Behind the Scenes of an Exhibit

Of all the types of writing projects I’ve done, working on exhibits has got to be the most involved and complex. For one thing, I don’t do it by myself. Oh sure, I do the writing and usually a lot of the research into the topic. But, there are always others involved in what is a team effort.

Take the one I just finished for the California Academy of Sciences. The  name of the exhibit is Altered State and is about climate change in California.  I estimate that I wrote about 10,000 words for the exhibit, all to explain how climate change works and how it is affecting various ecosystems up and down the state. It’s a complex topic

Like I said, I didn’t do this in a vacuum. I had a wonderful support crew including a director/producer, a researcher, a scheduler, a mom-confidant and, straight from the movie-making world, I had wranglers. Where did these people come from?

They work for Cinnabar, the company I worked under the direction of, comprising a group of people who are involved in just about every aspect of background production for films and exhibits you can imagine. They work on movies, theme parks, museums, and in-store exhibitry. Cinnabar, and its CEO Jonathan Katz, basically put together a really good support crew so I could focus on the subject and write exhibit copy in record time (four months start to finish). They also contracted and worked with designers such as VolumeSF, to design the exhibits. I really don’t know how many people ultimately worked on the exhibits (and they also put together a fine set of exhibits about Madagascar and the Galapagos Islands using another writer. But after seeing the exhibits in person last month and meeting the Academy’s in-house writers and experts, I came away really impressed with everybody who worked on these exhibits.

Well, what about those wranglers, you ask?  These are people who collect items needed for the production of exhibits (and film sets, etc.). In my case, we needed to “wrangle” images and quotations (quotes from poetry, articles, etc.).  A fine lady named Pixie Cearbhaill was my image wrangler and through all the long days and nights when I’d be writing and need to see an image, Pixie would find it and send it to me or send links to possible images she was working on acquiring for use.

In addition, although I could (and did) do research myself, I also had a research “wrangler” Natasha Fraley, who could come up with papers and references for me almost on demand and often served as “quote wrangler.” I also had a great deal of support from Sophia Katz (of Cinnabar), and Carol Tang, Aaron Pope, and others at the Academy itself.  Cinnabar’s Jeannie Lomma was my sanity-check person, the producer’s producer who kept us all from going completely batty. And, there were many others who helped keep me on track and more or less on time throughout the vagaries of editing, design changes, and other processes that keep an exhibit project hopping.

As with the Griffith project I worked on in 2005 and 2006 (and for whom I still do work from time to time), I remain amazed at the complexity and teamwork it takes to put a major science exhibit together. It begins with an idea and wraps up as the proud work of many dedicated professionals.  We couldn’t do it without each other’s smarts.

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