, a problem. One can try to hide create these wonderful things, we tell these having the registrar insert her voice into the it or one can say yes, it is a problem, it is a stories, we pick the objects, and we hear from label and say, “This is why we actually look central thing that we are dealing with. Are scientists about the real nitty gritty. Then at the back of paintings.” We found that what we distill for visitors is such a pale re- there some components of the exhibit that using those techniques, some of them very flection. It’s like the detritus of an experience unpack that idea for the public and get them simple, really does demystify what is going of ours. What we have to get out of the habit to work with it? • Peter Kahn on. This is a real person talking about the art of doing is thinking that we have to imagine it all for our visitors. So what can we do that and this is who they are. Or this is not a real • I think we’ve done that in a few ways in our gets their imagination going? train or real boxcar, but you can have that Art and History Galleries. In the History Gal- Rick noted that the research that Cecilia is do- sensibility with this almost theatrical experi- lery the problem was how to create exhibits ing now indicates that you can market places. ence. • Lori Fogarty that are contemporary and recreating a time For me, the idea that you can have an appreci- and place. You don’t want people to confuse ation for these places even if you haven’t been • I want to follow up on this disequilibration what you’ve built in the gallery with the real there is the real breakthrough stuff because and controversial move. What if you asked that is what we are going to try to do. We are authentic objects. The answer that Kathy people leaving, “What is the edgiest or most going to try to create things where visitors and her team came up with was to create controversial thing that you encountered in use their imagination and can be there in a these stage sets, to make them theatrical the museum?” If you asked people that and way. There are a lot of people who love Paris by comparison, really making it obvious that they can’t think of anything, do you think who have never been to Paris. That’s what this is not a real train station, this is not a we’ve got to do because we are not going to you’ve succeeded or not? • Peter Kahn real mission, this is not a real boat, but to take people on busses and drive them to all of take it to extremes so that you could see these places. • Kathleen McLean the authentic objects in it. I think that idea • No, I think we would not have succeeded. of going to the opposite of the literal with • Kathleen McLean the habitat cases and the dioramas, to really juxtapose, would make that much more edgy. • So how would they answer that now in the way that you’re thinking about this exhibit? Another thing you were saying, Peter, was to • Peter Kahn bring forward and acknowledge the problems • It used to be that when people would ask me sumptions. It’s a sticky, fuzzy thing. The best that question I would make some kind of idea I can do is follow up on what Rick said. Give 65 statement, like a factual statement. I think them some citizen science. Have the schools it’s about the quality of the questions that sign up for something. Have the families people ask. For example, “I don’t get it, how sign up for something. It almost doesn’t come such-and-such is happening? I’ve got to matter what, but the participation is really go and find that out.” With the kind of cogni- important if you’re going to have any kind of Sharing Nature Stories on the Web tive dissonance that you’re talking about, it’s change in the future. not that we’ve fixed it for people but that • Building on Doris’s comment about visitors’ The third thing is, I really want the people we get people curious enough or compelled voices, I’m engaged in something I’m call- stories on the fly. Rick Stevens had this ing the Nature Language Project, where we strongly enough to go out and grapple with it thing where you could have the voice of the have people on a Web site write in about their beyond this place. • Kathleen McLean people who come to the exhibits. I know you nature stories. I’m wondering if there is a way have to make sure it’s not X-rated and all to incorporate that. Maybe we can unpack that Need for Testing with Everyday People; of that stuff. I told the people I was sitting at a later time. • Peter Kahn Connecting to Action; Hearing Other with in the gallery that I wanted to sit down Visitors’ Stories in that redwood forest and hear stories, and • First, a disclaimer: I don’t think you have I wanted to tell my stories. To me, redwoods to sacrifice hard science for the affect. I mean having to clear off my roof of all of the Kirk Johnson and Doris Ash on a bench in front of the redwood forest diorama never said that and I would never say that. redwood stuff that falls on it every winter. I do think you have to understand the social That is very personal to me. I want to hear piece before you can get to the hard science. other people’s stories too, and not a post-it I’m sorry, that’s what my data shows, so note, that doesn’t do it. You need some way we have to pay attention to it. We have to of doing that as well. • Doris Ash start walking families through immediately— ordinary, everyday people, not the people Ecosystem-based Management in this room—so we know what people think and do with this stuff. We have to know that • It strikes me that a central theme here almost immediately, like yesterday. Really do that we keep weaving in and out of could an intense following of families that we get be distilled down to “people nature.” I from a variety of sources, invite in, and give don’t say “people versus nature,” I just them a hundred dollars. That should be done say “people nature.” Scientifically, if we right now. are looking for a framework to show us one perspective, one form of guidance might be The other thing is this connection between ecosystem-based management because that attitude and action. We are really making as- is something that explicitly deals with people as part of the natural environment and how American Museum in Detroit. I know this 66 we work with that, how ecology is changing, is a different story, but bear with me for a how governance is changing. It is this minute. The coolest thing about that museum Juxtaposing Art, huge package. That might be a framework for me was that they just decided that they History and Natural Science which is perhaps better than biodiversity. were going to tell America about the African • One of the things I thought was really cool Biodiversity would be part of that picture, it American experience (even though we could about the Art and History Galleries was this would just be ramping it up one more level argue that experiences differed). So the juxtaposition disciplines. We haven’t talked to ecosystem-based management. I talked whole way this museum of 22,000 square feet much about that, but my assumption is that about that last year and would like to bring is set up is as a journey. You have to start at is going to play a big role in how we interpret these things. And that is edgy, when you that back to the table. the beginning when Africans were brought over on slave ships. One room was the hull compare how most museums treat informa- That brings in the edginess because this is tion, putting different contexts in play. • Kirk of the slave ship. You had to go upstairs to one of the big edges. This is the thing that Johnson get on deck and then you got off and were makes people uncomfortable but also gets suddenly somewhere in New England and them engaged. The seven bubbles each there was the auction block. Then it went up have a story. Sure, there has maybe been to Motown and barber shops. Artistic Takes on Place: Emulating the conflict in the past and there is change and Escalante Painting Competition things like that, but there are also decisions Some of those stories were difficult. The • I was just in Escalante, Utah where they have to be made about how we move forward hardest part for me was being in the hull of this yearly art festival and Plein Air Painting with those seven places, or any places. So the ship because they actually had bodies Competition. A bunch of artists show up, they each one of those has a story with which packed in like sardines. I was in there with stamp their canvases at the same time, and people can engage. We can ask, “What do four other people and nobody said anything, then they rush out, and over two days they it was so uncomfortable. all create paintings of that same place. Then you think?” We could even project different scenarios. There is lots of science, and I’ve there’s an art show of all of these paintings In the room that was Motown you could been involved in some of that, that looks of the same place. You’d have fifty different listen to music. There were earphones and paintings of the same place that different art- at scenario predictions. People really get records on the wall and you could pick who ists had painted at the same time, all in differ- engaged with that in very deep ways. We you wanted to listen to. They had a large ent views. It would seem to me that would be could spend the rest of the day talking about selection for you to spend time there. another way you could capture these places. just those, it’s a huge topic. • Christopher You could do that every year for all seven of Cogan I was thinking about each of the seven these places and just continue to build knowl- bubbles. There are difficult stories, tensions, edge of this place. • Kirk Johnson and you could highlight some of those stories. • You could include photography • Anon. Telling the Uncomfortable Stories, Not Supplying All the Answers Sometimes it’s going to be difficult, but it • You could choose your medium. It’s really a wouldn’t just be about what’s pretty, what great way to experience place. • Kirk Johnson • I want to follow up on what Chris just said. we should try to be thinking, how we are Earlier this summer I went to the African supposed to be. Instead you would somehow educators and with museum people, but the Bussing Visitors present that problem and not answer it. thing that really steered us in our current 67 Out to These Places Or if we are listening to stories, there’s a direction was the statement from scientists set-up where people can choose to listen to who said, if you don’t deal with the crisis • One of the things that this museum does almost as well as any museum I know of is different people’s stories. • Carolyn Finney facing the world, you are not fulfilling your engage the community. It’s really impressive responsibility as a museum. We took that what you folks do here, and you are engag- very much to heart and it is absolutely part History, Threats, and ing communities that don’t traditionally go the Future as a Connected Story of the meta-narrative of this project. to museums. What would be useful to think about is ways to increase that. It’s one of your • One the other hand, we have this tension Let me follow up. I’d really like to break strengths. down these barriers. Instead of history and with what this museum does very well, which Kathy said you’re not going to get busses and then threats, it’s all part of the same story. is the personal stories of everyday people. take people to all of these seven places. Why That’s what the whole History Gallery is: We really don’t know the answers to what not? Why not raise money to go do that? At the This is your story, you are part of this story, will happen in the next fifty years to these very least there are these cool programs that seven places, but we do know there are and your story as an everyday Californian is take kids from inner city Oakland over to Muir some likely scenarios and we know, based on every bit as important as Leland Stanford’s Wood and things like that. Maybe this museum choices that we make today, which way they story. So how do we balance those? How becomes the starting place where people learn can go. We can predict those fairly well, and do we balance those personal connections about these places and then get the chance to go out and actually experience them. Maybe I think that engages people very strongly. to the stories that people tell about going that’s part of the fund-raising in this museum’s And all of a sudden its from history to the camping in Yosemite as a kid or walking future, to allow for those types of activities. future, it’s all connected. You don’t need on the beach with a grandfather with that • Scott Sampson those barriers at all any more. That might be science story? As we get into the small the same kind of thing, where you take that stories, maybe it is the scientists telling • We have done some of that, we just haven’t done it with every visitor yet. • Suzanne tension, that stress, that fear, and turn it their stories of what keeps them up at night, Pegas into more critical thinking, without pushing worrying about the next hundred years. that on anybody. • Christopher Cogan That is one of the things I wanted to put out there. • Lori Fogarty Evoking Place Balancing the Science Crisis Story with • There is also the question of how you create Personal Stories and Connections this sense of place. I don’t think it’s about making a redwood that looks as real as the • As we start to go into small group discussions, ones we have. It’s how you evoke that place. one of the things I wanted to put out there And it may not be that exact place but a place is this tension relating to what Scott said. that is similar in your own experience, whether Scott was at one of the original sessions that it’s the sound or the feel. It’s those more we held with scientists before we submitted evocative things that may connect you to the the NSF grant. We also had sessions with place. • Lori Fogarty 68 Small Group Discussions

The Questions in these small groups will fill you in as needed INTRODUCTION with what is going on with the interpretive 1. World view: How do we facilitate a Kathleen McLean plan that might inform your discussion. conversation about the tension between Facilitator, Creative Director; culture and natural science? What are Principal, Independent Exhibitions These are questions that we have been grap- strategies that we can use to help visitors pling with and that we thought we’d like to What we would like you to do is read through feel these issues are relevant to their have you tackle in a concrete way while you this list of questions, decide which ones you lives? How do we link presentation of are here. Regarding the first question about habitats to environmental justice and think are of interest to you, and break into facilitating the conversation between culture improvement of quality of life in the city? small groups to discuss the question that is of and natural science, when we brought some How do we “depoliticize” the notion of most interest to you. The staff participating conservation? advisory committee people through the Natural Sciences Gallery early on, one person said that 2. How do we get the abstract sense of Chris Cogan signing topic list seeing the hummingbird brought back all kinds place to marry the exhibit cases, which of creation stories and notions about the hum- are very concrete? mingbird and values regarding hummingbirds 3. How can we present Deep Time (both that might not even fit in a natural science past and future) in a way that is compre- world view. If we are going to go out to the hensible? What strategies can we use? communities and tell them we want to hear 4. How do we use/embed/combine exhibits their stories, what happens when the stories about systems and interactions with a that come back are orthogonal to or in conflict natural history perspective? with the natural sciences world view?

5. What are the most important climate What are the strategies that we can use to change scenarios for these seven places? help visitors feel that these issues, whatever 6. Whom should we be talking to (scientists, they are, are relevant to their lives? partnerships, etc.)? How do we deal with issues of environmental 7. We are concerned that we are not going justice and improving the quality of life in the to be able to deliver the science and/or city and the notion of preservation of natu- meet the STEM standards. What do you ral habitats? There is a whole range of ques- think? tions around that: What is a native species or 8. What are your thoughts on participatory exotic species and what belongs here and what experience in relation to the gallery? doesn’t? We have the human world and the natural world, which are not split. But we may in classrooms at colleges and universities you say that we want to preserve native species get the physical sciences, you get the phenom- 69 and that exotic species are not good. The reac- enological sciences, the cause and effect and tion of one of our curators to that was, “Wait looking at phenomena, and then the clas- Clariﬁcation/Comments/Questions a minute, so what am I, an exotic species? I siﬁcation of critters and grouping them into World View come from the Philippines.” So there is that habitats. These are two really different kinds Several separate questions were combined into kind of tension around what is again world view of ways of seeing the world. How do we pull question number one under the umbrella, “world in a way. those together in this gallery? view,” based on suggestions from Carolyn Finney.

How do we “depoliticize” the notion of conser- What are the most important climate change Partnerships vation? We’ve heard a lot of people say, “Oh scenarios for these seven places? We thought Rick Bonney identified partnerships as a key issue yeah, cleaning up the beaches, worrying about we could just put Norman in a room and let and the need to form deep partnerships in each conservation, that’s a white person’s thing, a him tell us. We are committed to having some of the seven places. Suzanne Pegas noted that a middle class thing, an upper class thing.” kind of climate change scenario for each of presentation about partnerships is scheduled for later on the agenda. these seven places. Another question is, how do we marry that Scope of Questions abstract sense of place, which we have been Another question, one that may be addressed Kathy McLean clarified that the questions are talking about, with the habitat cases, which off to the side or tonight over dinner, is whom targeted to development of the Natural Science are really concrete? should we be talking to? What partnerships Gallery and that is the focus of the small group should we be considering for each of these discussions, but anything that happens in that How can we present Deep Time in a way that is seven places? Whom are the scientists we gallery will influence the rest of the museum. comprehensible, both past and future notions should be talking to about each of these seven of time? Are there strategies that we can use Abstract Sense of Place places? to talk about Deep Time or, as somebody said Doris Ash questioned the meaning of the phrase yesterday, are we just hard-wired not to be Also, we are concerned that we are not going “abstract sense of place” (question 2). Kathy McLean explained that the issue is that visi- able to comprehend that? Or should we even to be able to deliver the science content or tors relate to the concrete exhibit cases and try? meet the science, technology, engineering don’t make conceptual leaps of scale regarding and mathematics (STEM) standards that NSF How do we use/embed/combine exhibits about endangered species, habitats, and so on. Another is concerned about. There are some staff that systems and interactions? I think this is where dilemma is that the cases show something be- are worried that whatever we do is not going ing here while the narrative may talk about it we thought maybe we should tell you a little to deliver that science content, and we want no longer being here, so there is a time shift more about the interpretive plan. How do we to know what you think about that. problem. combine those systems and interactions with a natural history perspective? In museums and Participatory Experience Matt Matcuk suggested the addition of the eighth question regarding participatory experience. PARTICIPATORY EXPERIENCES try and do it in different ways, whether that is 70 creating art on-site or recording a little story Reporting: Dan Rademacher with additional on site. That can also involve your partners, group input though we don’t yet know who those are. The What are your thoughts on participatory We talked a bit about the 1960s boxes that opportunities will grow out of who your part- experience in relation to the gallery? people made for the Forces of Change gallery ners are. upstairs and the incredible amount of com- That leads into one other thing. We were strug- mitment required on the part of the people gling with the question of whether you have to who made them, which led to the idea that have participatory experiences in all seven of you have to be realistic about what participa- those places. It felt most realistic to us to fo- tory exhibit making is like and set up enough cus on Oakland. It seems like that is where you support for it so that people can actually do would get the most bang for your buck in terms it. The value of it, as Rick said, is that once of participation after people leave the gallery. you start hearing people’s different stories and It doesn’t make sense to push for participation start to connect with those stories, it’s almost elsewhere. You could probably make arguments impossible to not like them in a certain way, for Yosemite, since that is such a well-visited even if you disagree with the content. Group Members: place. Regarding Tehachapi, do people actually Rick Bonney, Matt Matcuk, Dan Rademacher, John Perry We also discussed what kind of citizen science stop there? Is it popular? Is it realistic to think you can get people to actually do on-site and that you are going to coordinate with whatever how important it is to have something that efforts are going on down there? I don’t know people do right in the gallery rather than say- what percentage of museum visitors come from Participatory group ing that they are going to do distant parts of the state. That would dictate it later. At the Cornell Lab, how much effort we want to put into these follow-up they’ve done indi- more far-flung, less likely opportunities. cates that something like one Why were we interested in this topic? I was percent of people will have interested in this topic because I come from actually participated in citizen a journalism background and was involved in science six months later. Even citizen journalism and participatory journalism. if the Lab made a big effort I think it is coming up in almost every aspect of to make it easy for people to our lives, in different aspects of culture. In the participate in citizen science, Bay Area there is the Maker Faire, underground people just don’t do it. So the food culture, DIY culture, and all of these idea is to try to find different things are converging on a different model. ways for people to participate while they are there, and to I can’t remember whether this came up in general discussion or in our group, but Matt ence, and it has value if you frame it properly. said that we can’t think of exhibits, or for 71 If you frame it as saving water through per- that matter journalistic enterprises, as tubes sonal choices and not necessarily as saving the through which we force-feed content. To polar ice caps through shorter showers, but be fair to all of us who have histories in our Different Levels of Participatory just saving water through personal choices, professions, it’s hard not to think of them in Commitment: Exhibits v. Farmville people will do that. In our case, you can help that way, and yet there are massive and I think • You say people aren’t going to devote days other people experience this park that you often positive cultural forces going in a dif- of their lives to this. What about Farmville? enjoyed because you can tell them that it’s ferent direction for group creation. But again, What’s the difference between that and this? not so steep. • Kathleen McLean you have to be realistic. People aren’t going to devote days and days of their lives, or at least • I don’t know. Games? • Dan Rademacher • Another issue that came up was telling mul- only a very small percentage will be inspired to tiple sides of the same story. Rick was talking do that. about upstate New York and natural gas drill- We talked about things that we are doing. At ing and the devastating impact that is having the Field Museum, Matt is working on a project on the ecology and the water table. But then to have people make pledges that are measur- when you look at the poor farmers, who are able and show the results of those pledges supporting the natural gas drilling, it’s re- within a conservation-type exhibit: I’m going ally hard to hate a poor farmer who is going The Foraging Issue: to make this change, I can see that fifteen under financially and you understand why A Potential Participatory Experience? people have decided to make the same change they’re supporting the natural gas drilling. So • The issue of foraging is a story we’re trying since I’ve been here, that is going to make this it’s hearing the voices behind an issue. to do at Bay Nature. Coming along with the amount of difference. Suddenly, on the screen, Right at the tail end we were discussing the whole maker culture is an interest in food and we are saving 10,000 gallons a day of water, San Francisco foraging group, which I was foraging. Talk about participatory—there are just with all of these strangers with whom I ignorantly enthused about until Dan pointed invasive weeds, and you could create a local, suddenly have a connection. Technologically out the impact of too many people forag- citizen science participatory project by pulling it may be complicated, but the conception out the invasive weeds and eating them. But ing in an area. That in itself is an issue that involves a pretty simple kind of participation. on the other hand you might go out foraging could lend itself to the many voices ap- and take the last of some native bulbs that At Bay Nature we are trying to do crowd- proach. Foraging for native weeds to eat are barely hanging on. The difficulty is trying sourced trail reports, not focusing on what sounds like fun, but on the other hand you’re to get people to understand that when several type of wildlife you saw but instead, was there destroying the environment. • Catherine million people do something, it can have a mud, is there a ramp, were there flowers? McEver devastating impact. That food connection is These are the kinds of things that are actually something that is potentially very valuable but useful, that anyone can experience and report potentially difficult. • Dan Rademacher on accurately because it’s their own experi- WORLD VIEW: CULTURE Americans and others. Richard said he was a 72 creationist and an evolutionist, so it isn’t like AND NATURAL SCIENCE TENSION the creationists are over on one side with Reporting: the Christians over here, and the people who How do we facilitate a conversation about Amy Billstrom and multiple group members relate to nature spiritually over here, and so the tension between culture and natural • We had four questions we were trying to on. In some cases that’s all in one place. And science? What are strategies that we can answer and each one of them could be a in some cases it doesn’t mean you have to use to help visitors feel these issues are complete conference. We started with the exclude a creation story because you’re tell- relevant to their lives? How do we link ing a science story. • Mary Jo Sutton presentation of habitats to environmental question about the tension between culture justice and improvement of quality of life and natural science. We had an interesting • Before we get into a discussion of that, in the city? How do we “depoliticize” the discussion. One idea that came up was, is it and I know it’s a really hot issue that I look notion of conservation? possible to create a comfort zone for living forward to digging into deeper, there was in the duality of a system that is cultural another question raised. We had a lot of as well as scientific. We could study that. different people at the table with different Richard offered an example of that. • Amy perspectives. Evelyn Orantes, who is our Group Members: Billstrom Amy Billstrom, Mary Jo Sutton, Richard Bugbee, Cultural Arts Developer, summed it up in the Doris Ash, Peter Kahn, Christopher Cogan, Evelyn Orantes, Carolyn Finney, Cecilia Garibay • We have a belief that the Grand Canyon was following way: Is there room in the exhibit formed by a big rattlesnake that came out for people to express different relationships of its house, but we also know that it was with nature, and are we ready to allow them to express very different relationships? Are World View group caused by erosion. We believe in both things, we ready to go there? it’s not a conflict. What also came out of our discussion was • Richard stories, stories, stories. Not only do the we Bugbee all like to tell stories, it looks like we want to incorporate stories from people represent- • We were ing these different perspectives, using vary- talking about ing methods, even that means sneaking in a creationist six-line poem from Tupac Shakur about a rose stories and growing in concrete. how those Then we were able to delve a little into stories are environmental justice and preserving natural generated habitats. I hope we have a decent discus- by Christians sion about that at some point also. There and Native are a lot of interesting issues that come up • I offered a counterpoint to that. There are regard privilege. Who is sitting at the table two ways of dealing with the labels. One is, 73 and, as we develop this project, where are steal the concepts but don’t use the labels we beginning to recognize that some things because you want to remain noncontrover- are becoming more privileged than others? sial. So use the deep ecology ideas and stay Sidebar: Demographics That includes the stories we choose to tell, away from who is saying whatever. But I • Do you have demographic data on exactly how whom we choose to tell them, and whom we proposed that if you do that, you need to re- your audience breaks down in terms of resi- choose to partner with. How are we going to ally give it some thought because you might dency? How many out-of-state people do you get? • Matt Matcuk deal with that? We also talked again about be missing an enormous opportunity. Natu- relationships: relationships to land, relation- ral scientists shape the discourse by nam- • Yes, we have the demographic data. About 80% ships to nature. • Amy Billstrom ing theory, building theory with constructs, of visitors are from the immediate Bay Area, and naming those constructs something like meaning a fourteen mile radius. More people • There was also the whole notion that people “evolution.” And you fight for that. You fight come up from San Jose than across from San Francisco. We can get you the demographics are part of nature. The way we view it from because a lot is at stake and the label does a of where the other 20% come from, and the a European American perspective of people lot of work. percentage who come on school busses. over nature isn’t necessarily shared univer- Why leave it just to natural scientists to • OMCA staff sally, and that is really important. • Doris have those constructs out there? If one could • I think the exhibit’s greatest strength will be Ash get the right constructs, you commit to them the degree to which it is linked to curriculum. and put them out there and that is part of • Anon • We mentioned in passing something that the work the museum does. came up in threads during our conversation that relates to the last question, how to So there are two very different ways of deal- World View group depoliticize the notion of conservation. One ing with this. Maybe you do some of each in of the things I was going to raise regarding different constructs. I just think it’s impor- that was that we shouldn’t depoliticize it, tant to approach this thoughtfully and recog- we should actually build in the concept of nize the strengths of the different sides. how policy and policy makers and all of that • Peter Kahn is connected to nature. • To build on what Peter is saying, something We had passing discussions on deep ecology Carolyn said really resonated with me, which and how that might be a useful concept, is that this project can look at new ways of though without using those labels because it defining a relationship with the environment. is controversial. Perhaps there are some in- We have such a diverse audience in terms of teresting things that could be drawn out and culture, economics, and experience, and it used as concepts without using the labels. would be really exciting to redefine relation- • Christopher Cogan ships with natural science. • Amy Billstrom us are products of a long history across the 74 globe. That is part of the answer to those • You said you didn’t talk much about the last questions of how to move from abstract to question, depoliticizing the notion of con- specific and how to take all stakeholders into servation. I just wanted to tell a short story account and so forth. Equally compelling is here. The recent NSF proposal that I submit- what is particular in the human relationship ted, which was funded, has to do with hold- with nature. That is your basic move right ing a conference to look at the ways we can there, what is universal and what is particu- better use citizen science for conservation. lar. If you can work both strands together and All of the reviewers and the program officer not get caught up with one or the other, then did not understand the difference between that is your way in to being able to solve and conservation and advocacy. They consid- answer those questions. • Peter Kahn ered them to be one and the same. And our negotiation questions were about that, four times, and we got them to understand the difference. Don’t de-emphasize the impor- Kathleen McLean editing topic list tance of that. There is such a difference between conservation and advocacy.

And regarding the connections for people in Oakland in terms of thinking about the other six places, there probably is a story to be told about the entire state of California being based on the health of all of those areas, which is not advocacy, it’s just conservation. • Rick Bonney

• I’d like to highlight one other idea that I’d like to put out there. I thought I had an answer to all four questions that was quite simple. Across all of them, the answer lies basically in trying to articulate what is universal in the human relationship that people have with nature, and I think there are universal ways of characterizing that, grounded in a deep sense of evolutionary theory. All of DEEP TIME ally erupting rather than being a dormant volcano. Another was Oakland with redwoods 75 Reporting: and mammoths. Cordell Bank, with low sea Kirk Johnson and multiple group members levels during the Ice Age, was actually rocky • We noted at the start that there is a lot islands instead of a submarine mountain. So How can we present Deep Time (both those are examples of a lot of really distinct more time in the Natural Sciences Gallery past and future) in a way that is compre- changes over time. than there is in the two other halls. The hensible? What strategies can we use? History Gallery has a very shallow timeline, Then there was the idea of tying that to an a few thousand years amongst friends. Deep animated paleogeography map that would Time is an unusually challenging thing to stop through time and you could click it on Group Members: talk about. We quickly settled on the fact these various scenes, these then-and-now Kirk Johnson, Lauren Palumbi, Douglas Long, that there are a couple of interesting tem- scenes. Scott Sampson, Tisha Carper Long poral things. For example, the 164-year-old fish found at Cordell Bank was living when We talked a little bit about interesting Abraham Lincoln was living. There is the fact connections, like the fact that grizzlies ate that it took John Muir two months to walk elephant seals down on the coast. It’s just to Yosemite from Oakland. The redwoods the idea that different interactions occurred were logged in fifteen years and it will take at different points in time with different a thousand years for them to go back to that players involved. • Kirk Johnson level. There are those sorts of things for each of the places. • I liked a couple of different quotes that I heard: that landscapes have a surprising One idea we sort of liked was this idea of history; that the place Scott Sampson and Kirk Johnson then and now, a sort of place-based thing. we’re at now wasn’t the For each of these seven spots we would pick place ten thousand years one point in time and refer to that spot in ago, a million years ago, a time. For instance, Sutter Butte is now this hundred million years ago. rocky island in the Central Valley. Three But more importantly, un- million years ago there was a sea there and derstanding major changes it was actually an island. The image of that over time, we need to island as opposed to its current state is a think about major changes pretty graphic then-and-now kind of thing. that will come. It is trying Another was Yosemite with the valley flooded to get the idea not of the with glacier, so you could actually see it instability of the earth but then and now. Another was Shasta actu- the changing nature of the earth. So part of it would be around that before that there were grizzlies, and before 76 surprise, but it carries with it a bigger mes- that mammoths and mastodons and bears sage that we are on a constantly changing bigger than grizzlies that could run as fast as earth. It might be woven into global climate a horse—exciting things like that? • Douglas change. People might think, well, the earth Long changes anyway, but we would be able to show that type of change happens at a • I’ll mention one more thing that Kirk himself slower rate, one to which natural ecosystems and his museum have done called “Ancient are able to respond, whereas the situation Denvers.” They hired an artist to depict what we are in now with global climate change Denver was like at different points in history. is happening much faster than organisms or We were talking about doing then and now, ecological communities can withstand. but actually hiring artists to portray Oakland, or each of these seven spots, in the then and We also talked about the Mannahatta Proj- now. You could even do a future thing and ect, which many of you may be familiar with. hire an artist to do multiple versions of the We recently talked with a couple of people future to get a sense of where that is go- who are doing something very similar for ing. This could give people a sense of time the San Francisco Bay Area and are currently Tisha Carper Long and Kirk Johnson and interject them into that history. • Scott having a discussion about how that might be Sampson interpreted in the gallery in some way. For those of you who don’t know, Mannahatta is • We were talking about participatory experi- a project where you can look at Manhattan ences in our group. There is an example on today versus Manhattan in pre-contact times, the Mannahatta Project that is not exactly and how the habitats and ecosystems have user-generated content, but involves using a changed very dramatically. We could have slider and stopping where you want to. Being something like that to show what Oakland able to control that information and stop- was like just 200 years ago, which is a radical ping where I want to and seeing what it was departure from what you see now. like then is a really good example of a more Or there is just that picture of 8th and Madi- deeply engaging activity. • Matt Matcuk son, where Oakland is this beautiful canopy of live oaks covering a thoroughfare of • A different way of looking at time is some- horse-drawn carriages, which is so dramati- thing that a group of us were playing around cally surprising to a lot of people. How do we with. We were looking at digital maps of bring into that the fact that there used to be California and speeding up time, looking at Pronghorn Antelopes and tule elk here, and seasonal changes, especially in vegetation. There are some really neat things you can do million or a thousand years, and I don’t have with satellite imagery, which provides views to worry as much because I’m understanding 77 of the whole state. You can run it through on evolution. I think there’s a critical junction fast forward, and what you see is the green- there that has to shut that down because ing up of the Central Valley. It’s amazing. It yes, we will adapt, but we won’t be fine. looks like a pulsing heart and the whole state Sidebar: Research on One of the ways we can do that is to show comes alive. And you can loop it and play it People’s Relationship to Nature that other cultures have adapted and have at any speed you want, but you are speeding • Cecilia, are there any evaluation studies out died out. They’ve made choices. Look at up time and you’re showing how the sea- there on people’s relationship to nature in Easter Island or Chaco Canyon or any of sons are affecting the state. It could be very terms of museum work? • Doris Ash these cultures that have not lived sustain- effective and a very easy presentation. It’s • Not evaluation studies, no. There is litera- ably. It was advantageous for a certain something you can create. We just did it as ture out there and Peter probably is a good number of people for a certain number of a thing to try out. There is a whole range of resource for that. • Cecilia Garibay years, and then they wiped themselves out. different satellite or air photo imagery. • So we’ve got the history that shows that. • I asked Peter the same question. I mean evalu- Christopher Cogan And Scott’s point is, on a global level we are ation studies regarding museum work. There aren’t any? That’s bizarre. How many science potentially for the first time at that spot. • I’m wondering how your group dealt with museums and nature museums do we have that something that Scott said earlier today when If we don’t convey that, what I’ve found, at convey that sense of a multicultural view of he was on his powerful rant. Basically, if we least in my discussions with a lot of people nature? • Doris Ash don’t do something big and change in a big about evolution and adaptation and the psy- way, in a hundred years we could largely chology of it, is that people just say, “Huh, destroy an enormous part of everything. I get it, we’re fine. Adaptation will just be What I’m concerned about is that sometimes different.” We will be different but it’s not as evolution gets played out and anyone gets going to be as good and we may get to Scot’s a handle on that and projects it out into the point. If that doesn’t get in there, it could future, they come up with the statement, be a shortcoming. But then you’ve got to “Oh, I get it. Evolution and adaptation is how counter that doom and gloom because it’s we came to be. We adapt. The environment a pretty depressing doom and gloom thing. changes and we adapt to it and we’re fine. I There’s the balancing. • Peter Kahn kind of get that things are going to change in the future and we’ll adapt to it and we’ll be fine.”

If you’re doing the Deep Time story, people may think, wow, everything has just kind of moved along great for a hundred million or a at least to the artist in that case. 78 PLACE I would love to see interpretations of that Reporting: Christopher Richard here. I would love to give people a pencil and multiple group members and tell them to draw something like that • We were seeking concepts of place, rang- representing their life around here, around ing from Google Maps through Mannahatta. the bay. What are the landmarks in their How do we get the abstract sense of There are a lot of whole new techno ways minds? Whether they locate them accurately place to marry the exhibit cases, which that people are gaining a sense of place. or not, it would be a really interesting way to are very concrete? Even the accursed cell phone and its GPS get at people’s sense of place. capabilities is getting a lot of people more We talked about some gallery sorts of stuff map literate. Hopefully we can take some and the history of place in the gallery and Group Members: advantage of that. Lisa White, Christopher Richard, Jennifer Stock, what the unit of place was in the gallery. Gail Binder, Lauren Palumbi We talked about the difference between When it started out, at least from the cu- an actual geographic to scale map versus ratorial point of view, the unit of place was something that’s more like a semi-geographic the community, essentially the plant com- bubble diagram. Remember the New Yorker munity. Yet from the design approach, with cover with a map where Manhattan was those evenly spaced walls marching down three-quarters of it and then there was a the gallery, there was this sort of geographic dime-size San Francisco. That was really cut: What was this transect, this continuum more a sort of bubble diagram of relevance, across the state? We had to conjure up

Place group names for that stretch of the continuum that happened to be between wall eight and wall nine. So that was always some sort of an artiﬁce but as the gallery evolved, it leaned more and more towards focusing on that and away from focusing on the community.

When we began this process in its earliest iterations, with people being part of it, we were really glad to get back to communities, but now we’ve made this jump to the hotspots, so there has been this various sort of thinking along the way.

During one conversation, Jennifer noted that she is uneasy about calling a hotspot over with the floor plan and that sucks. And Cordell. They have a pretty rigidly controlled then, of course, Tehachapi doesn’t work 79 vocabulary and Cordell Bank is that bump because it’s a quadruple junction of those on the bottom. It’s smaller than what they zones. Ecosystem Names v. Place Names would refer to as the sanctuary, which is the We also talked about Gray’s Reef, which is political boundary of the sanctuary. Sort of • People by and large were not happy with the another national marine sanctuary off the working names. I wrote a note that somebody the next step up in scale is the Gulf of the coast of Georgia. They have a lot of built said that the working names are a barrier. Farallones. The thought is that what we are infrastructure touting their existence at the • Christopher Richard really talking about, with the components big aquarium in Atlanta and the Fernbank that we are currently thinking of including, is • For example, some people might not know Science Center and I don’t know where all the ecosystem of the California Current. An where the Sutter Buttes are, and that might else. It’s even a smaller, much more obscure be a barrier for them to enter, or Tehachapi, even bigger next step up from that would be chunk than Cordell Bank, but Jenny said so there might immediately be a “What’s the coastal ocean. she’d look into what they’d learned about that?” instead of understanding the concept of It is sort of a nomenclatural quibble, but trying to sell their spot in terms of gaining what that ecosystem is all about. We discussed that as far as entry points. • Jennifer Stock nomenclature does have specified geographic public awareness to see if we can pick up footprints. In Yosemite it pretty much is the anything there. • And using those ecosystemic names might political boundary, but Shasta isn’t. There actually underscore your message of the many We got back to talking about the feel, the still is not good consistency or clear concep- different types of ecosystems rather than the immersiveness of place. We’re asking the tualization or rule-making about how we are many places. • Matt Matcuk question, what is it about those places that coming up with these names. • The Cordell Bank is sure to confuse a lot of is inspirational, confrontational, terrifying, people. • Jennifer Stock In terms of making this manifest in the gal- comforting, whatever it is? It’s like when lery, we have been talking about things like you are dragging someone around out in the lighting, the pathway. You might even get the woods, it becomes a teachable moment into some walls, some big props. In Cordell, because it has grabbed them somehow. Is for example, there’s the idea of a boat or a there any conceivable way that we can hope sub or something like that. to even approach that experience in the gallery? We didn’t get anywhere on that one. Gail came in with a scheme that sort of worked for a while for all but one of the We did talk about some more theatrical, big- places. That was the idea what people rec- scale stuff. A number of people have seen a ognize as the slices of the pie in this state number of recent installations using low-key, are things like the desert, the mountains, the animated, video-wall backgrounds, like the valley, and the coast. We were talking about elephants that walk through every now and some sort of overall first pass at cutting the then in the back of the California Academy pie. Of course, that would mean starting all diorama or the big video wall at AMNH. It’s basically using big scenes of nature with and experiential. • Christopher Richard 80 some motion to make it more immediate, but without being like the upwelling animation, • We have something like that with a Precam- telling a story rather than being art. We were brian ocean. There’s no plot, it’s just like talking about something more environmental you’re under water looking at a bunch of really bizarre animals swimming around, but it’s super high-res and people just stand Establishing Units of Time: 48-mile-long Fingernails there, mesmerized. • Matt Matcuk

• I’m very interested in this notion of unit of You then move to your tree that’s 2,000 years • I think Christopher covered our discussion place because unit of analysis is everything in old, or sort of build it from there, build those and just how difficult an issue it can be find- the work that I do. I was going to ask the Deep stories in. And then at some point you’re going ing the right sense of place. Our discussion Time folks about units of time. I have graduate to have to have a reasonable cut off. ranged from the abstract to the tangible students working on issues of space. We think We discussed having it more of a reference to physical and all of the scales. • Lisa D. White of the solar system, we think of the galaxy, what we already have in terms of images of we think of the universe, and we parse it up California 200 million years ago, and having • I liked the idea you mentioned about captur- that way. We can parse geological time up, but that sort of interactive slider bar access so ing visitors’ sense of space by having them that’s pretty boring and people don’t get it. Is that you can track through those time periods. draw maps. There is a project related to that there a way to parse time that is a little more Then when something of relevance comes up, graspable for people? When you say “three it’s not only then and now, it’s also put in the called Walking Papers, created by a company million years ago at Sutter Buttes,” what is broader context: This is then and now for this in San Francisco called Stamen Design. They three million years? place, this is where it was in current Califor- do all kinds of amazing stuff, but this one Is there some way to get a grasp of time the nia. And that’s probably not going to be where isn’t digital, it’s a physical piece of paper same way you’re trying to get a handle on a you expected. that has a bar code on it. It’s a map of what- unit of space, on place? I think it’s a really It’s about creating those reference points and ever you want. Anyone can draw on the map important concept. You’re saying, do we want that sense of place because you’re asking and then you scan it. In a museum setting community, hotspot, Cordell Bank, the coast, people to step outside of their normal concept you would probably collect those papers. or whatever, and the same is true of a unit of time, which is only a few decades, and When they are scanned in they are georefer- of time if you’re going to say this is what it interact and engage with this very out-there enced by bar code onto a Google Map. looked like then. • Doris Ash idea. I think starting from stories and building outwards might be the best way of achieving There were a couple of grad students who • To address that issue a little bit, what we that. • Lauren Palumbi did a project with students in Richmond and discussed was using finite stories in order to start to establish a sense of time, and then created their sense of what they need in • Doris, you want to know what three million keep moving it back. So you start off with your their neighborhood to feel safe, focusing on years is? It’s the time it would take your finger- fish that’s 140 years old, that’s a unit of time. replanning this two or three square block nails to grow forty-eight miles. • Kirk Johnson area and it was all over the map. Some of it was kind of nutty. Some of it was things like, “I hate crossing the street.” It was really a in. So if you wanted a cartogram of the Bay whole range of stuff. Area based on population, the areas most 81 heavily populated would blow up and get Walking Papers was specifically designed bigger, all out of scale. You could have hun- for working with communities that don’t dreds of different things built in and have have iPhones and aren’t interested in tablet the visitors very interactively make their computing, and so on. There’s no technologi- own cartograms. It would be very easy to do cal access, you just use a sheet of paper and because you could pre-load those, and the then you send it in. The museum setting is visitor is driving it. • Christopher Cogan actually an advantage because you could just have them drop it into a box. Someone then has to scan them, but you really could have their sense of place. And it’s participatory, and easy. • Dan Rademacher

• One of the things that I cover in teaching land use planning is urban renewal and urbanization. A key element there is how nature ﬁts into urban centers and how that’s evolving, OMCA staff listening to group debriefs how that is changing in the future. One of the buzz words that I use is this transformation from social space to MySpace. It’s all about place and how you think about place. I just wanted to toss that out there because it’s a big part of smart growth and reurban- ization that is pretty powerful. It’s part of the nature story right here in Oakland.

There is another element that you described at the beginning [New Yorker magazine cover map]. I forget the term you used for it, but the name that I and others have used is “cartograms.” It’s a very cool kind of thing, very digital and very interactive. Essentially, you make computer maps that distort themselves based on the content that you’re interested CLIMATE CHANGE squeezed out. There are a lot of things to 82 potentially focus on in Sutter Buttes: air Reporting: Dorothea Crosbie-Taylor pollution, heat stress on animals, and rising and multiple group members nighttime temperatures affecting the ability • We realized that there are a lot of differ- of animals to cool down. • Dorothea Crosbie- ent ways to go about talking about climate Taylor What are the most important climate change and that there is a lot of information change scenarios for these seven places? that would probably overwhelm some of the • In Shasta it’s about water, the Central Valley visitors, so what we ended up talking about Project, fish migration, habitat degradation were some specific things. To start with, we and how animals will respond. • Rebekah identified the 1860s as being important in Berkov Group Members: terms of that being the period when man Dorothea Crosbie-Taylor, Norman Miller, Steven started to have a major impact on nature • The main message here has to be tied to- Beissinger, Rebekah Berkov with agriculture and irrigation, and we talk- gether from an entry point where there is ed a little about how the Gold Rush figures a good understanding of what climate vari- into all of that. ability, climate change, natural variability, and man’s land use and modification of land Then we began to look at each individual really means, and how we understand it in place to see what would be the biggest thing the context of California and uncertainty and in terms of climate change to hit in each of the bigger picture of politics, if you will. That those areas. In Oakland we are looking at a really needs to be an entry piece as you come change in sea level, and in this case a rise in Climate Change group to these seven little ecosystems. Throughout sea level. In each of them there needs to be a tie-down Yosemite we point, which is the most sensitive response look at the for that particular ecosystem and how it is snowpack related to the others, which we began to and the summarize. fact that the freezing I think in the Tehachapis it’s going to be line is going increased fire extent, run off related impacts up. That in with increased drying, and if things happen turn affects the way they seem to be playing out it will vegeta- be very intense wet periods interspersed with tion, which long drought and dry periods, which may not is being be too different in some regards from the past except that it’s going to be hotter. We have high confidence that is really happening Norman just referred to, to present Califor- and that it is related to carbon dioxide. nia as a leader. California has always been a 83 leader. The idea is again to give this sense of The important aspect is not only the entry empowerment from the beginning to combat but the exit, and leaving a really solid set The Environmental Defense Fund Diet this doom and gloom. We got to the point in of take-away messages that a student, and our group where we said, “Well, you are two • If every American skipped one meal of a parent who drives the student’s thinking climate scientists sitting here with us. How chicken per week and substituted vegeta- to some extent, as well as the teacher, can bles and grains, for example, the carbon do you get up in the morning and keep going walk away with some action items that can dioxide savings would be the same as having all of this data in your head and in help them go to the next step if they choose taking more than half a million cars off of your work lives all the time?” That is a piece to. U.S. roads. we need to grapple with, and I really like Those might include low hanging fruits such this idea of starting from an empowerment • If every American had one meat-free meal per week, it would be the same as taking as making more efficient use of electricity point, and these little things, the low hang- more than 5 million cars off our roads. and water, or cutting out something on the ing fruit, will make a difference when you order of one meat meal a day [see Environ- think about how many people we are talking • Having one meat-free day per week would mental Defense Fund Diet in sidebar]. It’s a about making these changes. be the same as taking 8 million cars off lifestyle change that is a clear, easy deliver- American roads. There was also the point about clarifying na- able in terms of a way for us to reduce our To see the statistics behind how these sav- tional climate change versus global climate carbon footprint. ings were calculated go to: http://www.edf. change, looking at the 1860s as a real turn- org/article.cfm?contentid=6604 Also, there may be a way to publicize As- ing point, and then the human relationship sembly Bill 32 here and what that translates with the environment: farming, the Gold into, and what a fifty-percent reduction on Rush, industrialization, and the population Climate Change group our 1999 level means. That could be con- influx that we are continuing to experience. nected to the idea that California is at the One last thing was responsibility and the cutting edge of green technology and of a lot possibility of really presenting each visitor’s of historical things that we have done over role and responsibility in climate change the last 150 years. Here is a great opportu- in terms of how they live their life and the nity to not just look at gloom and doom but impact that has. • Rebekah Berkov to offer an exit plan for people to go out and make the world better, and not just say the • It’s not all speculative, or what is going to sky is falling. • Norman Miller happen, there is a lot that has already happened. You could find an example or two for • There were a couple of other important each of the seven places and say, “This has things that came up in the group that I happened.” Don’t let anybody have the op- wanted to mention. One of those was what portunity to question it. • Rick Bonney • We talked a lot about that and thought that • There are lots of them, from the grapes to 84 in this exhibit it would be to the benefit of the snowpack to the fish migration. • Norman the audience to talk more about what has L. Miller been observed than to talk about projections because they are going to stir the pot. • And a lot of that information comes from • Norman L. Miller citizen science projects over time, so there About Partnerships is another opportunity for participation. • And those examples are easy to find. • Rick • Rick Bonney Whom should we be talking to Bonney (scientists, partnerships, etc.)?

• Partnerships and collaborations haven’t come up that much in the discussions today. I just want to assure you that there is a convergence and we have been working on the partnership aspects while design and our ﬁrst stab at content is all coming together. You will be hearing a presentation on partnerships later on the agenda. • Amy Billstrom

Steven Beissinger and Norman Miller Midpoint Reﬂections 85

A Call for Reﬂections

3-D Immersion • We would like to hear your thoughts, ques- MORE IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCES tions, dreams or ideas at this point in the Seven Big, Immersive Dioramas • I dreamed last night that when I walked into session before we begin day two. It sounds the entryway of the exhibit I had to put on very Californian, but we ﬁnd that sometimes • I really love this idea of the seven places, my 3-D glasses, and that the entire thing dreams can present new ideas and change the it really resonates, but I keep thinking that was done on visual screens in 3-D and I was direction of the design process. • Kathleen McLean the objects in habitat cases don’t get you to in those ecosystems in some way, and that those places. That’s a seminal issue. You guys was really a very different experience. I kept have done a really great job with the other hearing yesterday that you want to immerse two galleries and I think you want to carry people in these ecosystems and it’s hard to that on with this gallery, but there needs to do that inside in that situation. Unfortunate- be more immersion there. There are not a ly, our society has just become so technol- lot of real things there and there is not a lot ogy-oriented. What wows them? of immersion, and those two things are so Douglas Long and Kathleen McLean review the agenda central to getting people transported from That gets away from what has been the downtown Oakland to another place. • Kirk tradition and strength here, the dioramas in Johnson the cases. It’s also probably a whole other level of technology and funding and you’d • What do you mean by real things? • Kathleen need to think about that. But maybe there is McLean still some intermediate thing that still allows that connection to happen.

• I’m still not blown away by the density of ob- You asked about dreams. That could also jects to be on display. There are the habitat be your worst nightmare, the technology boxes, which to me are sort of intermediate involved in doing something like that. I between real things and dioramas. I guess the walked into Costco the other day and there thought that I have is, build seven big diora- were the 3-D TVs that you could try out and mas. Move the boxes up to the history com- little glasses you put on to see the screens. plex and build seven dioramas and immerse I thought, it’s not as if people don’t spend people in those seven places. • Kirk Johnson enough time looking at a TV screen, now what are they going to do? And how will that affect their impression of what we provide them? Maybe I was picking up on Kirk’s reac- Or something like that, so there are one or 86 tion to the gallery. There’s nothing alive in two iconic things. there for them to see and interact with, so In the exhibits that we’ve talked about, I what would they experientially walk away don’t really see the iconic things that people with? How do you get that sense of awe, are going to see and talk about here. I don’t which I think is where you’re trying to go get that so far for this exhibit. So you might with this, so that they feel some attachment Adding Video, Film, Light and Sound to think about using technology to provide one to those seven places or the concept of hot- Frozen Dioramas or two really amazing, iconic things that spots? • Stephen R. Beissinger • As I was walking around the History Gallery would be immersive. I have to agree with the yesterday, one of the things that really caught others. I’m very into this immersion thing me a little bit off-guard in a pleasant way was Different Styles of Immersion and I push it all the time, and I’m not quite this one scene with an open door, and then ev- from Low-tech to High-tech Iconic sure how that would happen here. • Scott ery now and then this woman comes by. These Sampson dioramas are so “yestercentury” and so frozen • Just to build on that, would it be useful to and so archaic in a way, compared to where think about different styles of immersion? I we are headed now in this YouTube generation. agree that part of the goal here is awe and Effective, Nuanced Examples in Native How do you capture people’s quick-moving wonder and getting people to really feel American Section of the History Gallery attention? something for these places. You could use • I agree with the scientists (I am one, but I We could see ways in which you could team with everything from a beautiful photograph, like often tend to go the other way in terms of Pixar and others to develop things, but to me the ones Douglas was showing us yesterday. voice). I was really touched going through what would be immersive as you walk through It could be blown up, so you could walk into these little regions would be running ﬁlm and the Native American section of the History this wraparound with the objects within and video vignettes—running water, the grasses Gallery. I thought it was the best part, quite it makes you feel like you’re there. Clearly moving—so there is a sense of dynamics. A lot frankly. You did some really lovely, little, it’s a photograph and you’re not trying to of that needs to come in so there’s some light sophisticated, nuanced things. There is a wall make it look like you’re in the real place, and motion with these frozen, age-old diora- displaying basketry, which also has two or mas, that to me seem nice but old and kind of but you get a sense of the beauty of the three little screens that show a person mak- dusty. • Norman L. Miller place. That’s the low-tech, easy way. ing a basket. That changed the whole thing Then there might be one or two examples for me. of the kind of thing Steve was talking about, But what really got me were the stories in where you use technology to blow people each of the little subareas. And I assume away. Maybe you create some underwater you made a conscious decision not to try to scene for Cordell Bank, so it is immersive recreate real background contexts. Instead, and you feel like you’re right there under you had plywood that was partly painted water with these animals doing their thing. brown. Very simple, but it worked. And then there was a screen with mostly women tell- would be a little bit of a mind blower. ing the stories of foraging and so on. I didn’t • Norman Miller 87 do them all, but I really stayed there watch- ing this little screen that wasn’t too big and wasn’t too small, it was just right. And MAKING THE SCIENCE behind the screen was the granary and over MORE APPROACHABLE The Value of the Dioramas: Awe, Resonance, Close Observation there were some objects, so as I watched the Presenting This to Middle School screen, my side views were doing the rest of Students as Something They Could Pursue • Scott said “awe and wonder.” I feel muse- the surround. It pulled me in in a way that ums are most successful when they capture actually surprised me, so kudos. • As the exhibit hall gets better and better in resonance and wonder, and I see those things our minds or in reality, there is also a risk as different. One of the things I think is so It would be great if we could do something that it can alienate. Especially an audience successful about the dioramas is that they re- like that in the Natural Sciences Gallery. I like middle school kids, who might come mind me of being in real nature. The detail is so real and so accurate. That really resonates like the idea of the grasses moving and the here and say, “Wow, that is so amazing I for me. water ﬂowing and I think you can get that could never do that.” It’s something I’ve with smaller screens, not big ones necessar- struggled with in working with students in One other thing I wanted to mention relates to a conversation that Lindsay and I had last ily. Did anyone else go into that section? my area, especially at the junior college night. I think that the dioramas really invite • Doris Ash level, where we are trying to focus on STEM the visitor to observe nature closely. As an • I did. • Richard Bugbee issues, which I notice was on your list of educator, that’s a skill that we are losing, questions as an NSF priority. that we are not fostering in people any more. • There was one experience in a dark room I think that in order to be able to appreciate I can’t help but wonder if there is some way that just gave me goosebumps. It’s where and connect with nature, we need to be able there could be a connection to encourage or the Spanish and the Native American cultures to observe it closely, and that takes patience at least keep the door open to kids coming meet and it’s a dark room with an Indian and time. • Rebekah Berkov headdress and a Spanish helmet. It really is through, letting them know that they’ve got immersive. And there’s a voice-over which this incredible university system, actually includes Richard’s voice, which I didn’t know two of them, in California: the University at the time. I was thinking about the Te- of California system, represented by some hachapis, where everything comes together. people here at the table; and the California You did a good job of showing cultures com- State University system, which is actually ing together, and if the Tehachapis really are the largest university system in the whole a meeting place... • Doris Ash world in terms of numbers of students.

• Not just cultures, but it would be interest- There might be some way to keep that door ing to have a long, Deep Time, geological open— “If you want to do this as a career, process showing the actual formation. That as a lifelong passion”—especially for middle school students. That might not work for the entry point over here, her personal story.” 88 fourth graders so much. We haven’t talked So we did the exhibition as a kind of comic about that and if it’s left out completely, book on the walls, which we covered with there’s almost a danger on the flip side that white vinyl. It’s huge and it traces her in four their reaction will be, “Wow, that’s so amaz- phases. There is when she was a little kid, ing, but it means all of this science and I Biomimicry: What We’ve Learned from standing on the sidewalk and looking at ants could never do that, so I don’t want to try,” Nature about Sustainability in the dirt with her brother. She was in New especially given the kind of students that Orleans, living in an apartment building and • One entry point you might think about for you’ve described coming through the mu- there wasn’t a lot of wildlife around, but combining the natural sciences with the social seum. aspects is biomimicry. In every one of these there were always bugs. Then there is middle seven spots, think about something that we’ve So that might be a danger if it’s ignored. I school where she was kind of ostracized learned from nature. We can actually show don’t have the answers for how to do that. because she was a girl, and she was studying a project with kids reclaiming a stream or It’s not just about “go to college,” the idea ants at the time in middle school when there recycling in a certain place—something that of going into STEM disciplines is a bit more is pressure not to do that. nature does that now we are starting to do. We focused. There could be things that say can feature that, and it’s a way to show that She went away to college at Berkeley and something like, “Here are faculty at your we are integrating back into nature. Instead was going to be a teacher. She took a Biology local university. Go call them. Here’s their of trying to dominate nature, we are using its 101 class and rediscovered this incredible phone number.” • Christopher Cogan wisdom, based on four billion years of R&D, love that she had for insects. The light went to help push us into the future. It’s a message on and she decided that she was going to be- about sustainability, but it’s also a message Putting a Human Face on Natural come a biologist. She ended up at Harvard, about children being actively involved. My Science: Ant Exhibit at the Field Museum guess is that in all seven of these places you working with E.O. Wilson. She is a hotshot entomologist, completely down to earth. could find really great examples of that. • We just did a small exhibition in one of our • Scott Sampson wildlife research galleries. It is a very small So there it was on four walls in these four gallery, about 800 square feet. We worked chapters, and it was accompanied by these with a scientist who studies ants. She is re- huge, six-foot by four-foot, color photo- ally cool, she is tattooed all over, and she graphs of macro shots of ants. So you’ve got didn’t come up the easy way, she came up these huge ant photos and your standard the hard way. We were looking at her tat- exhibit ID that talk about the biology of the toos and how she approached science. She is ants and what is happening in that section, relatively young. I said, “You know, we really and then you’ve got her story. And people ought to do an exhibition that is not just really use it, they love this thing. about the ants but uses this young woman in We did it in twelve weeks, which was a some way. Let’s take this dual-pronged ap- struggle. It was my idea and I kind of got in proach where we do science here and human trouble for it, but I thought, let’s change the in Illinois.” It’s really a matter of scale. whole paradigm. What people have com- 89 One of the things we learned here really mented on most in the comment book is that quickly from the front-end was that people they read her story and felt like maybe they thought of these places in the dioramas could do that to. The exhibit will be up for a Missing Place/Hotspot: as very much what we would call “generic year. • Matt Matcuk Mediterranean Coastal Ecosystems habitat.” It was the prairie, the woods, the redwoods. That lends itself to very different • Among the seven places, we are missing the main biodiversity conservation hotspot, which THE NOTION OF PLACE kinds of conversations than they are able to is the Mediterranean coastal ecosystems that have if they have a specific place in mind. Continuum from Specific to General run from the Bay Area down to Los Angeles. The example I might give from the current That is our internationally renowned biodiver- • I’ve got an issue that I want to bring up, study at the Field Museum is that the Grand sity hotspot. You might want to think about and it’s one of the biggest things we have some way to deal with that. I am not saying Canyon label has a very specific description, to tackle after you go home. The thing that that it has to be number eight, but if you were something like, “this particular view or part came up over and over again yesterday was to ask someone in the biodiversity community of the Grand Canyon.” That then allows for this notion of place, the scale of the no- about California biodiversity, this would be the different conversation about: “Was I at that thing that would come to the forefront. tion of place, and the continuum of the idea place? I don’t think it looks like I remember. • Stephen R. Beissinger of place from the very specific to the very I don’t think I went to that side.” As opposed general. It came up when we were looking to a much broader, “Isn’t that a nice shot of at Cecilia’s research. You have prairie and somewhere in the Grand Canyon.” Or worse rainforest on the one hand, but the surveys yet, “Oh yeah, that’s some really cool deer you had talked about specific places. with some rocks in the back.” That’s impor- • Kathleen McLean tant to think about, the way that visitors locate themselves. • Cecilia Garibay Visitor Reaction to Specific v. General Places • Can you say something more about what they • What we can say from the front-end research say about that? What is the actual dialog? here, and what we are finding from conver- • Doris Ash sations happening at the dioramas, is that the more specific a place, the more likely it • A lot of the dialog is this memory piece, is that visitors are engaging mentally with particularly if people have been to the Grand where that is. For example, visitors can Canyon but at different times, so they didn’t locate and situate themselves much more go together. It might be, “Oh, I remember easily if you say, “This is somewhere along seeing this,” or, “I don’t remember see- the Fox River,” than if you said, “someplace ing this, did you see this part?” That lent itself to several conversations about how For most people it’s probably boring, but 90 maybe this place is much bigger than what I thought it was really interesting because you could possibly see at one time. So they space is a kind of chunk of the big void and began to think about what I think of as the with place, the more specificity you give the spatial relationship and the dimension of more people feel like they are grounded, and Bioregions and Watersheds, and Taking a that place. They wouldn’t articulate it that place becomes where they are personally. Proactive Role in Sustaining these Places way, but it’s really clear that they began to Yesterday the question of how we are dealing • In most of the education literature, when they locate themselves and think about place and with place came up over and over again. I talk about place and defining it, they refer to space in that way. • Cecilia Garibay think that’s why I had a brainstorm in the bioregions, and bioregions are often equivalent middle of the night about our next small to watersheds. One of the things we might • This is really important in terms of the learn- think about is, what is the engagement of group breakout session. This time, rather ing piece. What you are saying is that people this museum with those seven places? Are we than big, abstract questions about how to start with the very particular and then are just talking about them here? Do we actually change the world and what’s the meaning able to generalize by themselves without any engage with the communities there? Could you of life, we are going to break up into groups other spurring thing. • Doris Ash actually work with those communities to make and we are going to talk about those seven those places sustainable? For example, could places. You are not going to talk about all you bring all of the different players to the • But they need to be able to locate them- seven places, you are going to get one place table and talk about what sustainability would selves in that particular place. Otherwise, to talk about and there will be a staff person actually look like in this place, actually help what we saw happening during the front end there to facilitate it. them work towards the future rather than just with the dioramas here is that it became featuring them in the museum? You might think a generic habitat. So then it was no place, I think, even in those small group conver- about this in terms of bioregions or water- it was just this generic thing called “the sations, it might be helpful to think about sheds, though bioregions and watersheds don’t woods.” • Cecilia Garibay something that Christopher raised yester- map all the time, but think about it in terms of how nature would define it. What is this day in a more philosophical way: Where do you draw the line? That’s something we’ve area in terms of the ecosystem and how would Impact of Place Decisions been really grappling with. And Jennifer nature do it, and how does that map onto what on Gallery Development and Design you could do for that place? brought up the question of Cordell Bank. Is

• Scott Sampson The Next Small Group Assignment: it the pinnacle at Cordell Bank that we say Focusing on Speciﬁc Places, Drawing the Line is the place, or is it the coast of California, which is this huge marine system? • Kathleen • I’ve been writing a lot about sense of place, McLean but it’s from a design perspective and the architecture, it has nothing to do with muse- A Design Issue ums, but they talk about the continuum and the notion of the difference between space • But they don’t have to be exclusive and it’s and place. Philosophers really get into this. highly likely you’ll end up doing both. It’s really a design issue of how you’ll balance “We value this, what do you value about this those things. How large is the graphic that place?” How do we incorporate that? 91 says “coastal upwelling ecosystem,” and how • Lauren Palumbi large is the type that says “Cordell Bank.” It’s how you approach that, what you see, Sutter Buttes: The Sacred Spaces and the Nature of What when you see it, how it’s repeated • Matt Nexus of Biodiversity and Private Land Makes a Place a Special Place Matcuk • The thing that struck me about Sutter Buttes • During the last small group discussion I was is that it’s private land. Everything else is public access land for the most part, but An Issue that in the World View group, which talked about Sutter Buttes is not. It’s very hard to actually Permeates Every Aspect of the Project accessibility and relevancy of the content of visit Sutter Buttes. It’s open by prior arrange- the places. In that conversation we talked ment for a very short time in the spring. But • But it’s not just a design problem, it’s also about how these places, these experiences that brings up a whole bunch of other re- what examples we use, which habitat cases of nature, mean things to people. Last night, ally interesting questions about the nexus of are used, it’s very complicated. The reason driving Peter Kahn to the airport, we were biodiversity and private lands. • Stephen R. it kept bugging me is that it comes up in talking about the different places and I told Beissinger every level of what we are doing in terms of him we are meeting with the Native Advisory evaluation, in terms of prototyping, in terms Council in a few weeks to talk about the of how you write things, the design. It’s even places. Two of them are these big sacred the way we think when we’re drawing the places within California: Shasta and Sutter circle for our own attention in creating this Buttes. Peter said he had just come from thing. I don’t have the answer, but it comes a sacred space conference and that at this up in all of the different conversations we session we hadn’t talked about sacred spaces have been having. • Kathleen McLean at all yet. He remarked that he thought that was really interesting. We haven’t talked Enabling Visitors to Express their Own Values about how biology and faith come together.

• To attach something else onto that, when I’m hoping that comes up some time during we talk about these places and we show the conversations today. For some people them to visitors, we are also going to have it’s a bioregion, for other people it’s their to offer some explanation regarding why we quarter-mile neighborhood. What is it about think they’re important. Once you have the the place that holds together in a coherent values that we think are important and our way that is recognizable as a special place? representation of those values, the question • Mary Jo Sutton I would have is how we keep that open for visitors’ interpretive values and let those be • That’s the first thing that came to my mind a part of that as well. How do we tell them, when you mentioned Shasta: Oh, that’s a sacred space for all of these groups of people California. The cocoon man said, Gather 92 all of the way around the mountain. What flowers and put them in the fire to send them Space for People’s Stories. has been bugging me is that I can’t remem- to Kashaya,” and the flowers made a sacred • In our small group we talked a little bit about ber what the real name of the mountain is, bridge that sent them back to Hawaii. That’s relationship to place. Richard’s story about co- the Native name. The cocoon man lives up the short version of a long story. • Richard coon man reminded me, where is there space there. He is the one who sent the Hawaiians Bugbee in the gallery for people to tell their stories home. The Hawaiians got lost in northeast of their place? It may be connected to that specific spot, but it may also be a reminder of a spot that is special or sacred to them. I haven’t heard a lot of conversation about that notion of story in the discussion. • Cecilia Garibay Community Partnerships

INTRODUCTION about links to education and schools at the K through middle school level and high school Kathleen McLean youth. I want you to know that there are allies Amy Billstrom We haven’t talked about partnerships much yet here on this team for youth, and for pre-school at this session, we’ve been focusing on content and elementary school as well as community and design, but as you know, the name of this college. It is a part of the conversation we project is “Bringing Dioramas to Life Through have talked about in the context of this NSF Community Voices.” Well, who are those com- grant because of the funding parameters, but munity voices? We are just now starting to get it is a priority here at the Oakland Museum. into that. Amy is going to give you a very quick The partnership component of the project overview of the complexity of the community is very complex. Kathy has worked with us partnerships piece. to make a bubble map to try to explain how partnerships might fit into this project [sidebar OVERVIEW page 93]. Our approach to the partnerships, Amy Billstrom, Interim Natural Sciences both as an institution and for this project, is Interpretive Specialist, OMCA that we are committed to sharing the message. For instance, in the History Gallery there First I would like to say that I have really ap- is a wall of baby photos from the Baby Boom preciated the comments people have made era. We went out to the community and asked people to contribute a picture from their child- In terms of partners, we have a bubble repre- hood. Participation ranges from that relatively senting local organizations, which includes five 93 low level of involvement to cocreation. For the partners right now that we went into the grant “Before the Other People Came” section of the with: the Golden Gate Audubon Society, the History Gallery, we brought people in from our YMCA of the East Bay right here in Oakland, About “Family” at the Core Native Advisory Council and shared the mes- the East Bay Regional Park District, Bay Nature • Who are your family? Aren’t family the ones sage with them from the start. We shared the Magazine, and the Nature Conservancy. This is you can’t pick? Your friends you pick, your power and the privilege. our starter group of partners and the constitu- family you’re stuck with. • Matt Matcuk ency that we are going to work with for sure, How that is going to be manifested in this proj- though to which degree we are still explor- ect is still largely unknown. I choose to look ing. There is an analogy that Lori uses: We at this project as a living, breathing organism are committed to a long term Community partnerships bubble diagram that can grow extra parts, while other parts relationship and we are dat- might die off, so we are looking at expanding ing, but we are not necessarily and contracting programs. married yet. I’m going to quickly walk you through how Now is the time that we are partnerships fit into the project according to expanding and developing our current vision, and then other members relationships in the local com- of the team are going to address what we’ve munity. This includes local done and where we are going. The develop- community members and ment team is at the core of the extended organizations. As an institution team, what I refer to as our family, which we have extensive relation- includes staff, consultants like Kathy McLean, ships with organizations all and our advisory councils, including the Na- over Oakland, but there are tive American Council, the African American gaps. There are people we Council, the Asian-Pacific Islander Council, don’t know, particularly in the the Latino Council, and the Teacher Advisory natural sciences. Council. That family includes our other departments—art, history and education—as well as There is one problem we have our docents and an upcoming project on John been struggling with and we Muir and other advisors that we have on our would appreciate any input board. you have regarding this. That is, how do we have a conver- Then we have our funders, we have our NSF sation and articulate our goals advisors, and we have Cecilia Garibay, who and yet not commit? People should get her own bubble. get very excited about the idea of participat- ROUND ONE Q & A 94 ing in a project like this, but as we go through this experimental process we are not sure how Partner Courtship and Marriage everyone is going to fit in, and not everyone • What does getting married look like to you? can fit in. Rebekah and Dorothea are going to • Kirk Johnson share some of the criteria that we are using as we decide who we are working with. • That’s a really good question. We have So that is local. Then we have the other six enough experience here at the museum to places, which are distant. There again, we are know that for a partnership to be meaning- Missing: Education and Business going to look for organizational partners and ful, you’re going to be in it for a long time, • I see an apple when I look at that diagram, and specific individuals. At Cordell Bank, NOAA and so getting married means working with that I like that image. I’m curious about a couple the Nature Conservancy are solid partner right person or that organization beyond the open- of things that are not there. One is explicitly now and this is going to expand. We also have, ing of the gallery. We are just going to have education and partnerships with teachers in meshed in between the local and distant part- to be very careful about that because we the local area. It seems like that’s a big one ners, our research partners. really respect where the non-museum folks in terms of things like curriculum develop- or the other museum folks are coming from. ment partnerships and things along those Our definition of “partners” right now is very That’s the getting married part. I have to lines. Second, I see a lot of organizations on broad. It could be someone who helps us, such your diagram and on the list you handed out, start planning these opportunities two and as one of you or one of your colleagues helping but I don’t really see local business commu- three years out, knowing that we are not us with specific content in the social sciences nity leaders. I’m just wondering why. That’s just going to get it up and started, we have or natural sciences. It could be a whole organi- a huge one. That would be a different kind of to seed it. For example, I know what goes zation. With the YMCA we are hopefully looking partnership to be sure, but I suspect there are into having a youth program and what that at working with a series of families to do some a number of businesses that could really get requires in terms of commitment and time. behind some of this and be very helpful. sort of project. But that may not work out, we • Amy Billstrom • Christopher Cogan may end up working with them just on prototyping. So there are a bunch of unknowns. • We find, as we get to know our local organiza- • Do you actually draft an agreement? • Kirk Cecilia has a bubble amidst all of this because tions, that many of them are businesses. But Johnson actually, businesses haven’t been invited to she is involved in much if not all of this. And the table yet. • Amy Billstrom finally, there is evaluation to find out how suc- • Yes, we are going to. A memo of agreement, cessful we were. even if informal, is important to make sure everyone is accountable. What is really important as we enter into these is that we have an initial discussion to create a shared mission. We can have talks about what is important to you and what is important to me, but when we create it together and write a sketch of the process, including everything it down, we’ll be able to come back to that you’ll be doing at each major stage, so they 95 over time as we make the hard decisions. understand that this isn’t the time to discuss • Amy Billstrom the color of the carpet. • Matt Matcuk

Local Primary Criteria for Partnerships • I was going to say exactly that. What do you • We’ve had several discussions about setting and Collaborations want from them and what are you going to up the roles and understanding where vari- give them? If I were one of these organiza- ous people come from. Fortunately, our Days Oakland and the East Bay tions, I would want that right up front. of the Dead exhibition dates back fourteen 1. Organizations whose missions relate to • Doris Ash or fifteen years, and that is a cocreation pro- developing healthy communities and cess we have been doing for a period of time supporting informal learning, and whose activities can be supported by inquiry into • We have also had experiences that are very now. I want to emphasize that the phase we the natural world around us. difficult, and it takes a while to get over are going through right now involves build- that. But with those we’ve approached so ing relationships and not necessarily exhibit 2. Organizations that represent a mix of com- far, there are a lot of sophisticated folks out making at all. • Amy Billstrom munities that closely match the current there who are grass roots and know what it’s and future demographic complexity of California and the Bay Area. all about. • Amy Billstrom LOCAL PRIMARY CRITERIA 3. A mix of organizations that represent the Dorothea Crosbie-Taylor, Community Liaison, OMCA The Need to Educate Non-museum geographic diversity of (a) the Bay Area, People About the Exhibit Process This is the list of criteria we are using to iden- particularly the East Bay, and (b) California as a whole. tify potential partnerships and collaborations • Probably I could take lessons from you guys on the local level in Oakland and the East Bay. 4. Organizations that have been recommend- about community involvement because that’s Regarding the first criterion, what we are talked by our project partners and advisors. not my area of expertise and it’s not an area ing about is groups that are working to create of strength for my museum. But one of the 5. Potential for a long-term relationship with a healthy environment. the museum (and potentially with other things that we did learn doing an exhibi- departments). tion on Native Americans was something the For example, there has been some work go- exhibits people probably already know. No ing on in West Oakland, looking at all of the 6. Reach, visibility, credibility with the com- one understands what it means to develop, heavy particulate matter that is coming from munity. Organizations that are themselves design, and then produce an exhibition, no the trucks lined up at the Port of Oakland to at the forefront of innovation, are seen as “go-to” groups, or have a broad network one who isn’t in the business. Because of unload the containers. They did work that of their own members, supporters and that, they will make lots of assumptions they showed that kids in living in that area had participants. will end up causing headaches. asthma at a rate that was three or four times higher than any other neighborhood. So it’s re- One of the things you might want to plan to lated to air pollution and things like that, and do, if you haven’t already, is lay out for them it’s also related to the health of the community. Another organization is out there working And finally, we are seeking organizations with 96 on getting healthy food to neighborhoods that reach, visibility and credibility. What we are lack supermarkets, they just have convenience talking about there is organizations that per- stores that don’t sell fruit and vegetables and haps are already well-known in the community, instead sell chips and Fritos. that reach into other organizations, that possibly serve as something like a clearing house. Gaps: Churches When we look at organizations that repre- In other words, they are one organization, but sent a mix of demographics we are looking at • I’m wondering if this is intentional, based on they know fourteen other organizations they the conversation, but I notice that you don’t both current and future demographics and at can put us in contact with. have churches anywhere. • Carolyn Finney Oakland in particular. There is one organization that is reintroducing African Americans to the • One of the things we have talked about is how spirituality comes out in nature, whether natural world through hiking, camping, trips ROUND TWO Q & A that’s related to a particular church or not. to Yosemite. Another organization works with Long-Term Relationships Spirituality and people’s personal relation- youth and has them going out and reporting on ships is an area that we are discussing, trying the world around them. • According to what Amy was saying, some of to figure out how that might fit. • Dorothea these partnerships are going to be based on The third criterion, regarding geographic Crosbie-Taylor long-term relationships. The question I have diversity, is fairly straightforward. It is not is, once the exhibit is open, what is it that • That was one of the gaps that we identified. just Oakland, though Oakland is spotlighted in When we look at our big five (YMCA, East Bay you are going to be doing long-term for which the gallery. We are also looking at surrounding Park District, et al.) and their constituents, you would need or want to have partners? areas, whether that is Richmond or Berkeley some of the gaps they don’t fill include the What are the activities you see that relate to or San Leandro or San Rafael. We are trying to urban environment, the underserved, what is this gallery that go on beyond the opening? sometimes called environmental justice, and make sure that we are not concentrated all in • Scott Sampson spirituality. • Amy Billstrom one area.

We are also targeting organizations recom- • The cocreation pieces and the community mended by our project partners and advisors, input pieces in our gallery are going to be and encourage you to make those recommen- changing from here on out, so the gallery will dations. Amy talked about seeking out the be open, but it will be constantly changing. potential for long-term relationships. We don’t Over what kind of timeline I have no idea, just want the involvement limited to the reno- but the idea is that we will invite new organi- vation, we want to take that further, whether zations in to create new exhibits or be pres- that means programming outside the museum, ent in some way. In the long term, I can’t say or organizations coming into the museum. what our role as a museum will be, but we We are not seeking their participation in only can serve the community in many different providing content or only contributing to one ways. We serve as a venue for many organi- particular exhibit. zations for small and large events, including the Day of the Dead event and exhibit, so facing, but they will also see the kid in West in terms of true programming the sky is the Oakland who decided there was a need to 97 limit. It is the changing exhibition that poses provide healthy food to the neighborhood a challenge. Those are the kinds of relation- that has branched out and now involves a lot ships we can have in the long-term. • Amy of other people. There are many different Billstrom ways you can take that story. It could be a social issue, it could be an economic issue, it • You have this long list of organizations. What could be an environmental issue, but other can they do for you other than the cocre- kids who come here will see that and think, ation piece? • Scott Sampson oh, that’s something I can do. So it is not only continuing programming with these or- Six Places Primary Criteria for • We are going to have more than one cocre- ganizations, it is also the stories they can tell Partnerships and Collaborations ation piece in the gallery. They are going to and having personal stories in the gallery, help us revision how we communicate with and working with us to cocreate exhibitry. Cordell Bank, Sutter Buttes, Shasta, visitors about environmental science. • Amy • Dorothea Crosbie-Taylor Yosemite, Tehachapi, Palm Desert Billstrom 1. Individuals/organizations that have a strong connection to the place and/or are • So over the long term, are you envisioning SIX PLACES PRIMARY CRITERIA “of” the place. new ways of working with the community Rebekah Berkov, Natural Sciences School 2. Organizations that provide a diversity of and actually having them see the Oakland Program Coordinator, OMCA perspectives, including but not limited Museum as partly their home, so that they to: conservation/protection, academic/ If you look at the criteria for the six places, will have stuff that goes on here rather than science research, aesthetic, economic, you’ll see that they’re similar to the local cri- some other place? Are you looking at this as a spiritual, recreational, nature-as-not-sepa- teria. We are going to look for individuals and locus of attention for community events? rate. organizations in each place who are gatekeep- • Doris Ash 3. Organizations or a mix of organizations ers, so to speak, with a strong connection to that match the current and future de- that place. • That is one aspect, yes. We also see their mographic complexity of that place and involvement in ways that you were able to One criterion I want to touch on briefly is that California. see in the History Gallery with “Forces of we want them to have a diversity of perspec- 4. Organizations that have been recommend- Change” [1960s boxes] and “Before the Other tives about that place. That’s going to include ed by our project partners and advisors. People Came” [Native American section]. the work relationships, a subject that was 5. Organizations with reach, visibility, cred- The idea is that when people come, they brought up earlier, as well as spiritual relation- ibility with the community. Specifically ships, recreational relationships, conservation, will also see themselves. They will see their looking for leaders/representatives/men- stories, they will get the natural science and and research perspectives. We really want to tors/cultural translators of that community the environment and the issues that we are include a diversity of voices and stories. and place. We are also looking for organizations that should be talking to in each of these places to 98 match current and future demographics of get the Native perspective. the place and of California. The Institute for the Future of Museums put out an article on PARTNERSHIPS THE EDGY ASPECT a fascinating study about who is going to visit : museums in the 21st century. It’s a seven-year- AND THE BEGINNING PROCESS Suzanne Pegas, old, multiethnic student. That was huge in Natural Sciences Program Coordinator, OMCA terms of helping me understand what we need our impact to be in the future, who we need Earlier someone was asking about what was to cater to, and who is going to be our largest going to be edgy. I think a partial answer about audience. That is not the only study out there, what is edgy is this whole partnership aspect but it was particularly fascinating. of the gallery and sharing the message. We got money from NSF because we said we know the Then, of course, recommendations from problems that we are facing as a world right you guys and from other advisors are always now are larger than can be dealt with just welcome. And lastly, we are looking for orga- by experts. We need to introduce community nizations with reach, visibility and credibility voices and grapple with this stuff together. So I Beginning Relationships within the community because you can’t just think this is the answer to edgy. • In Sutter Butte we’ve talked to the Middle go into the community and say, “Hi, we’re the Mountain Foundation people and several of Oakland Museum, come and work with us.” We You received a list of local environmental the private land holders who are around the need to identify the gatekeepers within the groups and organizations as a hand-out, and circle, as well as the local museums. community, the cultural translators who can we are going to be hosting an open house next week for potential Oakland partners. We have We’ve gone down to Palm Desert and talked to help us find a common language, the mentors people at the Cahuilla Cultural Center; the who can help us foster relationships with stu- a lot of goals, but this is the way we’ve decid- Coachella Valley Preserve, a privately owned dents and teachers. ed to start this process. We want organizations and operated preserve that incorporates land in Oakland to know what we are doing, that we We are just beginning these relationships and owned by fourteen different groups; the Living want to share the message, that we don’t have I personally haven’t been involved in going Desert Museum, which does a lot of public the whole answer, and that Oakland is a big to these six places yet, but there are a few outreach and desert observation; and people part of the gallery. We want to share our ideas in the UC Deep Canyon Preserve doing desert people we have met and begun relationships so far, and we really want to learn about the research. • Douglas Long, Mary Jo Sutton with already. priorities and passions of these organizations The last thing I want to mention is that we are in Oakland. The ones that we have primarily really looking to our advisory councils here chosen to invite are those that can, as Amy has at the museum. We have long-term relation- said, fill in the gaps in areas where we don’t ships with them. We are talking to the Native have expertise or advisors already. American Advisory Council to identify whom we One example of things we have done in the start this pipeline of information coming in. We past that have been effective is Youth Radio. are also hoping for new approaches, new ways 99 The museum has launched a partnership with to frame things and to hold attention in view Youth Radio, and Youth Radio was involved in of these many different realities we have been cocreation of an exhibition called Cool Re- talking about. After this event we are hoping mixed, which went along with the travelling that organizations will know more about our exhibit, Birth of the Cool. It was youth inter- goals and that we will know way more about Pie in the Sky with a Practical Side preting what is cool in the present day. We what they are up to, and that some organiza- • Before we have questions, I just want to add have an ongoing partnership with them and I tions will emerge as a good fit for reciprocal that we are aware of what a crazy idea this have a fantasy that we will dispatch reporters relationships. is, looking at the magnitude of these seven to these seven places, including Oakland, and Ongoing conversations will be part of a Web places. We also have experience in keeping it that will be part of the story, an interpreta- presence that we hope to set up. We got some practical and knowing just how many relation- tion from Oakland youth about these places. It advice from Nina Simon about how to continue ships we can develop and sustain. We are cur- could happen. rently at a pie-in-the-sky stage because we are to engage people. Hopefully they will pass on not going to edit any opportunities yet, but we We are going to bring these Oakland organi- the word about checking out this interesting know what we can handle. • Amy Billstrom zations to this community event and we are Web site that the Oakland Museum has that going to share a very little bit of what we have is asking us about the most critical issues in shared with you. It is going to be more about Oakland. And we will start having conversations getting to know people and engaging in activi- that may develop into these deeper partner- Missing: National Park Service ties that are going to help us get to know their ships. • One of the organizations that seems to be priorities and passions and their identification glaringly absent is the National Park Service. Not only is Yosemite one of your places, but of the critical issues in the physical and natural ROUND THREE Q & A they have such a wealth of information about environment in Oakland. What has to be in this natural science and about communities. They Oakland section? That is the minimal contribu- What Will the have such a presence here in the Bay Area, and tion, what we can learn from them. We are Museum Offer These Communities? I work with a lot of people throughout the Park also going to be putting our feelers out to see Service, which is why I’m thinking they would • What is it that you are going to be doing for who is a good match for us, who we can work be really useful. • Carolyn Finney these seven communities? What are you going with in a deeper relationship, who has the time to be giving them? To me, that in part deter- • We just haven’t gotten around to expanding to work with us, who we get on with nicely, mines with whom you are going to partner. that list yet, but this is the kind of thing we and things like that. What is your long-term commitment to these need to hear from you. • Amy Billstrom Hopefully it is a quick way to start a buzz communities? • Scott Sampson and provoke the reaction, “Oh, the Oakland Museum is doing this thing, I’d better tell them • That’s what we are going to find out in these about this thing that is happening.” We hope to conversations. We know what we can give them right now, but they may have some • But take a place like Tehachapi. • Scott 100 ideas of their own. • Amy Billstrom Sampson

• That’s part of the conversation: How do our • Building on what they’ve said, we are not Pie in the Sky: Partnering missions overlap? That’s part of our criteria, going to say what we are going to give them, with CSU to Take Urban Youth Outdoors to These Hotspots we’re not just looking at our goals and what we are going to ask them what they want, they can do for us and that’s it, it’s definitely what they need. • Kathleen McLean • This is another pie-in-the-sky idea, but at this point everything is on the table. I started to a reciprocal relationship. We are trying to be think about some of the old work that I do as open as possible, which is a hard thing to • It’s a question we all have, we just don’t that tries to look at the interface of field trips do. • Suzanne Pegas know the answers yet. • Amy Billstrom for urban youth, science education, and involving the California State University system. • For instance, the Days of the Dead exhibit • So those conversations haven’t happened That system has twenty-two campuses and I and festival came about from the advisory yet? • Scott Sampson would bet that there is one within ten to thir- committee, but part of the need was that ty miles of each of these places, such as Hum- the folks on the original advisory commit- • We’ve started some conversations. • Amy boldt State for Shasta. In thinking long-term tee wanted to educate their own community Billstrom and planning ahead, you want to think about about this tradition. That was one of the ways to engage your community partners and youth in the Bay Area through the museum to major goals. The folks from the community • It’s like meeting someone and saying, “Hi, these places. There would be really great op- came and said, “We want to reach our own here’s what we do. Want to go out on a date? portunities to partner with universities. There people and we need a place to do it and Where would you like to go?” • Kathleen are so many things themes that are at the top support on how we do it,” and a decision was McLean of funders lists, and not just the National Sci- made to do an exhibition and a festival. The ence Foundation but even within the state, to reason we are holding this year’s festival on • “Here’s what I bring to the relationship, are get youth outdoors. If you can center it around October 23 instead of November 1 or 2 is in you interested?” • Amy Billstrom the hotspots, with the intent of bringing youth order to help folks learn about the traditions to these places, there is an enormous amount and have time to assemble their own materi- of things you could build on there. I definitely Cordell Bank: The Opportunity know folks within the geoscience and environ- als at home. The advisory council was com- to Engage New Communities mental science departments at CSU you could mitted to recognizing that Days of the Dead talk to. • Lisa White can be a very private celebration within a • Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary is family at your own place, whether that’s in one of these partnerships, and we came to a cemetery or at home. That is why we have the museum because we have funds that we always held our festival a week or two be- want to contribute, but we see the benefits fore the actual date. So that’s one example. in terms of reaching an audience we totally • Amy Billstrom do not reach in terms of making a connection to the ocean. So when I’m hearing a lot of what you are saying about partnerships I am seven places, including Oakland. What would thinking, that’s exactly what we are doing. that kind of satellite relationship look like? 101 We are bringing funds to it, but it’s because Are you in constant contact with Tehachapi? the opportunity to reach the communities Who are the movers and shakers, and what that you reach is really valuable to us. I’m will you need to do to have that constant imagining that some of the other places connection with them and to nurture that? might view this that way as well, as an op- That is a really big reach. People would portunity to expose another huge audience really be impressed by that—”We are the to their place that they have stewardship satellite partner of the Oakland Museum”—or over. whatever you want to call it. They would all I view that as a long-term relationship as feel like they belong here. It’s that sense well in terms of going way beyond the exhib- of belongingness, writ large, and there’s no it. When the exhibit is done and built, great, reason you can’t do that. Then you are pro- but from my perspective, I anticipate our viding something, you are giving something. Amy Billstrom with partnership bubble diagram partnership going far beyond that to ongoing You are giving them the notoriety and the PR connections through programming and school that they would never get otherwise. • Doris programs and whatnot. • Jennifer Stock Ash

• Bringing us back down to earth, I’m wonder- Awarding Satellite Center Status to ing whether that notoriety and PR is at all of Partners in These Seven Places interest to the private land owners around • Following up on Scott’s question about what Sutter Buttes. You may have a little bit of a you are giving to these communities, I can different situation there than you have with envision satellite centers in all of these these other places. • Stephen R. Beissinger 102 The Seven Places

American name for Mount San Jacinto. Advisors separated into seven groups, each PALM DESERT • Richard Bugbee group focusing on one of the seven places currently highlighted in the project design. OMCA staff members served as facilitators • There’s also the extension of the whole Gulf and participants in these groups. of California up into that area. This was an area we had a hard time drawing a circle around. It was deﬁnitely one of those areas where you have questions about what you choose as your region. And there’s the Salton Palm Desert Group Members: Sea, and Lake Cahuilla, which used to occupy Kirk Johnson, Richard Bugbee, Amy Billstrom, the basin in the Pleistocene era. • Anon.

• You can see the old shoreline of the lake still at the base of the mountains, the calcium deposits or whatever that is, and all of the Palm Desert group old Indian villages are outside that marking. There are no Indian villages inside where the • Palm Desert has ringtails, rattlesnakes, wind lake used to be. • Richard Bugbee turbines, Mexicans, Cahuilla Indians, casinos, snowbirds. The palms are in oases and along • Lake Cahuilla was seen by De Anza when he faults. At Mount San Jacinto there’s an el- came through. It was a freshwater lake and evational gradient story. Richard told us that at that time it was still contracting. In the “Takwish” is the name for ball lightning that 4,000 years before that there is evidence, can be seen over the mountain sometimes. from these ﬁsh traps made from rocks that And if you get bit by a rattlesnake someone extend further and further out, that in rela- should sing you a song that gets slower and tively recent historical times it was a pretty slower and slower so that your heartbeat big freshwater lake. • Douglas Long gets slower and slower. • Kirk Johnson

• Takwish Peak is almost equivalent to Shasta in terms of its sacredness, at least to the Cahuilla people. “Takwish” is the Native TEHACHAPI It is changing the evolutionary dynamics of what had been these ecoregions. You have 103 • Because it’s an area that’s not known to this ecotone, which is now a mega-ecotone, many people, there needed to be a way and rather than two habitats coming togeth- to profile this as a way for people to get er in a relatively small area, habitats are grounded in familiarity. We were talking coming together along boundaries that are about using geology and it’s unique char- hundreds of miles. So it is a relatively new acteristics as a transverse range running and diverse and active playing field for the east-west, which differs from the majority evolution of organisms in California. of ranges in California that run north-south. If you look at what are called the “physio- That could be a unique identifier. Geology graphic provinces” of these major regions would be a major foundation for understand- that are coming together and compare that ing the biological communities, and those with what is going on in other states, you biological communities are part of much would see that what is happening in Te- larger ecoregions. hachapi is special. Within that area are five So by looking at geology, tectonics, ecore- major biogeographic realms that re in colli- gions, vegetation, communities, you can go, sion or in some cases even overlap and are as Christopher said, all the way from geology in fusion with one another. As Christopher Tehachapi Group Members: Douglas Long, Lisa White, Christopher Cogan to policy, looking at this whole gradient all pointed out, that is a very important thing the way from the bedrock to current political that you don’t see happening on that scale issues. in many other places in the Tehachapi group Another conversation was about the fact that U.S. When people think this is a collision of these major ecoregions. about their sense of place It’s not necessarily about the boundaries or that their place is spe- between these ecoregions, but the fact that cial, we are able to show at these boundaries there is a lot of mixing, how California is special so there are chunks of adjacent habitats on a superlative order of that are now melded within one another. magnitude. It is now an opportunity for new ecological Lisa was also talking about relationships between different species and how the geology and the between plants on new sediments, more or topography of the area now less setting up evolutionary scenarios that creates very interesting are relatively new that could perhaps lead to and unique weather and the evolution of new organisms in the future. climatic conditions, and this is one of the places where you can show ing the variations in these regions by having 104 extremes in the range of climate, both daily some sort of drive-through video. You could Why Choose Tehachapi? and seasonally, and also the differences in take a transect from one of the roads going climate from the western side to the eastern from west to east and have a video camera • Why was this place chosen with its intersection of habitats, as opposed to something like the side. This is also a good place to show sea- mounted on top of the car. You could then Mediterranean coastal system? This seems so sonality in California. In the Central Valley speed that up, so you could have maybe an complex to interpret. I’m just wondering what you can see extremes in the green right after hour-long drive shortened into a five-minute the logic was. • Scott Sampson the winter rains and the blooming of the video, going through extremes of habitats wildflowers, and then the dying and drying and illustrating just how diverse these habi- • This does have some part of the Mediterranean ecosystem to it. Part of it was trying to search out of the grasses, whereas if you look on tats are as you’re moving from one area to for a place that represents Southern California the Mojave side, you see very little differen- the other. to some degree. It also encompasses some of tiation in seasons. The condor discussion also led into a conver- the dioramas that we have. But it was really There was also talk about the condor story sation about conservation issues. One of the these light bulbs that went off when I was on I-5 and stopped in a place where, literally, for in this area. This is a historical breeding and reasons that the condor is there, of course, a hundred yards in each direction I could see foraging area for the condors, and this is the is because of the prevailing winds that allow California sage scrub and manzanita chaparral; place that condors that have been released them to migrate through and forage. But this there was valley oak and grass savannah; there are going back to for a variety of reasons. is also an area where people are going to be were little fragments of Great Basin sagebrush One is because it is a large, contiguous, rela- setting up green energy turbines, and they and Joshua trees from the western Mojave. tively uninterrupted area for foraging. More will be putting these turbines up in the path All of those very different, very diverse plant importantly, however, the topography and of the California condor. communities were literally within the distance the climate, particularly the winds, afford I could chuck a rock. It was just amazing. And This led to other discussions about conscien- what are basically freeways or rivers of wind then Mary Jo came back from a trip and said, tious land use. The current owners of the that the condors are able to use to cross “I just went through the Tehachapis and you Tejon Ranch, which is a holding of 270,000 very large regions. wouldn’t believe what I saw,” and started acres covering a majority of this area, want naming off these different plant communities That brought up a couple of interesting to develop on some of the most ecologically that were interwoven with one another. things. One is, can we show this area on a critical and sensitive habitats in that entire • Douglas Long level of scale, say from the view of a con- region. How can science influence policy and • Are those things recognizable enough to a dor that is flying hundreds of miles a day, to policy influence conservation and conserva- guy like me that I would look around and go, something like a kangaroo rat with a home tion influence the future of this area? whoa, these look like plants that come from range that might be just a matter of tens different places? • Scott Sampson Lastly, we talked about these very important of yards? In looking at a habitat, different wilderness corridors connecting these various • Yes, absolutely. • Christopher Cogan organisms will have different relationships bioregions. There was also talk about ways with that habitat on a variety of scales. • Maybe—most people don’t get plants. • Mary of depicting these regions. A good way might Jo Sutton There was also talk about maybe depict- be to have a topographical map showing the terrain, which you can’t really depict in a change stories. The Grinnell Survey and the two-dimensional photograph. With a three- resurvey came up of course, and the op- 105 dimensional model you’d be able to show portunities that they present for showing just how varied this place is. • Douglas Long research that has been done on change over time. • If there were any way to enhance the exhibit Norman had some specific stories that we through visual displays, we thought a relief might be able to draw out in cases. To me map would be important, even a new school they feel like they will always be the same one that’s video or experiential. • Lisa White essentially, and they will be related to climate change timing, snow melt change, river • I wonder if you could benefit from a useful flow, elevation within the space, and where analogy like immigration, where different these plants and animals go as these situa- zones and people come in and these over- tions change. • Lindsay Dixon lap zones are very, very rich, like where we are right now at the edge of Chinatown and • In terms of the stories (and Norm felt this as Yosemite Group Members: Lake Merritt, so people could have a grasp well), when the national parks were created Lindsay Dixon, Norman Miller, Carolyn Finney of these mixing zones and what’s rich about it was about creating a sense of American this. • Doris Ash identity, so the story of this place is a way to connect to a larger story of this country. Yosemite group YOSEMITE • Carolyn Finney

• We talked about Yosemite as a place and • When I think of Yosemite I think of John Muir how, as a place, it feels very iconic, and and of Roosevelt, standing on top looking about some of the weight that it carries as out. I think of the 1950s tourists in their an icon. For Norman it feels very close to na- plaid, baggy shorts, looking up and trying ture and might represent that as a place. The to figure out what’s up there. And I think of fact that it is iconic means that in some ways those looking out from the top, seeing all of it carries the weight for mountain ranges in the mountains and the connectedness, and general. people looking up from the bottom, who can Carolyn was very interested in bringing out observe only a piece of it from a different some of the people stories in Yosemite, in perspective altogether. What we want to try particular the Buffalo Soldiers story. to do is provide the two of those connections of perception of the grandness of this icon, We also talked about climate change and which is internationally known as a unique Yosemite, the place, as a venue for climate slice. • Norman Miller • When I think of Yosemite I think of Julia • When I think of Yosemite, I think of the traf- 106 Parker. She has been weaving baskets in fic jams on the valley floor. I think of the Yosemite for probably fifty years, and she overuse by tourists as being just a small part knows everything about Yosemite. She’s a of Yosemite. Everyone will know the pictures wonderful lady. She has woven baskets for from that small little part of Yosemite, but the Queen of England. She’s a very talented the rest of Yosemite is untouched. • Stephen lady and basket weaver and story teller. You R. Beissinger might want to contact her. She works for the National Parks Service as the tribal liaison. • The 1950s parking lot picture was the most She is actually Pomo, but she married into striking example of how we approach our the Miwok and she weaves Miwok baskets. national beauty. • Norman Miller • Richard Bugbee OAKLAND Missing: Indian Land Relationship • In a lot of ways this was an extension of • I see Yosemite as underused. We are not al- • This is one of the things we tapped into. For me the community voice discussion. One of the lowed to gather there anymore and that was it is the fact that there were people before in things I thought was really interesting was part of the ecosystem. That was what I thought all of the natural sites you’ve identified here. the idea of strong identification with neigh- was missing about everything here. It’s called At what point are you deciding you’re not going borhoods and bringing that out. When people “Indian land management,” but I always call to talk about any of the people who were here say they’re from Oakland the next question it “Indian land relationships.” This is some- before? At some point you have to decide what is, “What neighborhood are you from?” thing that has happened for thousands and you’re going to do about that. • Carolyn Finney • Tisha Carper Long thousands of years, and for the last couple of • Another thing, when talking about land man- hundred years the relationship with the plants agement, is that California Indian basket has been severed, and it’s like the plants don’t • We were trying to orient folks who weren’t weavers work a lot with Northern California know what to do and they go crazy. There are from Oakland and figure out how we were basket weavers, burning areas to get materials a lot more trees in Yosemite than there ever going to tell the story. We talked about to make their baskets, working with the Forest were. That’s the first thing the old people say: whether other people feel it’s safe to come, Service. • Richard Bugbee “There didn’t used to be this many trees.” about who is coming to the museum, and What has happened is, everything is crowding • Louise Pubols, the Chief Curator of History, what the museum is bringing out to Oakland talks about seeing a National Park Service up because nothing is being gathered. I can see and California. So do people feel it’s safe to plaque with a quote from a Native woman who the tourists overrunning it, but the people that come here? Who comes here and why? There used to gather for thousands of years are not said that Yosemite had become really messy was some sense about who could be coming allowed to do that anymore. There is no such because it hadn’t been tended properly. here, and weaving that with what is happen- thing as “wilderness” to an Indian. • Richard • Kathleen McLean ing and changing here and/or what is surpris- Bugbee ing in the habitat. It was both about how we are interpreting Oakland, and how we tionship between the people piece (which are trying to communicate to others what is seems kind of overwhelming in Oakland 107 most important about Oakland to folks from compared to the natural environment) and Oakland. the natural environment. The National Park Service formed a relationship this summer We were also trying to get feedback from with a Latino organization that works with the people in this group about the event we African-American and Latino teenagers on are going to have next week, and ended up art and music. They took them to one of the veering a bit more towards that. Our angle national parks in D.C.—there are eleven or was more the human angle than the natural twelve of them—and then they did murals environment in Oakland because there was and they did slam poetry on climate change the sense that what is there right now in the and on their experience in thinking about exhibit isn’t the people’s Oakland, and there the environment, which was really power- isn’t a lot that is going to resonate. So a lot ful. They were fourteen and fifteen years of the focus was on what we are going to ask old and talented and had their own ways of the people coming to this event next week. thinking about things. • Suzanne Pegas Imagine something like that, where you • We had a lot of discussion about how much could have some of that poetry up next to Oakland Group Members: of what we already have here is “push” some of the changing natural environment in Tisha Carper Long, Suzanne Pegas, Doris Ash, Cecilia Garibay, Dorothea Crosbie-Taylor (with content, versus leaving space for the visitor a way that I think would invite a lot of Oak- input from Carolyn Finney) to sort of be in that Oakland section. So a land residents to think that they might have lot of our conversation was about that idea. a relation- Oakland group We touched on issues of people having an ship with the identity and potentially, because of visitor natural en- demographics at the museum, maybe there vironment. A is a strong sense of Oakland identity that you lot of these might want to be thinking about. We had a teenag- list of question that I think are possibilities ers hadn’t for next time, or they are at least jumping thought off points for other kinds of questions. about the • Cecilia Garibay natural environ- • I was talking earlier about a program in D.C. ment at all that is called Second Nature. This relates before, and to one way in which to highlight the rela- now they are writing music about it and painting about it • There are two things that I think would be 108 and having very different kinds of relation- interesting to juxtapose with Oakland. Of ships. It was a very powerful program. course, Oakland sits on the biggest estuary • Carolyn Finney on the West Coast, so hopefully the whole bay issue can come in here. Then there are A Hybrid Approach: • One of the things we discussed was how you the oak trees, but there is also the reforesta- Science and Community Stories convey the natural sciences in these frag- tion attempt underway in Oakland with the • One of the things that has informed my think- mented environments in Oakland in such a Urban Releaf efforts and other groups that I ing recently is a book called Museums and densely populated area. I live in the Temes- think fit part of that interesting oak story. Communities. It has a chapter about the Chi- cal and for years I had no idea why my street • Stephen R. Beissinger natown History Museum in New York and about was wider than other streets in the area. The having a dialogue with the community and train tracks used to run down that street and • But there is apparently not a single native telling the story from the community’s points before that, Native Americans lived in that species on the approved list of street trees. of view, so alongside the academic account area. That was in my neighborhood and I had • Christopher Richard you have the story of the Chinese diaspora no idea about that. • Dorothea Crosbie-Taylor to New York told from the point of view of a • Because they can’t live in these environ- laundry worker, for example. Apparently it ments very well. • Stephen R. Beissinger was quite successful. I look at it as a hybrid • And why is it called “Temescal,” which version. You have what the museum wants means “sweat lodge”? There used to be a and the intentions of the historians, who want sweat lodge there. • Christopher Richard CORDELL BANK their story told, and then you have what the • We got so excited about Cordell, but we community wants. • Yes, “temescal” means “sweat lodge,” I think really struggled with the parameters. How We don’t know what the community wants, do in Aztec. It’s from some language in Mexico. do we define them? There are so many we? We know that neighborhoods are probably • Richard Bugbee important, and maybe the firestorm is impor- opportunities to describe the diverse habi- tant. So we have some ideas and can make tats that are in the ocean, that are off the • One of the things that strikes me about something in the middle, a little bit of both, California coastline, and yet Cordell Bank is California is that it has got so many invasive so that one can learn from the other. That’s a such a unique gem. And Cordell hasn’t been species. But if you didn’t know which were hard task, but I think that the Chinatown His- highlighted or interpreted, other than a very tory Museum did that. • Doris Ash the invasive species you wouldn’t realize small piece at the Bear Valley Visitor Cen- that. You might want to bring that out. And • I think the big difference is that that museum ter. We got excited about the opportunity to who is to say what is native and what is not? is about people’s histories. That’s where we highlight something that is unknown, a place • Kirk Johnson get a little tripped up. We’ve got some other that most people won’t ever visit. There is thing going on here that is not exactly paral- the intrigue and the mystique and the chal- lel. But the issue that you raised is a good • Has anyone thought about incorporating the lenge of trying to interpret something that is one. • Kathleen McLean effect of the Oakland firestorm and the eu- abstract and out in the middle of the ocean. calyptus as part of that? • Norman Miller Scott brought up the idea of starting at Point might come in here in a different way than Reyes and having the beach serve as the in some of these other locations. Because it 109 interface for the visitor, since it is a place is such a productive place you can get into that many people have visited, and then those stories from a different angle. For ex- making this transect that goes all the way ample, there is the fact that in Cordell there out to Cordell Bank. We were all on board are the same rocks as at Yosemite. There with that. are a lot of connections you can make that can give that sense of place a little bit more Jenny talked about this fabulous new high- context, context that a visitor who might definition footage that was just obtained, not have so much of a relation to the ocean and talked about her preference for using might not originally bring to it. • Lauren real footage rather than animation to depict Palumbi Cordell Bank, and we were all on board with that as well. We thought about the Pixar • Scott brought up the opportunity to talk screen experience, that final twenty minutes about evolution and adaptation and strati- or so, and whether there would be a way to fication of the different fish and how they show this fabulous, hi-def footage of Cordell, adapt to particular niches. That could be a and feature Cordell as this amazing place of good story for this area. high productivity that brings animals and or- Cordell Bank Group Members: ganisms from whale lice to the whale itself, Lastly, I wanted to plug the connection Rebekah Berkov, Lauren Palumbi, Carson Bell, Scott Sampson, Jennifer Stock and show the magnitude of scale of organ- between Oakland and the estuary and the isms that this place can support. streams and the bay and the ocean, and then the Cordell Bank group There are lots of opportunities for exploring conservation conservation messages, from the story about messages. the Cordell area being a Naval waste dump For example, to the “Albatrocity” stories. There is also we produce a lot of room for exploring affect that this around place can create. • Rebekah Berkov eighty percent of • A quick correction: that Naval waste dump the plastics was at the Farallones, it’s not a Cordell story. that go • Jennifer Stock out to the ocean. It is • There is the evolution story potential as well plastic that as geology and geography and how those we have discarded as part of our disposable culture. the people that he works with who are in 110 We can bring these conservation messages the flatlands, who are now really managers home to visitors in an interactive, concrete of that land. What would they think if their way. • Rebekah Berkov place suddenly became this famous place? Would they like that or not? We should talk to them and ask them that. Some would SUTTER BUTTES think it was great and others would be re- • Maybe what made our group so small is that ally pissed off about it. The land holders are this is a very unknown place and no one had really the stewards and guardians of that ever heard of it. It is a place that Stephen place. has wanted to go to but has never been. It We talked a little bit about the physical- has an aura of mystery, especially for those ity of the place really being like a ring. I who are biologists or know about the natural said I keep thinking of it like this castle and world. The line you will hear people say is, the landowners are like this moat. There is “I’ve driven by it a million times and I’ve access, but it is like a gate that can come never been there,” and in fact, that is one Sutter Buttes Group Members: down and that gate can go back up. We of the things that Steve said. Mary Jo Sutton, Stephen Beissinger just have to be really sensitive about what I have been there a couple of times and have people think about our project. I have talked talked to people there. People talk about to a couple of people there who are involved

Sutter Buttes duo it as this line on the horizon, but it’s really with the Middle Mountain Foundation, and a circle. It’s this kind of ring around all of they are kind of ecstatic that this place these mountains. It’s a very atypical, anony- would get publicity because it has been mous place for the Central Valley. very difficult to generate enough support to preserve that place. It’s hard to own the We talked about how far our identification of property and take care of it, and they’re at place should extend. Is it just the peak of it, risk for it becoming all housing. or does it go down to the watershed where it hits the Feather River and the Sacramento Back to the personal stories, what are the River? We both felt that should be included. people’s relationships to this place, what are It does have a north side that is more wet, it the personal stories? And what has disap- has wild fowl preserves, and it is surrounded peared that has gone extinct? What used to by farmland. There is a ring of privately held live there, what animals, what plants? land with a tiny little donut hole in the cen- We talked about using Calflora (http://www. ter that the state now owns. calflora.org), which is an online database, Steve talked about the farmers and about to put together a visual picture of what lives there in terms of plants, and the important about Shasta that members of the team plant communities that are there: the Blue have heard a zillion times, and Matt would 111 oak community, the wetlands. The story of then parse them down to what he thought loss of the wetlands in the Central Valley is we should highlight, so I’ll pass the baton to huge. him. • Christopher Richard

Something Steve said that I thought was • Poor Christopher was dealing with a guy who really interesting was, as soon as you put is a non-Oaklander, non-Californian, non-sci- a road in there you’re going to get trash, entist—just the hardest sell imaginable. All I you’re going to get invasive species, you’re knew about Shasta was this soda pop brand. going to get degradation of that place. So is And you may laugh, but if you ask anyone there a different kind of model? We talked where I come from, that’s the connection about Denali in Alaska, where there are no they’d make. trails. You get escorted in and the only trails there are made by animals. It’s a low-density, Christopher walked me through some of low-impact model and it’s a pretty different the interesting hydrological and biological kind of idea for a state park. stories there. We really didn’t touch on the anthropological or the people-oriented so We also went and looked at the habitat case. much, except to say that of course it’s a Shasta Group Members: There’s a rare Tricolored Blackbird in there very spiritual place for Native Americans. Matt Matcuk, Christopher Richard right now that is very unusual. They nest That has kind of been taken over by various in these large colonies, but in only a few folks practicing various New Age religions, places, so the places do matter. Once those so there’s a little tension there in terms of places become housing, the Tricolored Black- wanting to take it back from the New Age bird is gone. • Mary Jo Sutton folks.

• The only thing we forgot to talk about was There are several cool biological stories. The Shasta duo the salmon connection in the Central Val- one that I felt was really important is this, ley. That can connect to Oakland and that and Christopher can stop me if I go really can connect to Cordell Bank. • Stephen R. badly awry. The McCloud River comes down, Beissinger and the power company comes in and they create a dam. And holy cow, this area right here is the southernmost place that these SHASTA fish, the bull trout, live and they sliced it in • At Kathy’s suggestion, I was paired with Matt half. Well aren’t there still two good groups? with the idea that I would relate the stories No, there’s not enough genetic diversity there and these guys start to suffer and cause it’s a shield volcano, and it’s huge. 112 they’re going to die. The river where we get our water from here in Oakland starts way up north in Oregon. And then the power company says, “Oh, It turns into the Klamath River and it comes we’re concerned, we’ll help. We’re going to over, and then it hits this shield volcano restock that for the fishermen. We’re going and it goes underground. It becomes an to put brook trout in there so you can fish.” underground river and it’s so big that if What they didn’t count on was that when there weren’t water in it you could drive a the brook trout and the bull trout mate, semi truck through there. And it’s desert up they produce mules that can’t reproduce, above! There’s all this water underground, so you’re kind of killing them off in a differ- but it’s desert up above. ent way. That’s a real cool story about how Then it gets south of that big shield volcano you can monkey with things and then try to and it pops out in these springs, turns back remonkey with them and make them even into a river and comes down to us. Is that worse. cool or what? • Matt Matcuk As a secondary story, there’s a big volcano that doesn’t even look like a volcano be-

Shasta duo discussing really cool stuff Deep Time Intermission 113

Wow! Whoosh! Advisors were treated to a screening depicting a trip through Deep Time in California. Blam! Reactions to Animation We Cheers, whoops, and exclamations of surprise Douglas Long, Natural Sciences Chief Curator, OMCA want sound and delight. This is a thirty-second video animation that effects! was put together based on a series of paleo- Whoa! geographic maps of the western U.S. by Ron Blakey and the University of Arizona. There were forty maps that Carson Bell put together to animate to show the evolution of California. A screenshot from the Paleogeography of California proof of concept animation. Map images copyright Ron It is actually part of a series of 100 maps and Blakey and Colorado Plateau Geosystems Inc. we just got the remainder, so what you see here is a proof of concept, taking those single, static maps and developing something for possible use in the gallery.

When we incorporate 100 maps the animation will be much smoother and because we have the original ﬁles, visitors might be able to zoom in to California or manipulate the images in other ways.

This goes back 550 million years and takes us up to the present, and you can see some exciting things. Several times during the animation you’ll see island arks moving over from Asia and slamming against California. 114 Dioramas and Habitat Cases

Eliciting Advisor Thoughts I think they could augment new exhibits and on the Habitat Cases WALK-AROUND CASES do a great job of doing that if you choose • We thought we might now bring the dialogue • There is something about a case that you can specific ones, but to focus around those around full circle to the gallery and the walk around that makes a different impres- habitat cases still seems to me like a big habitat cases. Given what we’ve talked about sion to me than one that rests against the risk. I’m concerned about the project as a in terms of the project, what is your sense of wall. I noticed I was responding differently how we are trying to incorporate those? Keep whole being successful with those as the in the day-and-a-half I’ve been here to the in mind that you have seen only a few of the core. That’s my honest take, sorry. • Scott habitat cases in the course of this advisor ses- simple way that the cases are in the space or Sampson sion. You saw a few in there, such as the one filling the space. I think there’s a value when with the seal, where we are experimenting you can see them from all sides because it Lack of Context with some labels. So what about these habitat pulls the observer in more closely to look at • I have feelings similar to Scott’s. Yesterday cases? • Kathleen McLean what’s in the case. • Lisa White when we looked at them it felt like the Kathleen McLean furniture got moved around, but it wasn’t a DRAWBACKS TO HABITAT CASES living room yet. I knew all of those pieces. Some of them helped create a larger context Unimmersive Albatrosses from Yesteryear and some of them just didn’t. Some didn’t • I have said this before during other visits work for me at all, like the Oakland one, here. My impression is still strongly that the redwoods. There was no there there. these habitat cases could be an albatross It didn’t hang together in a way that made to the project. First of all, most of them any sense to me. But other ones were a are not dioramas; they’re not immersive. little more contextualized. The first thing I It would be interesting to know, and maybe thought yesterday was, get those things out you’ve done this, how fifty people taken off of there. I’ve softened on that view a little the street randomly would respond to them. bit. I think there’s a mix and match you can My gut reaction is that people are not going do. to engage with those in ways we might like This doesn’t mean I don’t like the redwoods. in terms of sense of place. On the contrary, That’s my favorite place in the gallery. It’s they’ll feel like the museum is outdated, the only immersion experience out of all of that those are from a yesteryear. Basically, the exhibits and the only place where I feel they’re from another time period. like I’m part of something. I just wanted to goal. These ones certainly are from a differ- qualify that. • Doris Ash ent era, a bygone era, but that can be used 115 to your advantage if you can find some ways to work them in quaintly. Maybe even think USING THE CASES SUCCESSFULLY about some ways to combine new technol- The Advantage of Choice As Added Elements ogy with them. As Lisa said, these give you a • I agree with what Scott has said about the with Added Interventions different kind of interaction than the di- habitat cases. One thing that is important to orama on the wall that you stare at through • I don’t want to give the impression that I recognize is that you have a choice. In our the glass, although with some of them you think that they’re all bad. We saw what you museum, our dioramas are fixed and built into guys did with the interventions we saw dur- really do have to look around a bit to find the building in a way that to move them would ing the last advisor session. Some of those the things in there, and there are all kinds of be to actually destroy them. These you could were really clever and really well done, and little hidden treasures. So they do push your actually move. I’m imagining you could put them elsewhere and them even not being part I think as added elements they could be powers of observation, which aren’t pushed of the exhibit if you chose. phenomenal. But to base the entire gallery very hard in society anymore with everything around them worries me. I don’t see how you pushing at us. But they have some baggage It’s not a question of use it or destroy it. With our dioramas, and with most dioramas, if you can do that and pull it off successfully. That’s that goes with them as well. • Stephen R. chose not to use them you’d have to rip them my concern. Beissinger out and destroy them. • Kirk Johnson Why? I don’t find them engaging for the most Sliding Habitat Cases part. I think they represent a time period in and Screen-based Media museums that is gone to some extent. They • I’m just trying to think of examples of how are not immersive or able to convey that they could be used but still have some- sense of place that you’ve said is important Seven New Immersive Dioramas thing screen-based, whether it’s 3-D or not. to this whole project. I think as isolated ele- • I was not being tongue-in-cheek when I said There’s a lot of ceiling space. I could imagine ments, as teaching elements, they might be why not build seven new immersive dioramas. some of the smaller ones sliding up out of effective, but if you base the whole exhibit I love the seven places, I love the concept. the way. You walk in and see that case and around them I don’t think you’ll achieve the You’ve captured the state of California really that’s the introduction. You want to know well. There are lots of ways to do immersion goals that you have laid out for yourself. more and the case slides up and away and and those cases don’t do it. • Kirk Johnson • Scott Sampson there’s something behind it you can watch and the closing scene is an image of the case Quaint Habitat Cases and the habitat case slides back down and Juxtaposed with New Technology covers up the screen again. • Christopher • I’m not sure that any dioramas really do Cogan immersion anymore in this culture, so I’m not sure that I can see them achieving that EXAMPLES OF IMMERSIVE DIORAMAS where I would have taken it, but there is 116 something interesting about that notion of • Stephen said that dioramas aren’t im- going inside that world that has a frame To What Purpose? mersive. Have you seen some of the really around it. • Kathleen McLean • I don’t think the issue is keeping the habitat immersive ones? We have two at our museum cases or not keeping them. I think the issue is, that you walk through. There’s no glass, to what purpose will they be put? What is the there’s running water, there’s sound, the UNTANGLING THE DIORAMA ISSUE immersive experience you are going for, and light changes, you truly are in the space The Crux of the Problem? will this get in the way or not? My reaction to surrounded by the thing. It really is an im- • Rather than exhibit techniques, there’s an- the little harbor seal in the Oakland exhibit mersive experience. • Kirk Johnson was, “What?” That’s not what I think of, even other issue I’m struggling with. Here you all when I want to think about dangers, etc. The are, you’re deeply into this, you think this is • I can imagine that in that case it would be activity and the purpose weren’t a match a cool idea, you think it’s a really important more so. But it’s hard to know; society in- there. I think you have to consider that with topic, you have science to contribute to it, teracts with screens now in such a different each exhibit, each one of the seven. How do you have some processes to contribute to way. • Stephen R. Beissinger these cases enhance the exhibit? Maybe some help us make this a really great experience of them will have none, maybe some will have for people. You believe in what we are trying two or three, depending on how it’s meant to to do, right? I haven’t heard anything around function. • Doris Ash ABOUT USING NEW TECHNOLOGY the table from advisors last year or this year It’s All Stuff Inside a Frame thinking that we are on the wrong track in Doris Ash • What is interesting to me regarding com- terms of what we are trying to do. ments about new technology is that long ago So what is the problem with these habitat when the proposal was being written and I cases beside saying they’re old and from a was at NSF talking to program officers there, bygone era? What are you saying we need to there was a technology program officer who get at instead? Are you saying that everybody was young and hip and very smart. She said, looks at a screen now and what we need is a “Well you know, dioramas are kind of like lot of screens? • Kathleen McLean the Web or going online because they are these things inside boxes. They don’t move Use of Dioramas at the Heart of the Grant like the stuff on a screen, but when you go online you’re looking at something with a • What I’m sensing is that you’re not wanting frame around it as well, and these have a to hear what they’re saying, that the habitat frame around them. Maybe there’s some- cases are dusty, boring, old fashioned, not as thing there.” immersive as they could be, and not doing the trick in terms of your goal statements. That always stuck with me. I don’t know But unless I’m mistaken, part of the NSF grant and part of your goal is that you are • And wouldn’t solve the problem of other mu- going to demonstrate how to use old, dusty, seums across the country who have dioramas. 117 bygone dioramas in a new and exciting way, • Catherine McEver so the fact that they’re old fashioned and from a bygone era is sort of the point. How • Right. And if they don’t give you the do you use these things? Museums across the immersion that you want, that’s going to be Kirk Johnson country are dealing with this problem. a factor. • Kirk Johnson • Catherine McEver

Bait and Switch: These Aren’t Dioramas WHAT’S THE EMPHASIS: HUMAN • These are not dioramas. I signed up for this INTERACTION? NATURAL SCIENCE? grant with the promise of working on diora- • I think you guys have done a fabulous job mas and this is like a bait and switch. These on the art and history floors, integrating all are a different experience altogether. Diora- sorts of things that no other museum has mas are structured, in a strict, traditional really tackled effectively. You’re in a real sense, to make you suspend disbelief and leadership role in the museum world right be in that place. What you have here aren’t now, you’ve set the bar high. The first two dioramas, they don’t put you in a place. A di- floors, art and history, are really about hu- orama is an illusion of a place, not a diagram man endeavors. So another question I have of a process. is a question that museums in general are facing now as we enter the 21st century: Is I was truly struck when I first walked into The Need for Human Presence your gallery and thought, this is a differ- it about something or someone? No question • Before we had the NSF grant, people who were that art and history are for someone and ent game that is happening now. Regarding invited to come here and give their input said, about something. Cecilia’s work, which I tried to burn through “There are no humans, this is like a static this morning, it’s a really interesting situa- In the natural sciences, there are some really fantasy land out there.” That was one of the tion to think about what dioramas are going great questions here that aren’t even ad- first things we got. I’m going to put that as the second elephant in the room. If there isn’t to be used for in the future. That’s a really dressed: the whole John McPhee, Assembling human presence, we’re not working it, and important question, but comparing these to California story and how California came if there is human presence are we repeating those is really an apples and oranges situa- to be geologically, the whole geologic time the other galleries? I think we’re someplace in tion. That’s really the challenge. story; the evolution of the biota and the between those because without the presence These things could be used in this exhibit, landscapes. The conversations we had this of humans, we aren’t going to meet our goals. they could have a purpose, but it’s not morning were all about taking a very hu- • Suzanne Pegas the purpose that was represented. • Kirk man view. You might end up making another Johnson history hall if you’re not careful. It could be so much about the human interaction RETHINKING THE HABITAT CASES 118 with these places that it’s just history part two and not natural science at all. • Kirk The Question About the Cases Johnson • One of the questions that we addressed earlier was: How do we facilitate a conversation • Which is why I think Douglas brought up about the tension between culture and sci- the question earlier, how do we make sure ence? In some ways that is kind of this same Telling Side-by-Side there’s enough? • Kathleen McLean thing we’ve just been talking about. Another Human-Science Stories question that Mary Jo added was: How do we • We have conversations and they revolve around • You’re so good at the human interaction stuff get the abstract sense of place, which is a stuff. That’s what we do, we curate stuff. I and you’ve sharpened your tool twice in the human notion in and of itself, to marry with want to get away from stuff for a moment. two halls. I don’t know the answer. We are the habitat cases, which are very concrete? The seven stories that you want to tell should wrestling with this question at natural his- be some kind of hybrid, some kind of mashup tory museums, what do we do next? How do My intention in revisiting the habitat cases between the natural history story and the hu- was more to get at that question. How we portray the natural world? • Kirk Johnson man story, and it doesn’t have to be the same should we be looking at these habitat cases with each one. How that story gets told will and what should we be doing with them? guide whether you put that seal in there or not • I think our challenge is going to be not to Over the past two days, comments people because it will be relevant or not. turn it into a history hall but have the stories be a dialogue with the natural environment. have made to me echoed what Scott said, So I think you have to have this individual vision though perhaps not as strongly, that these for each one of the seven places. God knows • Kathleen McLean are an albatross around the museum’s neck. you have enough ideas for each exhibit. Think That’s pretty scary. • Kathleen McLean of it as how, side-by-side, you can tell the hu- • I’m absolutely not saying ignore the audi- man story and the science story, never giving ence, but I am saying remember what the short shrift to either one. The Venn diagram topic of the hall is. • Kirk Johnson Accessories, Not Centerpieces where the circles overlap is where you want • My argument would be not to jettison all of your selection process to focus. It’s a differ- • I think the conversations have flowed pretty the habitat cases, but rather use them as ent way of looking at it, but I think it could be strongly around human-environment interac- accessories, not the centerpiece. • Scott very useful. • Doris Ash tions and I don’t think we’ve ignored that, Sampson although the mock-ups now do. But I think the conversations we’ve had have all been • That’s actually really interesting and I think strongly about human-environment interac- you nailed it in terms of your concern. I tions and not making it a history hall. There wanted to hear what this meant for us, and is a danger, but I think our discussions have it’s thinking of these as accessories rather addressed those issues pretty well. • Chris- than the main attraction. We have been topher Cogan thinking of them as the main attraction and that everything else would accessorize them. ing that is interesting because you feel like • Kathleen McLean there’s a sense of exploration, whereas Seven Different Ways of Telling 119 natural history, cookie-cutter environments Seven Different Stories • I want to second what Scott said. That’s are prim and proper, with almost a cabinet- • I think it would be an interesting challenge to exactly the way I feel. I like the potential of-curiosities-type of environment. I think try to come up with seven different ways of of using them as pieces to complement the that is contributing to that anachronistic telling the stories. Take a multimedia approach to this and try to find seven different tech- other things you want to feature. They’re sense, and it’s hard to imagine it outside of niques to really invest people. Some of them different from dioramas in the sense that that context, but I think that might be the could be very simple and inexpensive: big, you don’t get immersion in the place, but place to go. floor-to-ceiling photographs with things around they’re like an exploded piece of that Think of something that is way out there and them. For Cordell Bank we talked about using diorama that you can walk around. You can really high-end, high-def video, where you go then see what you can do with those. I think look inside the habitat and maybe see some off in a boat and jump off the boat with the they have so much potential artistically and details that you might not be able to get oth- diver and you’re all of a sudden underwater in the prototyping people have really con- erwise, but maybe they don’t have to be the experiencing this beautiful place. I don’t know nected with them on an interesting level. I what all of the different techniques are, but centerpiece, they’re accessories. • Stephen don’t think we want to lose some of those think about what you can do in this day and R. Beissinger pros, but there are pros and cons and we age. And some things might be switched out. need to sort those out. • Lauren Palumbi It’s the dream that all museums have, to be Contained Slices of Nature flexible in your content, but think about things that might be flexible. • Scott Sampson • There are a few ways to connect a lot of Capitalizing on Visitor these comments together. As Doris said, Fascination with the Specimens; Christopher Cogan and Scott Sampson there are a lot of ways to tell a story. Maybe Avoiding a Biopsy of California Approach in some areas those habitat cases won’t be • We have talked a lot about the spectrum the centerpiece, and maybe there’s some from the most real to the most virtual ver- way to repurpose them so that they can be. sions of these natural places. We have also One of my difficulties with the cases is their talked about the habitat cases and dioramas clean-cut lines, in the sense that you get a (there are four actual dioramas, which you piece of something, a slice of something, and didn’t see on this trip) as being towards the it’s very contained. It’s a habitat handed to real side of the spectrum compared to a pro- you on a silver platter in a way, and that’s jection, or a flat version, or an interpretation not how nature works in a lot of our experi- of the place that’s just two-dimensional. ences. I think one thing that is really compelling One of the things that strikes me in the to people is that we have talked about the History Gallery is almost a sense of clutter. animals being dead, but the animals look like It’s overwhelming and it’s cool, and explor- they’re alive. That cognitive dissonance is a way into: “What’s going on here?” A lot of shooting for an audience that hasn’t been at 120 people want to know what’s going on. They the museum before. That is another goal of want to know what is going on in the drama this project, to bring people to the museum Opening the Conversation we’ve posed, but they also want to know who don’t have this fluency with this kind About Stuff to Visitors what is going on with the animals: “I’ve seen of construction. And the people we bring in • I’d like to riff off of what Doris said about our dead animals and they never look like this.” who have no fluency look at it and it’s like tendency to talk about stuff. I find it interest- So there is a piece about the presentation the moon: “Whoa, what is this thing?” I think ing that over the last couple of days you have that provokes a lot of curiosity that I think there’s something there for us. • Mary Jo been having such intense conversations about we can capitalize on. Sutton stuff. I would actually like for the public to weigh in on the kind of conversations we’ve I think it was Kirk who said that dioramas Value of Showing Natural Objects, been having amongst ourselves about the stuff create an illusion of place. For me, growing Potential Visitor Fascination with Cases in our gallery because there are all kinds of up in California and having been to a lot of different cultures in this room that could rep- places in California and loving the real places • I think I may be the only one of the advisors resent part of what’s out there. in California, it never looks like these cookie who was defending those cases. It’s fine if Also, all of us here are all answerers. We’re cutter, petit four slices of place. It always we don’t make them the centerpiece and we all ready to provide answers and lectures for looks like this landscape that rolls out of have to work around them, but let’s keep fo- students and to write books. There’s a lot of your peripheral vision and is under you, and cused on what we intend to highlight, which power to posing questions and hearing ques- that’s the trick of immersion. is mostly the natural history of these spots. tions from other folks. • Amy Billstrom There is a lot of value in having natural I want those pieces to not always be the objects from those spots and showing them center of attention but maybe sometimes. in three dimensions to people who don’t go What I would like is to have them nested in a to museums as much as we do. I’m hearing a landscape that makes me feel like I haven’t lot of projection of what we see as more old Scope of Collection on Display done a biopsy of California, with the pieces fashioned and not 21st century, but perhaps • One thing I don’t have a good sense of is, what in little jars for you to look at. I want it to to a kid it’s different and they like those other collection items are going to be part of feel a little bit more like you’re in the place. dioramas or habitat cases. the project? Do you have collections of rocks, That would be a way to try to soften the or other collections that are going to be dis- surgical slicing of the places that the cases I’m also curious to know what the project’s played in some ancillary way? • Kirk Johnson have. data says about the cases, besides the obser- • These are the collection. There are some shells vation that they don’t stop unless there are I do think they’re amazing objects, and from and other items, but this is basically the col- animals in the cases or the seal looks sad or the way people look at them and react to lection. • Kathleen McLean whatever. • Lisa White them, they are kind of crazy. We are used to them, we understand the museum profession. Most people who come to the museum are not in the museum profession and we’re CROSS-FERTILIZATION OF GALLERIES and cycling our gallery pieces through these floors because they get a whole different 121 • We are clearly intending to use pieces from audience. the collections of the other disciplines in the When we did testing down here when the museum. • Mary Jo Sutton Pixar Metaphor: Evocative Abstract two floors were closed, we had an exhibit at Sketches that Evoke Sense of Place the back of the hall that was art and history • Something fascinating happened when one of • The video in the Pixar exhibit blew me away, together. People who were into art came the topo models from the Natural Sciences it’s just an amazing thing, and I think it’s an down against their will to the Natural Sci- interesting metaphor for the exhibit that we Gallery was put up in the Art Gallery. There ences Gallery and walked all the way through are talking about. If you think about this set are a couple of them up there, and there are it to find the art, and in spite of themselves, of images on a board, you can zoom inside of a couple of pieces in the History Gallery. We some of them looked at stuff along the way. those things and explore them, it’s very im- have topo models that have been here since mersive. Because some of them are trying to These are people who segment themselves, 1987, and I’ve never seen anybody stop and show the process by which you create them, who say that they are only here to see the look at a topo model in the Natural Sciences they’re very abstract, just simple sketches. art and are not interested in natural science. Gallery, they just pass right by them It’s amazing what the artist can do with just They were forced to go through the Natural a few lines that evoke the sense of something Up in the Art Gallery there is a topo model of Science Gallery to see the art. important and yet very immersive. It gives the desert near a couple of paintings of the you a sense of the place that they’re trying to That’s kind of what’s happening upstairs desert. I’ve seen people stop and look and depict and it shows you different ways to try now: “I’m an art person. Oh, what’s this, this point; they’re talking to each other, they’re and do that. cool thing of grass? Trippy!” It has a different hugely engaged with this topo model. And If you think of each one of the seven places status and it has an aesthetic context. It’s a yet they’d never look at it here in the Natu- as places that you want to briefly zoom into, piece of ground that just went up there, a ral Sciences Gallery. I think it’s because of how do you make them immersive? I’m not little case with a rock, and it’s like, “Wow, too much of the same stuff in here. In a dif- saying you use that same kind of technology, this looks so great up here!” It definitely ferent context with different things around I’m just thinking of it as a metaphor, but they changes it, whereas down here, we have box- do it powerfully without trying to make it look it, it engaged people. • Gail Binder es and more boxes and they don’t communi- like realism in all cases. I’m just hoping that cate, “I am part of this whole other world.” might be a different window for looking at this • I want to follow up on what Gail said, which problem. • Scott Sampson I love. Because we are the third gallery out Because we are the third out of the gate we of the gate in the renovation of this three- have this opportunity to ask and demand that floor building with over 100,000 square feet we be part of this timeshare of pieces within of “stuff,” maybe these temporary things the building. We are, of course, going to get happening upstairs are a sort of permanent those paintings of Yosemite at some point. changing opportunity for us as we think in And maybe, as the carousel turns, they are terms of the long view and think of churning going to get pieces from the Oakland section here up in art when it’s about the Oakland art scene. Or maybe that’s all down here. something, for example in the background, 122 We have the promise to be more interdisci- that keeps them visually engaged, something plinary than either of the other two galler- that has fluidity to it and a motion about Static v. Dynamic ies, and I think that’s a hint I’m hearing: Get it. That has come up a number of times in • Do you have statistical information, data that artists to portray these places; make those the discussion: having a water scene in the show, nationwide, how adults and children cases expressions of a really close view of background or the image of grasses blowing observe these things, how long they like to part of those places. • Mary Jo Sutton in the wind. I think that would add a lot, just stay? I guess the main question I have is how psychologically, to the sense of a static set they’re affected by a static versus dynamic set of glass enclosures that you can walk around of displays, and to split those two apart and REACHING THE YOUTH AUDIENCE look at how they could be recombined. or look at. So add dynamics. I would even • Norman Miller Capturing Kids’ Attention: Enhancing say do the reverse of your topography story. Displays via Dynamic Visuals, Motions Bring some art down here to enhance this • I would like for us not to get into the static and have some local art for each of these versus dynamic issue at this point because we • I agree strongly with that idea of using piec- regions. That would really bring richness to have to do that later, we have to get more es across different galleries. I’ve watched it. • Norman Miller data, there are a lot of things at play, there is students, which are your target audience. a lot of research that has been done. I would The outcome that NSF wants is that target like to focus more on other people’s senses audience, kids with short attention spans. • So you are saying that those habitat cases about the habitat cases, or elaborating on the • Norman Miller are too static for kids. • Kathleen McLean strengths of these habitat cases. • Kathleen McLean • And adults and families as much as children. • I wouldn’t say they’re too static, I would say It’s not just for kids. • Kathleen McLean that standing alone they’re not sufficient. • Norman Miller Lisa White • All right, but adults want to see kids grow. Testing Assumptions They come here for their kids, primarily, I about the Youth Audience believe. • Norman Miller • This discussion is raising the priority for me • There are also many adults without kids, who regarding the need to test and check-in with come here for themselves. But what have the youth audience because we are mak- you observed about kids? • Kathleen McLean ing a lot of assumptions. Based on all of the programming I’ve done, there is validity in • They have a short attention span and they Lisa’s point of view that an object can be like dynamics, they like motion. If it’s too a powerful experience. I just want to give static it might not capture them enough. So everyone a heads-up not to underestimate my view is, keeping these things here is fine youth, including the younger kids. and dandy and it’s important, but you need What I would love to find out is, where are a nice piece in that it did portray, “Where the common threads? What is it that they would I be?” • Norman Miller 123 find engaging? It could be game playing, which could foster observation and other Immersive Interventions skills we want them to acquire, and not nec- with the Habitat Cases essarily the technology. • As I said earlier, some of the interventions When we did the front-end surveys, I did an that you guys came up with for the habi- exit survey with a young woman who was tat cases the last time we were here were about nineteen years old. As she sat next super-effective. One of the techniques you to me she was using her cell phone, texting were using was to make a case immersive her friends (who were there in the room). I by covering up the entire case except for asked her to tell me about the exhibit she a small peephole that offered a glimpse of just saw and she said, “You’re not going to something inside that you wouldn’t see oth- change them are you? You should keep them erwise. To me, the strength of the habitat What Positive Purposes just like they are.” I asked her whether she cases is that they are realistic three-dimen- Do The Habitat Cases Serve? would be interested in any technology and sional models that are tough to come by. • If we were going to think of the habitat cases she said, “No, no, no, we don’t need any They are beautiful in themselves. But then more as accessories to the experience, and I’m technology,” and then she kept going on her if you could use some of these techniques not saying we are going to, what would you say to accessorize what you are doing with the cell phone. • Amy Billstrom these are good at? One example was they are habitat, maybe even create mini-immersive good for looking at things more closely. • That’s the dilemma of museums. Matt was experiences, I think that’s a real strength • Kathleen McLean talking about that yesterday. • Kathleen you guys showed last time. You did things I McLean never would have thought about. • Scott Sampson STRENGTHS OF HABITAT CASES Stephen Beissinger and Norman Miller Looking Closely, Observing (Finding Waldo) Evocative Imagining of Self in Place • One thing that prototyping has taught us • Looking at the Yosemite one of Half Dome, over the past couple of weeks is that people my eye kept capturing the rock formation really like the “Where’s Waldo?” game. You more than anything else. Anybody who looks set them up and give them flashlights and at that thinks, how would I go up it, how they are so happy. They look and they look, would I feel in that region? Maybe that’s the and when they find it they get this little shot same reason people stop at that topographic of endorphins, they feel good about them- case in the Art Gallery, to see where they selves. They really are good for that pur- were with respect to that. I thought that was pose. I don’t know about any of these larger questions, but I do know that visitors really tion of communities, so it was an ecological 124 enjoy that and I believe that it does sharpen story. How do you tell the story of ecology? Cases as Entry-Exit Portals their observational skills. It makes them How do you represent the interactions that • Regarding this idea of entrance and then im- want to look harder. • Tisha Carper Long make up the science of ecology? You take mersion and then an exit, I could see playing that real place and you recreate it, and you off Lisa’s idea, that being able to walk around • In some instances, however, it’s Walter offer a three dimensional illustration of the these pieces has more power than if they instead of Waldo in those cases. In other processes that take place and those interac- were just shoved up against a wall. I could see words, maybe some of the species in those tions. And it has the whole geology and the some of the cases as entry portals, and then cases are not the ones you would have whole transect. It was a very defined scheme you go past them and into the space. You get picked and associate with this particular one for which these boxes were designed as ac- your immersion there, and then as you walk back out you get the same case, but this time of the seven places. For example, a case in cessories. • Lindsay Dixon through slightly different eyes because you’ve Palm Desert was filled with urban birds, birds learned some things and you’ve had that im- I would see here in Oakland, with the excep- • The master narrative was just so invisible. It mersive experience. The case has these actual tion of one species. They weren’t filled with was invisible to me when I worked here for animals, it has detail, and it’s immersion in a the things that I would think of as being typi- seven years in the Natural Sciences Depart- different way. The cases could be these por- cal of the desert. • Stephen R. Beissinger ment, so it was hard to see what they were tals that you pass by on your way in and don’t accessorizing. • Kathleen McLean think much about, but on the way out see in a different light, from whole new angles. SAME ACCESSORIES , • I accept that, but I know that it is there and • Christopher Cogan DIFFERENT STORY it is the way it was constructed, and even

Carolyn Finney • What I’m thinking about is that, in fact, though it wasn’t successful, they were built that these cases were originally designed as accessories to that story. • Lindsay Dixon as accessories. The question now is, what role do they play in the new storyline? They THE CALIFORNIA CONNECTION were developed with a very specific storyline in mind, and they are in fact accessories Seeing the Whole First to telling that storyline. So here we are • I’ve been thinking all day about something faced with using accessories from a previous that I’m not hearing, and I’m assuming that storyline and we are trying to adapt our big- it’s something you’re going to do. The thing thread thinking as to how to tie those things that holds these seven places together is the in. fact that they’re in the state of California. I’d love to see the state of California, like a I do accept them as accessories and in fact topographic map, before you see any of the they have always been accessories to a big- other stuff, the individual pieces that you’ve ger master. In that case it was a representa- pulled out. How might it all look if you had a big map? Somebody earlier said something California as a Hotspot 125 about looking at a topographic display and • A step between Assembling California and getting excited about the question, “Where going into these seven places is introducing am I on here?” Where is the connection that them to California as a global hotspot. That Literal Hot Spots all of these places are part of this state? has to be a step in there because almost • You could have them touch a place and it’s hot • Carolyn Finney all of these places fall into that. It doesn’t on the map. • Stephen R. Beissinger take much and you can decide exactly how • They have a digital exhibit like that upstairs. to play it out. And it’s only there on that • Norman Miller walkway on the way in, and most people are Touchscreen Display rushing past it anyway, but that’s the way to • Upstairs in the Art Gallery there’s this side gal- Using the Deep Time Animation get it in. Then you’ve got the seven places, lery that has found, funky art in it. There’s a • I’d like to see that little animation as the and then on the way out you let them know table with a screen on top displaying some- first thing, how California was formed, and what they can do about it. • Stephen R. Beiss- thing like nine places where this funky art exists. You touch the spot and you can pull up then see the outcome of that formation. inger the story and see exactly what they’re talking • Richard Bugbee about. It’s really cool. • Doris Ash • I agree. Douglas’s presentation showed that California as a Refuge really clearly, when he started out globally with all of the hotspots in the world, showed • The other thing that stuck with me was what the California hotspots, and then zoomed Richard Bugbee (foreground) and Norman Miller Douglas said during his PowerPoint presenta- down inside of the California region, which tion about this notion of California as a ref- is a hotspot in itself, to the various selected uge, that ice has come and gone. You could seven places. So that is it, a way of bringing provide that as the context for all seven of it down, focusing it in, showing the rele- these places. You tell a story at the begin- vance, and then coming out again. • Norman ning that includes that refuge story so ev- Miller eryone knows, wow, that’s the context, and then you tell these little subplots within that • That is where we started, and we found in each of the seven places. • Scott Sampson it didn’t work for the visitors. • Rebekah Berkov • For example, with Oakland, there’s that line you have in the exhibit: “A dense urban • Don’t worry about that. We are still talking environment with remnants of diverse native about concept. Our job is to figure out how, habitats.” Tell that story of where these and if it doesn’t work we’ll throw it away. remnants are growing. • Doris Ash • Kathleen McLean 126 Closing Thoughts

A CALL FOR CLOSING THOUGHTS to express any closing comments, thoughts, things for us to think about after you leave. • I want to thank you all for your participa- • Kathleen McLean tion and your thoughts and comments. We thought we would give you a few minutes FOCUS ON RELATIONSHIPS • I was drawing a little sketch here. I know I Late Addition: Advising on Sense of Place Research started off by saying you need to focus on human relationships. I know this is a natu- • In the presentation I did yesterday I mentioned seed of the question that I had. I had three dif- ral science gallery and exhibition. I’ve also Nicole Ardoin’s work and the complexity of it. ferent research sites: the Galapagos, the Klam- heard you all say that you want to connect She is in a sort of advisory role for this proj- ath Siskiyou in Northern California and Southern with people, and you want people to be Oregon, and the Chesapeake Bay. ect, particularly the research piece. • Cecilia involved in the relationship. I really want to Garibay I am really excited to be able to think about emphasize that focusing on the relationship how you would incorporate these principles of • Coming to this meeting is exciting for a number doesn’t undermine the natural science as sense of place into an exhibit experience, with of reasons, not the least of which is that my something important and vital. the challenges I think that you face of people background is in exhibit design and develop- being in some ways disembodied and the fact ment; I was an art history major as an under- So I was trying to draw this sketch. I recently that it’s also a mediated experience. But I also grad. But as Cecilia mentioned, for my disserta- saw a billboard in Berkeley depicting a house think you’ve got some tremendous opportuni- tion work, which is still continuing, I looked at with a person inside looking out and an owl ties here. • Nicole Ardoin sense of place and environmental behavior on sitting in a tree next to the house and the an ecoregional scale. I was really interested in • We’re glad you’re here, and I know Cecilia was owl is looking back. They had this focus and ways that people connect with their places and using your work as a foundational, organization- were in some kind of conversation or had what creates that connection as well as the “So al system for how we might ask some of these awareness of each other. So—focus on rela- what?” piece. What does that mean for the kind questions. Hopefully you can come to our next tionships. • Carolyn Finney of behavior that people take or don’t take? meeting. You’ve had exhibit development expe- I think, at least in the environmental educa- rience as well, haven’t you? • Kathleen McLean tion field, which is where I work quite often, • Before I went back to graduate school I worked COOLNESS POTENTIAL: AN we tend to believe that if people connect with at World Wildlife Fund and managed the Biodi- INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH their places and care about their places, they’ll versity 911 exhibit for three years, an NSF- do something to take care of it. Yet in reality • I wasn’t at the first advisor session so I didn’t funded travelling exhibit. • Nicole Ardoin we find that’s rarely the case. That was the get to give you my passion statement. I’m a scientist who works with artists. As a paleon- scientist, but edgy doesn’t mean watering tologist, I’m always imagining Deep Time and down the natural science. I don’t think you 127 I have artists who can actually reconstitute give that up and I don’t think you have to. Deep Time. I’ve always maintained that all You have a powerful story to tell and the scientists need artists. You actually need tools and the people to tell it, and the cases, your own personal artist, and then every art- however you want to use them. ist could have their own personal scientist. Here I’m going to get up on my soapbox. You I just love this museum. By having these need to have the voice of the people, the three separate disciplines stacked on each culture, whatever you want to call it, and other you have this huge opportunity, which really create a genuine dialogue with the you’ve really taken advantage of in the first community. Not what we think they want, two halls. Keep doing that. Use the art, use but really opening the doors to see what that Plants, Plants, Plants all of these different ways of accessing the looks like. That’s the genius of it. I think • I was reviewing and thinking about hotspots. natural world, which is the way we do think that’s where you can carry the rest of the Despite being a bird guy and really enjoying about the natural world. It has the potential museums in the country with you because I these cases because they have a lot of birds to be a lot cooler than most natural his- don’t think natural history museums have a and neat animals in them, a lot of the hotspots issue is plants, plants, plants and plants. tory museums because you have these other clue how to do that, to be honest with you. There are over 2,000 endemic plants, there toolkits to dip into. So go finish it, it’s going • Doris Ash are four threatened endemic birds, there are to be cool. • Kirk Johnson IN five threatened endemic mammals, there are HUMANS AND NATURE eight threatened endemic amphibians. There are 2,124 endemic plants and they’re not all MESSY EDGY AND A GENUINE , , • Just as a counterpoint or balance, and to threatened, but it’s a hotspot for that reason. DIALOGUE WITH THE COMMUNITY connect with a theme that I mentioned We just need to make sure that we build that in there somehow, into these places, and it • I’ve said everything I would want to say on yesterday, I think that the problem right now won’t be hard. • Stephen R. Beissinger other levels, so I’m just going to emphasize is in part because we have this dysfunctional what I think is very powerful. I liked what relationship with the non-human world. So Lauren said about the fact that nature is it seems to me incumbent upon institutions messy and the idea of maybe messing it up like natural history museums to represent a bit. It is a rather tidy hall and it is pretty a new vision, a new perspective. I would circumscribed, what you are supposed to be suggest that when you’re thinking about the doing. That has been true in the past any- voice, the vision with which you present the way. So I like the idea of making it messy, information in the hall, you think about do- whatever that means in terms of edgy. I ing it from the perspective of humans inside don’t know what edgy means to a natural nature. Don’t make the mistake of talking about ent pieces that thread throughout as sub- 128 humans and nature. Rather, put us inside. plots in your story. Then you need to come That is where we belong, that’s where we out with a nice set of concluding statements Ecosystem-based Management are. I think that’s the fundamental shift that and closure so that there is something people as Focal Point hasn’t happened that needs to happen in take with them when they walk away. • My lens on this is focused on ecosystem-based this culture. One way of doing that is with As an example, I remember going to the management, which I’ve already mentioned. artwork, and I think that many of these ideas Holocaust Museum. It’s a story that you walk I see that as one way to focus in on how are best embodied, best internalized, and humans are a part of nature, how we have through as a progression through time, about they best become effective or emotional been destructive, and how we can clean up how it evolved and how any society can when they are done through various forms of our act; sort of the scary and positive views come to that consequence. Then at the very art. wrapped into one. And again, not separating end you see these shoes, and that left me people and nature, but using ecosystem-based Science, because it is so rational, because with a lasting impact, just seeing this pile of management as a mechanism to see how to it objectifies, is the evil antithesis of re- real shoes and hair from that time period. incorporate all of those issues. • Christopher lationship. Science is all reductionism. It What you really want is that kind of walk- Cogan is through these other forms of knowing, away hit. through indigenous ways of knowing, through This is a very precious set of hotspots, various forms of art, that we create this sub-hotspots if you will, that are in a very Clarification re the Cases relationship. So what I would ask is that you beautiful place. It’s fragile, and what we are • I’m concerned about some of the reactions that would think about how best to embody that doing right now is trying to create steward- I’ve heard that have grown out of viewing our vision in how this information is presented. ship. We need to know how to do it, and prototype set-up. I think it needs to be made • Scott Sampson clear that the cases that are out there now are there are ways to create that. Maybe we can window dressing; that what has been tested try to bring people forward with those kinds out there are text and graphics; that those NARRATIVE of messages as a story. • Norman Miller are the only things out there that are at all THREADS AND CONCLUSION representative of the new thrusts we’ve been pursuing. • I am walking away with the sense that, one, ENGAGEMENT People mentioned the interventions with the there is a lot of potential, and two, there VIA THE HUMAN ELEMENT cases you saw the last time you were here. The is a story you are trying to tell. You want to • Some parting thoughts from me are that I cases as you see them now are actually a step tell it as an entry, an opening, and an impact was admittedly not thinking about the human backwards from where you saw them before, in that opening, and it links and threads element at all in the exhibits, even after two and no one here meant to represent them as each vignette. You have seven of them, and full advisory board meetings. Part of that anything other than that. • Christopher Richard you want to have a nice clean thread, one may have been that I like to think of mu- • I think people understand that. • Kathleen of them being diversity. Then there is loss of seums as ways we can all escape from how McLean habitat, climate change, all of these differ- much we’re doing to the environment that’s every time you hear “interaction” you see it negative, so wouldn’t it be nice to treat as all negative and every time I hear “inter- 129 people to a visit that strips away our interac- action” I see it as something we used to do tions and lets people take in and enjoy these and it was positive. There has to be some- environments? thing in between. I guess today’s interaction has to be about being advocates for conser- But in listening to all of you and thinking vation and that type of stuff. Next Steps about what that hook could really be to com- • Going forward, our job is to listen with begin- plete that engagement, maybe it is profiling It’s kind of a dilemma for an Indian to go out ners’ minds to what you have all had to say, those spots in ways that speak to steward- into the open and see the lack of interac- to be open. We will sort it all out and because ship or conservation or even activism, which tion and how the plants have done, how they the staff has a much deeper understanding of could strike a tone with some of the youth are growing and interacting with everything, the process and all of the intricacies and de- groups that I think the museum intends to and not be able to do anything about it now tails of this, we will be able to sort it out over work with. That could be a way of drawing because it’s gone past the point. We’ve not time. The advisors’ honesty hasn’t set us off people in: Here are some things you could done the practices that we’ve done for all on a different track. I think we know what we need to do and I think it’s important for us to do, or here was this individual’s experience those years and we can’t catch up, and it’s hear, just off the top, how people are respond- when they went to this place, or this artist going in a strange direction. I guess my main ing and to take the nuggets you have given us was especially impressed with this. concern is to make people aware of that, in terms of positive reinforcement. seeing how everything was formed, how There were suggestions over the last couple My sense of this whole two days is that you everything was, how everything is, and what of days about profiling individuals or histori- have been an incredibly responsive, support- they can do. cal people or Native Americans who have ive group and have given us a lot of food for thought and a lot of material to build on. We a special place in a particular spot. I think When I went into the exhibit, the first thing hope that the next time you come back, you keeping that in mind would be a great way I went to was the ground squirrel. That’s my will see evidence of your thoughtful sugges- to link the human element in a couple of dif- clan. Then I realized that I’m a ground squir- tions and inspirations among the things that ferent ways to keep people engaged. • Lisa rel because I was descended from a ground will be in the gallery at that time. Given what White squirrel that was one of the first people. So you’ve all said, I think there is a lot of positive my relationship to the exhibit would be dif- grist for the mill, so thank you very much. ferent from your normal visitor, but I think • Kathleen McLean THE NATIVE AMERICAN TAKE ON part of that story should be told. • Richard INTERACTION WITH NATURE Bugbee • I just don’t like the separation of people and natural science. I’m made up of the same stuff that animals are made up of. I just can’t see the separation, we have to be part of it. You were talking about interaction, and