Bemusement - The Attractions Industry Blog

Wednesday, May 20, 2009 Museum Design: Who is this Man?    A photograph caught my eye today. It shows a man on the roof of a men’s lavatory in a California State Park. Why is he there? Why is he in black and white? Is he spying on someone through the skylight?                                                                 ...View more

Tuesday, May 12, 2009 Museums: An Outpouring in Paper and Pencil - Visitors to Calif Academy Get to the Point on Climate Change    For the new California Academy of Sciences, my company, Cinnabar Inc., produced the exhibit “Altered State,” which focuses on climate change and California....View more

Thursday, February 05, 2009 Museums and Green Building: Look at the big picture to create a truly sustainable facility and establish a basis for meaningful decisions    The term “green building” is something of a misnomer because the heaviest environmental impact comes after construction, with the behavior and consumption of the building's occupants. When you look at the life cycle and total cost of a green building, the vast majority of the expenditures involved are connected to the people inside it ......View more

Saturday, January 03, 2009 The Fine Art of Science Exhibit Writing    Remember the last time you went to a science museum and actually read the exhibits? Perhaps not many think about who writes those words on the panels about biology and botany and astronomy and geology. That’s entirely appropriate because what’s really important is the message. The goal of a good exhibit writer is to convey it in language that engages interest and excites inquiry among the very diverse audiences that visit museums and science centers....View more

Thursday, October 16, 2008 "World-Class Planetarium Invests $39.50 on Overhead Projector"    The above is not a headline you often see and there is a compelling reason: Overhead projectors are simply no good for presenting educational star shows. It seems obvious enough that there’s a world – indeed, a universe - of difference between a planetarium system and an overhead projector, but a mix-up between the two contributed to a recent John McCain campaign gaffe that has been the subject of much commentary in the science community....View more

Wednesday, September 10, 2008 This Is - and Isn’t - Your Grandfather’s Science Museum    Update from Jonathan Katz, CEO of Cinnabar, and executive producer of 35,000 square feet of new exhibits for the Kimball Natural History Museum at the new California Academy of Sciences....View more

Saturday, August 23, 2008 Museums: More news from the installation front!    Here is the latest entry of Cinnabar’s installation diary, by Jonathan Katz (Executive Director) and Jeannie Lomma (project manager)...View more

Monday, August 11, 2008 Cinnabar Installation Diary: The California Academy of Sciences    Here’s a report from Jonathan Katz in San Francisco, where his company, Cinnabar, is in the process of installing new exhibits at the California Academy of Sciences. This will be a weekly diary for the next several weeks (the new Academy opens Sept. 27).
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