We’re a talented community dedicated to making great exhibits. We offer over 35 years of experience and a staff of more than 100 exhibit professionals to provide a wide range of exhibit services — everything from start to finish, or just the parts you need.
Exhibit
Services
A Design-Build Firm within a Museum
From Idea to Installation
With all the talent you need under one roof, we can take on any and all aspects of a project, from project articulation or master planning to exhibit development and design, fabrication, print production, installation, and warranty support.
We Get You
We’re not just an experienced design-build firm, we’re also a museum. We’re keenly aware of the issues museums face as we create exhibits that challenge, delight, and engage visitors. We work with our clients to imagine — from visitor and operations perspectives — the best exhibits possible, and we both learn and innovate, pushing boundaries and advancing the field. When you hire us, you’re also supporting our mission to “turn on the science” in Minnesota and beyond.
Innovative. Impactful. Ironclad.
We don’t waste time wondering whether or not visitors will engage with an exhibit. Because we’re a museum, not a studio, we take ideas to our galleries and let visitors tell us what works. We test ideas and prototypes early and often to ensure learning goals are attainable; visitor experiences are engaging, enjoyable, and memorable; and any safety or durability concerns are addressed. We offer unparalleled quality and work hard to turn your dreams into reality.
Featured Projects
View existing exhibits and galleries we’ve created and partnered with other organizations.
6,000-8,000 square feet
Explore the often invisible inner workings of the urban environment: drive a bus, get a pigeon’s-eye view, load a garbage truck, build a skyscraper, design a park, or even see what lies beneath a city’s manhole cover. Investigate five different aspects of city infrastructure: transportation, water and wastewater, sanitation, urban development, and integrated systems. Each section highlights how that system has traditionally functioned and evolved over time, as well as potential future challenges each could face as cities continue to adapt. Discover the intricate systems and engineering that allow cities to function, consider how natural and built systems are integrated, how people impact the landscape, and how we can rethink cities to address the challenges of climate change in the future.
Explore the often invisible inner workings of the urban environment: drive a bus, get a pigeon’s-eye view, load a garbage truck, build a skyscraper, design a park, or even see what lies beneath a city’s manhole cover. Investigate five different aspects of city infrastructure: transportation, water and wastewater, sanitation, urban development, and integrated systems. Each section highlights how that system has traditionally functioned and evolved over time, as well as potential future challenges each could face as cities continue to adapt. Discover the intricate systems and engineering that allow cities to function, consider how natural and built systems are integrated, how people impact the landscape, and how we can rethink cities to address the challenges of climate change in the future.
77,000 square feet
Climate resilience and sustainability aren’t all doom-and-gloom! Our Backyard blends gardens with hands-on experiences, providing opportunities to gather and play or reflect in solitude. Enjoy a meal or recline among the native plantings, rain gardens, and demonstration fields. Play with water, engineering, sound, and energy. Collaborate with friends to make music. Explore electrical generation, transmission, and circuits, as well as energy storage and wind turbine engineering. Along the edges of a small stream, get busy making—use natural materials to construct rafts or build dams, divert water through bamboo troughs, experiment with water pressure and buoyancy, or create art. Or unplug and experience wonder as you watch pollinators flit from flower to flower or marvel at the diversity of colors and textures in the garden. Our Backyard has something for everyone!
Climate resilience and sustainability aren’t all doom-and-gloom! Our Backyard blends gardens with hands-on experiences, providing opportunities to gather and play or reflect in solitude. Enjoy a meal or recline among the native plantings, rain gardens, and demonstration fields. Play with water, engineering, sound, and energy. Collaborate with friends to make music. Explore electrical generation, transmission, and circuits, as well as energy storage and wind turbine engineering. Along the edges of a small stream, get busy making—use natural materials to construct rafts or build dams, divert water through bamboo troughs, experiment with water pressure and buoyancy, or create art. Or unplug and experience wonder as you watch pollinators flit from flower to flower or marvel at the diversity of colors and textures in the garden. Our Backyard has something for everyone!
4,500 square feet
The galaxy is yours to explore! Blast off on a journey through the cosmos, where hands-on activities, immersive media, and incredible artifacts bring space to life. Experience liftoff, travel across the solar system, and step inside a space station to see what it’s like to live beyond Earth. From stargazing here at home to deep-space missions, this exhibit puts you in the astronaut’s seat—opening a world of possibilities and inviting you to be part of the adventure. Ready to launch? The universe is waiting!
The galaxy is yours to explore! Blast off on a journey through the cosmos, where hands-on activities, immersive media, and incredible artifacts bring space to life. Experience liftoff, travel across the solar system, and step inside a space station to see what it’s like to live beyond Earth. From stargazing here at home to deep-space missions, this exhibit puts you in the astronaut’s seat—opening a world of possibilities and inviting you to be part of the adventure. Ready to launch? The universe is waiting!
2,500-3,000 square feet (total)
Investigate your body’s functions, the actions you can take every day to keep it operating optimally, and the medical interventions that can help when it doesn’t. Discover medical innovations developed in Cincinnati and meet members of the medical, technical and social services workforce who can help you feel better. Advancing Health includes nine interactive sections focused on your heart, brain, lungs, muscles, bones, brain, digestion, immune system, and mental health. You might just discover your own career path in health care, science, engineering, or technology!
Investigate your body’s functions, the actions you can take every day to keep it operating optimally, and the medical interventions that can help when it doesn’t. Discover medical innovations developed in Cincinnati and meet members of the medical, technical and social services workforce who can help you feel better. Advancing Health includes nine interactive sections focused on your heart, brain, lungs, muscles, bones, brain, digestion, immune system, and mental health. You might just discover your own career path in health care, science, engineering, or technology!
2,500-3,000 square feet
RoboSapiens explores cutting-edge technologies that treat, assist, and enhance our bodies and minds, and the ethical questions raised by the blending of human biology with technology. Try real devices for yourself, discover the basic science that underpins many new advances, and hear from futurists and engineers about developments on the near and far horizons. Personal experiences provide a comfortable entry point—and likely influence how you view the ethical questions these technologies raise. Is it fair if some people have access to assists that others can’t afford? What does it mean to be human? Sharp angles, dramatic lighting effects, and dynamic forms create a future-forward feeling. Larger-than-life imagery of fantastical humanoids encourages you to imagine a future where humans and machines are ever more closely integrated.
RoboSapiens explores cutting-edge technologies that treat, assist, and enhance our bodies and minds, and the ethical questions raised by the blending of human biology with technology. Try real devices for yourself, discover the basic science that underpins many new advances, and hear from futurists and engineers about developments on the near and far horizons. Personal experiences provide a comfortable entry point—and likely influence how you view the ethical questions these technologies raise. Is it fair if some people have access to assists that others can’t afford? What does it mean to be human? Sharp angles, dramatic lighting effects, and dynamic forms create a future-forward feeling. Larger-than-life imagery of fantastical humanoids encourages you to imagine a future where humans and machines are ever more closely integrated.
20,000 square feet
Hone your creativity and problem-solving skills. Follow a scarf as it shoots through pneumatic tubes. If you’re quick, you can use diverters to change its path. Predict its path and catch it before it lands! Or prime a pump, build the pressure, aim your blaster, and let it spray! Hitting a target activates delightful payoffs—like spinning a turbine to power a light. Invent your own game, or work with other visitors to trigger all the elements. All the time, you’re learning how water behaves, and to manage those properties for practical, playful, and artful results. Build sturdy bridges, design, build, and launch rockets, and race against the clock to move materials. Experiment with machines and discover the relationships between physics, engineering, and your own ingenuity.
Hone your creativity and problem-solving skills. Follow a scarf as it shoots through pneumatic tubes. If you’re quick, you can use diverters to change its path. Predict its path and catch it before it lands! Or prime a pump, build the pressure, aim your blaster, and let it spray! Hitting a target activates delightful payoffs—like spinning a turbine to power a light. Invent your own game, or work with other visitors to trigger all the elements. All the time, you’re learning how water behaves, and to manage those properties for practical, playful, and artful results. Build sturdy bridges, design, build, and launch rockets, and race against the clock to move materials. Experiment with machines and discover the relationships between physics, engineering, and your own ingenuity.
6,000 square feet
Get ready, get set, and get active as you explore the anatomy and mechanics of your body in motion! Can you outrun a Tyrannosaurus rex, or throw a football better than a pro? Kick a soccer ball, jump rope, or turn cartwheels while a high-speed camera captures every detail. Even couch potatoes will enjoy Sportsology’s blend of biomechanics, kinesiology, physics, sports medicine, health, and nutrition. Studying the body in motion provides insight about the importance of physiology and physics in active play, whether you’re challenging friends to a game of tag or watching a professional athlete set a world record.
Get ready, get set, and get active as you explore the anatomy and mechanics of your body in motion! Can you outrun a Tyrannosaurus rex, or throw a football better than a pro? Kick a soccer ball, jump rope, or turn cartwheels while a high-speed camera captures every detail. Even couch potatoes will enjoy Sportsology’s blend of biomechanics, kinesiology, physics, sports medicine, health, and nutrition. Studying the body in motion provides insight about the importance of physiology and physics in active play, whether you’re challenging friends to a game of tag or watching a professional athlete set a world record.
3,800 square feet
Made in Cincinnati—winner of CityBeat’s 2023 Best Museum Exhibit award—celebrates the city’s robust “maker” history. It features stories of the innovators who seized opportunities
and the people who helped bring new ideas, designs, and products to fruition. Highlights include an automated “object theater” that reveals the region’s significant contributions over time—from artisanal, hand-crafted creations to large-scale, industrial goods and inventions—and a vignette of once-enslaved Henry Boyd’s integrated 1840s cabinet shop. “We wanted to not only change the way we think about Cincinnati’s history, but also how we learn it,” said Elizabeth Pierce, President and CEO of Cincinnati Museum Center. “We’re presenting information and telling these stories in new, unconventional ways that we hope adds to the fun of learning.”
Made in Cincinnati—winner of CityBeat’s 2023 Best Museum Exhibit award—celebrates the city’s robust “maker” history. It features stories of the innovators who seized opportunities
and the people who helped bring new ideas, designs, and products to fruition. Highlights include an automated “object theater” that reveals the region’s significant contributions over time—from artisanal, hand-crafted creations to large-scale, industrial goods and inventions—and a vignette of once-enslaved Henry Boyd’s integrated 1840s cabinet shop. “We wanted to not only change the way we think about Cincinnati’s history, but also how we learn it,” said Elizabeth Pierce, President and CEO of Cincinnati Museum Center. “We’re presenting information and telling these stories in new, unconventional ways that we hope adds to the fun of learning.”
4,000-7,000 square feet
Nature All Around Us explores the ways our daily lives are intertwined with nature—how trees cool neighborhoods, how streams carry stormwater away from homes, and how spending time in nearby nature keeps us healthy. See familiar places through new eyes, learn and practice a naturalist’s skills, find inspiration in specimens and interactives, and discover opportunities to get involved in your own community. The Natural History Museum of Utah (NHMU) created Nature All Around Us as a temporary, locally focused installation. But, recognizing the appeal to a wider audience, NHMU asked SMM to reimagine it as a traveling show. SMM refined the interactives to ensure their durability over a ten-year tour, reinvented and fabricated the components and infrastructure to make them suitable for travel, and included a broader variety of species and habitats.
Nature All Around Us explores the ways our daily lives are intertwined with nature—how trees cool neighborhoods, how streams carry stormwater away from homes, and how spending time in nearby nature keeps us healthy. See familiar places through new eyes, learn and practice a naturalist’s skills, find inspiration in specimens and interactives, and discover opportunities to get involved in your own community. The Natural History Museum of Utah (NHMU) created Nature All Around Us as a temporary, locally focused installation. But, recognizing the appeal to a wider audience, NHMU asked SMM to reimagine it as a traveling show. SMM refined the interactives to ensure their durability over a ten-year tour, reinvented and fabricated the components and infrastructure to make them suitable for travel, and included a broader variety of species and habitats.
5,000 square feet
33,000 square feet
During the darkest time of the year, Illumination celebrates light and transforms the Science Museum. With the main lights turned off, temporary visual effects create a very different appearance and atmosphere. Explore this interactive showcase of hands-on activities, like glow-in-the-dark slime or light-up parachutes, immersive experiences, live theater, and food and drink. Lasers, lights, and things that glow—come see the Science Museum in a whole new light!
During the darkest time of the year, Illumination celebrates light and transforms the Science Museum. With the main lights turned off, temporary visual effects create a very different appearance and atmosphere. Explore this interactive showcase of hands-on activities, like glow-in-the-dark slime or light-up parachutes, immersive experiences, live theater, and food and drink. Lasers, lights, and things that glow—come see the Science Museum in a whole new light!
9,600 square feet
Step back in time and onto the Public Landing. Stroll the cobblestone streets of a bustling riverwalk and get a sense of 1850s Cincinnati—a city built on pork, beer, innovation, and determination. Dynamic soundscapes add to the immersion, simulating a raucous political debate, the hubbub of a German beer garden, and the cobble-to-gangplank clatter of a working wharf. Wander into any of six historic shops and try your hand at plying these trades. On the gangplank, meet the Queen City’s newest arrivals—perhaps your great-great grandparents?—and see what people moving west brought with them. Dodge a noisy running of the pigs through Porkopolis, look out for the cargo on the wharf, and step aboard The Queen of the West to learn about life on a steamship on the Ohio River.
Step back in time and onto the Public Landing. Stroll the cobblestone streets of a bustling riverwalk and get a sense of 1850s Cincinnati—a city built on pork, beer, innovation, and determination. Dynamic soundscapes add to the immersion, simulating a raucous political debate, the hubbub of a German beer garden, and the cobble-to-gangplank clatter of a working wharf. Wander into any of six historic shops and try your hand at plying these trades. On the gangplank, meet the Queen City’s newest arrivals—perhaps your great-great grandparents?—and see what people moving west brought with them. Dodge a noisy running of the pigs through Porkopolis, look out for the cargo on the wharf, and step aboard The Queen of the West to learn about life on a steamship on the Ohio River.
