Today’s guest blogger is Rick Riccio. Rick is the owner of Riccio Exhibit Services and is now in his 18^th year of teaching History Museum Exhibits to graduate students in the Historical Administration (HA) Program at Eastern Illinois University. He has worked on museum exhibitions in one manner or another since 1974. Each of the exhibitions with which he has been involved has had its unique challenges and problems to solve. Rick has guest blogged for us before.  You can read his previous posts regarding the process he guides his students through so they understand what is involved when creating exhibits here and here.

After just reading “No Place like Home” by Dan Erickson in the Jan./Feb. 2013 issue of Museum, I feel compelled to respond. Having been on exhibit staffs of museums myself, I agree with him that museums should not eliminate exhibit staff positions. But his reasons pit for-profit companies against in-house staff, which I think misrepresents both. His main argument for producing exhibits in-house instead of outsourcing is the issue of “quality.” In-house staff, he argues, can produce better quality exhibits than commercial firms for two reasons; one, exhibit companies need to make a profit and two, museums (and their staff) have better access to specimens and information. Erickson has worked for both commercial firms and a university museum. When tasked with making a small prehistoric shark model with the commercial firm, he was given basic book illustrations and two weeks to complete the project. Asked to produce a similar model as the university museum employee, he accessed fossil references at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History (CMNH), consulted with the vertebrate fossil curator there, and invested a couple hundred hours on the project. The problem with this comparison is that same information at the CMNH is available to anyone with a serious research project. You don’t have to be a member of a university museum staff. Furthermore, if a design company were only interested in the profit margin, they wouldn’t stay in business for long. There are good reasons for choosing to produce exhibits or some exhibit components in-house, but the main reasons lie with the particular skill sets of your staff, and any exhibit manager should know what her staff is capable of accomplishing in-house and what tasks need to be out-sourced. Even commercial firms are more qualified for certain exhibit services than others. If a shark model is needed, go to those firms skilled in that kind of exhibit fabrication. There may be exhibit firms out there that don’t work closely with museum staff, but that is not typical of the industry. Most museum staff would feel insulted at the least, if they were not closely involved in the exhibit development process.

Museum staff should, as Erickson points out, share their expertise with other institutions, but this arena of cooperative engagement is not limited to museum staff. Just look at posts on listservs like the one NAME hosts, and you will see that solutions to problems come from exhibitors in both the non-profit and for-profit worlds. Exhibit firms want to develop long-term relationships with their clients. My firm created epoxy resin Indian house models for a state historical society so they could distribute them to their historic sites. We then gave the molds to the museum and instructed their exhibit staff how to make additional casts if they desired.

I agree with the author that museum exhibit staff are underutilized at many museums, and he offers creative ways that other departments can tap their varied skills. But the in-house vs. outsource issue is not an either/or proposition. They are two sides of the same coin, and museums are better served when the option for either choice is kept open.

Taylor Studios has built a good reputation for our ground forms. These are the artificial, full-scale environments we create for exhibits. A wetland at your feet? Ground form. A cut away into a World War I trench with sandbags and mud? Ground form. While the real impact of a ground form comes from the surface, where our fabricators do all the texturing, painting, and addition of plants and animals, the structure underneath is crucial. In the olden days, the ground form’s structure was a creation of wood, metal lath, and plaster. It was heavy and somewhat fragile, with disastrous consequences if someone stepped on it.

Fortunately, as building technology has advanced, so have our choices for how we build ground forms. The bulk of the structure is made from carved EPS bead foam, the same kind of foam used in those white, flimsy, throw away coolers. The bead foam is available in different weights, which indicate how much of a load they can carry. These carved blocks are stuck together using the other foam in our toolkit: insulation spray foam. This the industrial version of the “Great Stuff” you can buy in a can, except that you are combining a Part A and a Part B as you spray. The end product of this two-foam tango is a rigid, lightweight structure that can be carved as needed but can handle a load.

While insulation spray foam is the go-to fixit for us, it has a much bigger role to play. It is one of the best insulation technologies on the market today, and it has many green aspects. It has a high insulation value for a layer much thinner than fiberglass batts or sprayed cellulose. Since it adheres to just about any surface and expands after it is sprayed, it seals holes and gaps that allow air to infiltrate other types of insulation. It acts as a vapor barrier, which improves indoor air quality by reducing the likelihood of mold growing in insulated spaces. Spray foam doesn’t settle or shrink over time, which can reduce the insulation value of other products.

While spray foam has a lot of positives, it’s not all roses. The Part A is derived entirely from petroleum, and most formulations of Part B use toxic chemicals as fire retardants. The application of the foam involves a blowing agent using hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). Some companies are innovating by using bio-based ingredients (like soy, sugarcane, or castor oil) for the ‘polyol’ portion of Part B, or recycled plastics. There are even products available that use water as the blowing agent. Like many products touted as ‘green’, the full story is often a little more involved. No matter what it’s shade of green, spray foam is a valuable tool at Taylor Studios.

How long have you been with TSI?
Since Feb 13, 2012

Where did you work before joining the TSI team?
At a Web Hosting Company running support.

What do you do at TSI?
Exhibit Artist

Hometown?
DeWitt, MI

What’s your favorite TSI project?
Modeling a Squirrel for Sinnemahoning

Why?
I’ve always loved to sculpt so it was great to actually be able sculpt something for my job.

What’s something your coworkers don’t know about you?
Mark Dams is my best friend

What’s your favorite part of the day?
The mornings

What are some of your hobbies?
Right now I am trying to sculpt a bust at home.   I also enjoy gaming, sword fighting, and reading.

What do you think potential clients should know about TSI?
We have smart people working here who can figure out a solution for any exhibit.

Anything else you’d like to add?
www.alexcfriend.com

Everyone can play a role in increasing our sustainable practices and environmental awareness. Museums, while often seen as unchanging institutions, are actually rather forward thinking. While it may seem obvious that nature centers would focus on sustainability, many other institutions have also put a lot of effort into figuring out how they can leave a smaller ecological footprint and save money.

The Shedd Aquarium in Chicago has an extensive sustainability program that covers energy use, water conservation, recycling, composting, gardening, and animal diets. Due to the huge number of visitors they have every year, their food services offered several ways to both cut costs and cut waste. Reusable flatware and plates, cloth napkins, and compostable containers all help the Shedd reduce its footprint.

The Field Museum in Chicago uses incentives to encourage staff to use public transport, ride sharing, and bicycling. Its extensive recycling program kept 54,000 pounds of recyclable materials from landfills in 2011, and it replaced hand towels with air driers in its restrooms. Instead of using regular commercial air-conditioning units during the hot months, it uses an innovative system that makes ice overnight when electricity usage is low. During the day, air is circulated around the ice to chill it before it’s sent through the building. Pictured below is part of the Field’s 99.4 Kilowatt solar array on its roof, which reduces its electricity bill.

Smaller museums might not have the budget to install a massive solar array, but they can often be very creative with green initiatives. The Madison Children’s Museum in Madison, Wisconsin, uses a lot of reclaimed materials in both its interior common spaces and its exhibits, from old school bleacher boards to an entire log cabin moved to its city lot. By moving from its former location into an older building, the MCM emphasized its focus on reuse while helping keep the downtown area vibrant and active. Old exhibit components were updated and reused, while unique scrap materials (like an airplane fuselage!) became tables and parts of a huge climbing frame. This webpage offers a link to a fascinating downloadable PDF (their Green Guide) that describes the whole program in detail and makes me eager to visit.

To help other institutions learn from their experiences, MCM created the organization Green Exhibits. Green Exhibits “was launched to provide museum exhibit designers and fabricators a resource for designing and building exhibits and environments that best support healthy spaces and a healthier future for kids and the environment.”

Next time you visit a museum, see if you can spot what they may be doing to encourage sustainability. What are some of the coolest green aspects of the museums you know and love?

Design budgeting can be a difficult pill for clients to understand or swallow.  Sometimes it is easier to understand if you can correlate it to something in your personal life.  It would be like explaining the national budget as if it were your household budget.  Getting rid of all those zeros can make in more comprehensible.  Therefore, I will tell a personal design budgeting story.

I have been dreaming of a horse barn, arena and maybe less importantly a new home.  My house is three miles from where my horses live.  It sure would be nice to be near them and to have a real horse barn.  Several years ago I started planning a barn/home.  I thought I could kill two birds with one stone by living in a simple loft above the horse stalls.  Maybe that would fit within my budget.

I picked a company and they began the design work.  After we got a rough plan in place I began gathering quotes for the construction work.  This included electrical, water, concrete all the way to kitchen cabinets.  Once I got some rough ball park numbers I realized it was beyond my budget.  I asked the company to help value engineer and reduce.  They spent all their allotted design hours on the original design.  I would have to pay more to have more design work done.  Hours equal dollars.  So, I paid to have it redesigned.  I eliminated a basement and many other things.  I budgeted again and I was still not within my budget.  Unfortunately, I decided to put the project on hold.  I added and improved some fencing instead.  I still have the horses to enjoy and that’s what is important.

I am very passionate about horses.  I am also very passionate about Taylor Studios Inc.  I tend to invest my money back into the company instead of horse barns.  And, of course, paying vet bills for horses is more important than a really cozy stall when a lean to will do.

Our clients are very passionate about their stories.  They want to tell their stories in a grand way.  Often when cuts have to be made after they have seen something drawn on paper it causes them pain.  We are responsible for designing within a budget.  Yet we can’t know the fixed cost of something until we have enough detail for vendors to bid it.  Therefore, sometimes we have to eliminate the more expensive approach for a more cost effective one.  We always offer a cost effective solution that meets the success factors set up front.  Yet, it can be hard to swallow that in order to have horses you’ll have to settle for the lean to over the cozy barn.  Tough decisions have to be made during the design budgeting process.