affiliates, want to play with MIT?

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Kids playing at the Natural History Museum's Fossil Lab

@ the Smithsonian's Fossil Lab

The educational game designers at MIT’s Education Arcade have been working with Smithsonian scientists and educators to create an online curated game for middle school students to be played over six weeks in the spring of 2011.

 

In the game, players will receive encoded messages from scientists in the far future.  These scientists are writing because much of the scientific record has been destroyed.  Through scientific reasoning, research and exploratory challenges at museums, online collaboration with other players, and online experiment simulations, players unravel a multilayered mystery about the possible future of our earth – a science fiction scenario that incorporates very real environmental issues and natural science.

Players will explore, hypothesize, and test in the areas of cryptography, mathematics, anthropology, astronomy, climatology, zoology, environmental science, paleontology, archeology, and forensics.

 

How can Affiliates play?  During several weeks, players will be encouraged to collect “clues” – many of which can come from the Affiliate network.  Affiliates are encouraged to participate at any number of levels – from minimal to fully engaged.  Here are some examples of Affiliate involvement:

 

  • Encourage your Museum’s after-school club to play the game or distribute information sheets to your teacher constituents to encourage their students to play.
  • Distribute a “clue” at your front desk to visitors who provide a particular password.
  • Discuss any relevant exhibits or collections you have with the game designers, so that they may possibly be included in the game itself.
  • Maintain a “drop box,” placing items (hidden clues!) in a Tupperware box on your property for gamers to find.
  • Host a dedicated treasure-hunt style challenge in conjunction with the game.

The game hopes to drive student players and their families to their local Affiliate museums, to discover the resources in their own backyards that unlock the mystery of the future.  

 

Interested in more information or how to sign up?  Contact Jennifer Brundage, National Outreach Manager at 202.633.5306 or brundagej@si.edu.  Game designers will also be discussing this opportunity at the Affiliations Annual Conference – hope to see you there!

Kudos, Affiliates! May 2010

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Great news from Affiliateland… way to go!

 

Michigan State University Museum (East Lansing, Michigan) will be a partner in the Biocomputational Evolution in Action Consortium (BEACON). A partnership between five U.S. universities, BEACON will be a five-year, $25 million research center exploring the intersection of computer and biological sciences, with a focus on the processes and results of evolution. The MSU Museum will assist in delivering educational outreach programs for schools and the general public through exhibits and virtual outreach (teleconferencing) programs.

 

The Putnam Museum (Davenport, Iowa) has reached an agreement with the city of Davenport through a real estate deal to receive $995,000 over three years. The money will be used for ongoing operating expenses.

 

Hy-Vee Inc. has made a $100,000 contribution to the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium (Dubuque, Iowa) to help fund the museum’s new Great Rivers Center. Hy-Vee’s gift will be used to fund the Water Cycle exhibit in the Great River Center’s RiverWORKS Gallery, an interactive museum-within-a-museum for children and families.

The Ford Foundation’s new Supporting Diverse Art Spaces initiative is giving $250,000 to the Wing Luke Asian Museum (Seattle, Washington), the country’s only pan-Asian-American museum, for marketing, a website upgrade, music events and other activities. The Foundation believes its initiative will revitalize local economies by promoting strong cultural environments, noting that support for the arts is even more vital in the current economic downturn.

For the first time, the Center for Jewish History (New York, New York) was awarded a grant by the National Endowment for the Humanities through its Fellowship Programs at Independent Research Institutions initiative to support fellowships devoted to advanced study and research in the humanities. The Center was awarded $169,200 to support (over three years) 12-month fellowships for distinguished scholars in Jewish studies.

 The African American Museum in Philadelphia (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) has been awarded a $150,000 grant from Save America’s Treasures to preserve its extensive photographic and film-based collections of several hundred thousand items.  The funds will enable the Museum to purchase new collections management software and provide internet access to a portion of the collection.  Greater access will also promote cooperation and collaboration with other museums, scholars and researchers.

 

Well done!  Do you have an accomplishment to share?  Leave a comment and let us know.

affiliates in the news: week of march 29

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Congratulations to these Affiliates making headlines this week!

Mexican Heritage Plaza (San Jose, CA)
Exhibit in San Jose triggers memories of farm labor for old braceros

California Science Center (Los Angeles, CA)
Museum Takes New Look at Air, Water, Land and Life (ABC news/travel section)
Museum Takes New Look at Air, Water, Land and Life (SFGate/ San Francisco Chronicle)
Exploring ecosystems at science center (LA Times)
California Science Center near downtown LA takes $165 million, hands-on approach to ecosystems (Canoe.ca-travel)
New look at ecosystem (Straits Times)
Museum Takes New Look at Air, Water, Land and Life (ArtDaily.org)
Blinded by Science:  Dynamic ‘Ecosystems’ Exhibit Highlights The California Science Center’s $165 Million Expansion (losangelesdowntownnews.com)
What’s New at the California Science Center? A lot!

High Museum of Art (Atlanta, GA)
Civil Rights Battles, in Black and White
Touring the ‘Road to Freedom’

Conner Prairie (Fishers, IN)
Conner Prairie’s 1859 Balloon Voyage to be featured at Smithsonian Air & Space Museums conference in Washington, D.C.

National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium (Dubuque, IA)
Hy-Vee gives $100,000 to river museum

Plimoth Plantation (Plymouth, MA)
Name that steer

SITES’ quarterly corner

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lotus

 Spring has sprung here in Washington, DC and we can’t help being drawn outside to experience the sights, scents, and sounds of nature. But you can bring nature indoors for your visitors through a selection of SITES exhibitions that explore our natural surroundings.

Farmers, Warriors, Builders: The Hidden Life of Ants

What we normally think of as pests are actually highly organized and industrious creatures. Learn about ant behaviors in this fun and informative exhibition featuring macro photographs, a cast of an ant nest, and a touchable ant model. A highly popular exhibition developed by the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum, The Hidden Life of Ants will soon embark on a national tour.

Contact: Minnie Micu Russell | 202.633.3160 | russellm@si.edu

Snow-covered ponderosa pine, North Rim. Photo by Jack Dykinga.

Snow-covered ponderosa pine, North Rim. Photo by Jack Dykinga.

Lasting Light: 125 Years of Grand Canyon Photography

Ever been to the Grand Canyon? If not, you can still behold the majesty of this great American landmark through this exhibition of contemporary and archival photographs.

Contact: Ed Liskey | 202.633.3142 | liskeye@si.edu

Green Revolution

How can your visitors be more eco-friendly and what impact would such actions have on the environment? This unique exhibition is both “green” in content and delivery – we provide the design files, graphics and fabrication plans, and YOU build the exhibit. SITES thereby reduces its carbon footprint and YOU get to reduce, reuse and recycle materials from old exhibits.

Contact: Shavonne Harding | 202.633.3138 | hardings@si.edu

Transitions: Photographs by Robert Creamer

Photographer Robert Creamer used a flatbed scanner as his camera in this exhibition of large-scale images, revealing flowers and natural specimens in striking detail and depth. Only one booking period is left, so don’t miss out! Available June 12 – August 22, 2010.

Contact:  Ed Liskey | 202.633.3142 | liskeye@si.edu

The White House Garden

You’ve probably read about First Lady Michelle Obama’s vegetable garden on the South Lawn, but there’s so much more history to America’s oldest continuously landscaped garden. Learn about the development of these grounds from the 1790s to the present through reproductions of historic and contemporary photographs, maps, and correspondence.

Contact: Minnie Micu Russell | 202.633.3160 | russellm@si.edu

Rock the Green Revolution gives visitors helpful tips for how they can reduce their carbon footprints.

 

  SITES.SI.EDU

how will you commemorate the Civil War’s 150th anniversary?

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cwdrummer

Winslow Homer's 1862 Study of a Drummer, in the collection of the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum.

Here at Affiliations, we’ve been hearing about all kinds of plans to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War.   Thinking about borrowing artifacts?  Looking for a speaker for a conference or public program?  Wonder what kinds of exhibitions other museums are organizing?   Here’s what we’ve heard so far from inside the Smithsonian and around the Affiliate network.

 

For the Smithsonian, the best and first stop to view the vast and manifold collections on this topic is the Civil War@Smithsonian website.  There, artifacts from several Smithsonian museums are grouped under such topics as Slavery & Abolition, Soldiering, Life & Culture, Leaders and Abraham Lincoln, among others.  (The site even talks about the various ways that the Smithsonian itself was involved in the Civil War.) 

 

And speaking of Lincoln, you’ll find a treasure trove of resources (and possible speakers) at the Lincoln Online Conference site, sponsored by the Center for Education and Museum Studies.   Here, Smithsonian scholars discuss a wide range of issues related to our 16th President from Lincoln’s Air Force to Mathew Brady’s photographs. 

 

For even more ideas on programming or group tour itineraries, turn to the Smithsonian Associates’ Civil War Studies site.  You can also sign up here for the Civil War Studies enewsletter for up-to-date program information and original essays exploring all facets of the War.  Want to hear about the largest stash of money ever discovered?   Invite American History numismatics curator Richard Doty to talk to your audiences about confederate currency, and show a few examples from our collection.

 

If you’re an art museum, don’t despair – you might be interested in what the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum is planning to commemorate the War.  Better Angels of Our Nature: Art During the Civil War and Reconstruction will examine the impact of the Civil War and its aftermath on visual arts in America.   Information on commemorative exhibitions at the Portrait Gallery will be posted soon so watch out for that.

 

And how about in Affiliateland?  Many Affiliates are already planning commemorations of their own.  Here are some of the plans we’ve heard about so far:

 

–          the Frazier International History Museum (Louisville, KY) is planning a Civil War symposium, update to its permanent exhibition, & a traveling show called My Brother My Enemy

–          the American Civil War Center at Historic Tredegar (Richmond, VA) is partnering with the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (Alabama) on a 2011 Civil War Conference

–          the American Textile History Museum (Lowell, MA) is organizing a traveling exhibition on Civil War textiles

–          the Heinz History Center (Pittsburgh, PA) will be one of three sites to host a major Civil War exhibition and will produce two publications on photography and the role of African Americans in the Civil War, as part of PA 150,  a major statewide commemoration  

–          the African American Museum in Philadelphia (PA) has already opened the Audacious Freedoms exhibition which explores the Underground Railroad, African American soldiers in the Civil War, and other topics

–          B & O Museum (Baltimore, MD) is planning a Civil War Railroading exhibition and symposium.

 

What are you planning?  Leave us a comment and let us know.

affiliates in the news: week of march 15

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Congratulations to these Affiliates making headlines this week!

Guests in Ecosystems at the California Science Center. Photo by: California Science Center

California Science Center (Los Angeles, CA)
Exploring the world’s ecosystems in the California Science Center’s new wing

North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences (Raleigh, NC)
SECU Members Help Bring NC’s Natural Beauty to Students Across the State!

The Frost Art Museum at Florida International University (Miami, FL)
The Frost Art Museum to Unveil Knight Foundation Virtual Gallery

Arts Council for Long Beach (Long Beach, CA)
Artistic Creation Blossoms In Vacant Lots

 

Bittersweet Harvest at Mexican Heritage Plaza

Bittersweet Harvest at Mexican Heritage Plaza. Photo by Laura Hansen

Mexican Heritage Plaza (San Jose, CA)
Bittersweet Harvest: the Smithsonian’s Bracero Exhibit at Mexican Heritage Plaza

Plimoth Plantation (Plymouth, MA)
Plimoth Plantation parades into a new season