Alexandra Zappa is a project leader in the museum’s Exhibit Services Department, leading teams that develop, design, and build full-scale exhibits for cultural institutions across the country and around the world. Below is an overview of Cultural Crossroads, one of her most recent exhibit projects created with the Mayborn Museum at Baylor University.
If you’ve found yourself visiting a museum while on vacation in New York City, Cincinnati, Dallas, or yes, Waco, you likely have enjoyed an exhibit designed by experts at the Science Museum of Minnesota. Our exhibit design firm creates experiences for visitors far and wide.
Fresh perspectives bring fresh experiences
We began working with the Mayborn Museum five years ago, reimagining their existing Texas Lifeways exhibit to focus on the many cultures and peoples who have shaped central Texas over time, including the Comanche, the Wichita, African Americans, Tejanos, and Anglos. While they wanted a more inclusive exhibit, they also had a few existing structures from the original gallery they wanted to keep highlighting, including an original log house and a Comanche tipi.
The new exhibit had three simple goals: develop engaging experiences that visitors would remember, offer relatable and relevant stories that represent the cultures of central Texas, and provide connections for further learning in the local area. From there, our team did a deep dive into Central Texas history and proposed a conceptual organization, interpretive framework, stories, interactive experiences, and a design direction for the gallery.
Through four years of phases, iterations, cultural advisor meetings, and trips to Waco, we refined that vision. Next came the hands-on work: original research, object identification, prototyping interactive experiences, and presenting design directions and rough drafts of gallery labels for feedback.
Exhibit iteration
Building exhibits and relationships
Cultural advisors played an important role in the gallery development. As a history exhibit talking about people, it was essential to involve members of the represented communities in shaping the gallery as much as possible. We built relationships with many wonderful people — their knowledge and history are the basis for what visitors experience and learn in the gallery.
These relationships came about in a number of different ways. The Mayborn Museum’s existing relationships with Derek Ross and Gerald Miller of the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes allowed us to work together to build a traditional grass house inside the museum. We are currently working with Derek and his son Cannon to produce a video about the building of the house that will eventually be played inside the Grass House.
In other instances, we were able to help create connections, such as with Eleanor McDaniel, a Comanche elder who advised us on the Comanche area of the exhibit. The Comanche Nation is headquartered in Lawton, Oklahoma, and colleagues from our past exhibit work with the Museum of the Great Plains connected us with Eleanor. We met in Lawton to talk about what Comanche stories she thought should be told in the exhibit. A two-hour visit quickly turned into a daylong excursion as Eleanor shared stories, reviewed ideas, and connected us with a Comanche artist, Tim Nevaquaya, who created the artwork for the projected tipi show; Dr. Cornel Pewewardy and Marie, who narrated the tipi show; as well as Sam Devenney, who helped us with Comanche translations.
Our work with the Mayborn Museum illustrates how one relationship can transform the institutions we help, the people involved, and our own home museum. Partnerships like this are invaluable, as they help us connect with other organizations, create opportunities for innovation, and push our thinking about how we create spaces for informal learning.
Video Courtesy Heinzen Media.
