Exhibit Plan
Exhibit Plan for the Housatonic River Museum
The story of the Housatonic River watershed, and an immersive, engaging museum experience based on that theme, is multifaceted and diverse, spanning a broad intellectual and emotional range that speaks to many audiences. It encompasses the scientific subjects of biology, chemistry, geology and ecology. It includes a great thread of human history, from native cultures to industrial expansion (the Housatonic River as a power source and waste stream) and modern day economics. It captures a swath of American culture, and can be tied to visual art, music, dance and crafts of untold variety. More fundamentally, the watershed and the River in particular represent for the Berkshire County community our innate connection to the outdoors – we imagine ourselves floating in a canoe, skipping stones, or wading in the water. The Museum aims to capture all aspects of this broad relevancy of the River, including that basic yearning and love of nature.
Although the exhibits for the Housatonic River Museum have been neither fully chosen nor designed, we can imagine them divided roughly equally into three distinct classes. After a full and satisfying visit everyone should come away with a personal impact from each of these three areas:
1. Environmental Connections These exhibits and programs focus on our stewardship of the watershed resource, the nature of the connections between the natural environment and human activity, and the underlying processes that shape the health of both the River and us. Interactive experiences give visitors a chance to experiment with environmental processes such as erosion, runoff and the water cycle, as well as the human/industrial activities that sustained our economies throughout the decades. Visitors can explore, in visceral, visual, overarching ways the true shape and behavior of the topography of the area and the central role played by the Housatonic in everyday life, even if unnoticed.
2. Historical and Cultural Stories These are the stories of the people who have lived and worked along the Housatonic. Drawing on a wealth of photographic material and other historical documents, visitors can relive the past and recreate memories. Through programming, visitors can join in the age-old crafts of boat building, whittling and papermaking. Through breathtaking theatrical scenes using new forms of museum exhibit technology, visitors of all ages can be transported and moved in ways only possible through a customized physical experience, entirely unlike anything available online or on television.
3. Water-Based Play Celebrating the wonders of moving water, and offering a compelling invitation to children and their families to learn more about the River and themselves, this class of experiences is built upon the stunning success of children’s museum water-themed exhibits found in the best institutions across the country. Visitors can make dams, build fountains, race miniature canoes, make fog and freeze rain. Young children can act out the lives of birds and fish in colorful, imaginative habitats, helping to establish a foundation for awareness of the natural environment around them. Strategically placed underwater and aerial cameras will allow Museum visitors to see the Housatonic River watershed in an entirely new way. These are experiences that families can share together, building memories within a specially prepared place of their own to which they can return again and again.
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