Tag Archive for: challenger space center

Kudos Affiliates! for December 2012

/in , , /by

Congratulations to Affiliates for a great year, and may 2013 be just as prosperous! 

Three Affiliates received MetLife grants to support programming around SITES exhibitions: 

  • Mashantucket Pequot Museum & Research Center (Mashantucket, CT) received $4,990 to fund construction of an outdoor skateboard park which will be used during the public opening and summer kick-off events for the exhibition Ramp It Up: Skateboard Culture in Native America.  The grant will also support an honorarium for skate-boarder, Walt Pourier, who will lead a skate deck workshop, art projects, and skating skills demonstration, as well as act as the artist-in-residence at the summer kick-off event. 
  • Sonoma County Museum (Santa Rosa, CA) received $4,700 to fund the honoraria and marketing for an event featuring a local story-telling group whose performance will involve narratives connected to the theme of military mail, particularly focusing on the ways it has connected service men and women to the public during war time. The grant will also support materials and marketing for a free family day. Additionally, funding will assist with the cost of materials and marketing for an augmented tour program which will be a series of docent-led tours for school children. All programming relate to themes of the exhibition Mail Call. 
  • American Textile History Museum (Lowell, MA) received $5,000 to fund speaker fees and promotion for lecturers such as astronaut, Daniel Barry, space suit designer, Dava Newman, and Apollo 13 Mission Control engineer, David Reed.  The grant will also support craft and activity materials for a free family day, as well as the construction of and materials for hands-on interactives at activity stations. All programming relate to themes of the exhibition Suited for Space.

Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and his wife, Gene  donated $5 million to the new Perot Museum of Nature and Science (Dallas, TX).  Their donation funded the Perot Museum’s atrium, the naturally lit entrance area that spans almost 14 stories high. The area will be named the Gene and Jerry Jones Dallas Cowboys Atrium. 

The Ohio Historical Society (Columbus, OH) received $30,000 from the Ohio & Erie Canalway National Heritage Area to help repair damage to the Bimeler Museum in Zoar, which was badly damaged by a flood in 2005. 

Challenger Space Center (Peoria, AZ) has been selected to receive a STEM grant for $94,013 from the APS Foundation. The grant will support the Center’s new Statewide STEM Mobile Outreach program, which will bring hands-on learning activities to schools in rural areas around the state beginning in 2013.

coming up in affiliateland in september 2011

/in , , , , /by

Fall is underway in Affiliateland!

ARIZONA:
The Challenger Space Center opens the National Air & Space Museum’s In Plane View: Abstractions of Flight in Peoria, 9/2.

PENNSYLVANIA:
Senator John Heinz History Center displays four artifacts from the National Museum of American History in its Stars & Stripes: An American Story exhibition in Pittsburgh, 9/10.

TEXAS:
Bill Fitzhugh, archeologist from the National Museum of Natural History, will give a public lecture on Genghis Khan at the Irving Arts Center in Irving, 9/10.

FLORIDA:
The National Museum of Natural History’s Dr. Valerie Paul gives a talk at the Museum of Arts & Sciences in Daytona Beach, 9/10.

The South Florida Museum, Tampa Bay History Center, and the Frost Art Museum will be represented at the Florida Association of Museums for an Affiliations Session in Sarasota, 9/20.

The Museum of Arts & Sciences will host the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra in Daytona Beach, 9/23.

CALIFORNIA:
The Riverside Metropolitan Museum will host Smithsonian Citizen Science Week in Riverside, 9/20.

NATIONWIDE:
More than 80 Affiliates take part in Smithsonian Magazine’s Museum Day, 9/24.

 

September 25 is Smithsonian Magazine Museum Day

/1 Comment/in , , , /by

Smithsonian Magazine Museum Day

On Saturday, September 25, 2010, Smithsonian Affiliates across the country will participate in the sixth annual Museum Day, presented by Toyota on behalf of the redesigned 2011 Avalon.  More than 90 Smithsonian Affiliates will open their doors free of charge to all visitors who download the Museum Day Ticket from Smithsonian.com. Find a participating Affiliate in your neighborhood! 

And check out the Around the Mall blog to learn where you can find Smithsonian artifacts at an Affiliate near you during Museum Day.

Here’s a sample of what a few Affiliates are doing to bring the Smithsonian to their neighborhoods on Museum Day: 

Greensboro Historical Museum (Greensboro, North Carolina) will host The Smithsonian Associates Discovery Theater’s traveling show, African Roots, Latino Soul, a vibrant play that explores what it means to grow up in the American melting pot. Filled with laughs and surprises, and written with the Young Playwrights’ Theater, the play is a look into the triumphs of today’s multicultural kids. There will be two performances at the museum on Museum Day. The performance will highlight their new permanent exhibition, Voices of a City, which emphasizes the expression of voice and their multicultural local story.  

Rayna Green, curator at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History (NMAH), will give a series of talks at two Affiliates over the weekend. At The Silo at Hunt Hill Farm Trust (New Milford, Connecticut) on Friday, September 24, she’ll discuss her experiences as co-curator of the Julia Child exhibition at NMAH, followed by a reception featuring some of Child’s favorite desserts, prepared by The Silo Cooking School. Next, Rayna travels to The Long Island Museum of American Art, History & Carriages (Stony Brook, New York) for an evening “Dinner with Julia” event on Saturday, September 25. She’ll speak about Julia Child’s Kitchen at the Smithsonian and its acquisition.  On Sunday, September 26, to complement their exhibition of America’s Kitchens, organized by the New England Historical Association, she’ll discuss her experience with the Smithsonian’s Julia’s Kitchen exhibition during a public lecture on the social history of kitchens. 

Virginia Museum of Natural History (Martinsville, Virginia) will be presenting a series of special Smithsonian films in the Walker Lecture Hall on Museum Day. The programs to be shown are part of the Stories from the Vaults series presented by Smithsonian Networks. In the series, host Tom Cavanagh (“Ed”) takes you on an entertaining insider’s tour of the private rooms, high-tech vaults, and cutting edge labs of the Smithsonian Institution, revealing some of the amazing artifacts and rarely seen treasures that visitors can’t see. 

Spacecraft Model

Challenger Space Center (Peoria, Arizona) opens their new exhibition, An Astronaut’s Life: Articles Flown In Space, including 23 items on loan from the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. Nineteen of the artifacts have flown in space on Gemini 8, Skylab 2, and several STS (Shuttle) missions. The artifacts tell the story of how astronauts live in space. Included are personal hygiene items such as a Gemini Survival Kit, a washcloth from the first Space Shuttle, STS-1 Columbia, clothing and bio-belt worn on Skylab 2 by astronaut Paul Weitz, space food from STS-27 Atlantis, and an actual heat shield fragment from Gemini 8 which carried astronauts Neil Armstrong and David Scott into orbit on March 16, 1966.  Photo: Spacecraft Model, Gemini. Courtesy National Air & Space Museum. Transferred from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Museum Day 2010 is poised to be the largest to date, outdoing last year’s record-breaking event.  Over 300,000 museum-goers and 1,300 venues in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico participated in Museum Day 2009. Last year, two million visitors logged on to Museum Day’s website to learn more about the program.