Exciting news from the County

-Anne C. Morgan, Head Curator

We wanted to share with everyone the latest press release- going out today! 

Admission in 2016 will remain free courtesy of the Imperial County Board of Supervisors. We hope you take a moment to contact your District Supervisor and thank them for their support of the Museum.

PRESS RELEASE

Supervisor Jack Terrazas, Education Coordinator Marcie Rodriguez, Curator Anne Morgan, Director Neal Hitch

Imperial County Supervisor Presents County Donation to Imperial Valley Desert Museum
-Rebecca Terrazas-Baxter

Today, Imperial County Supervisor Jack Terrazas visited the Imperial Valley Desert Museum (IVDM) to present the final installment of a total $125,000 donation for two County-sponsored exhibits, titled the Welcome and Visitors Service Area and the Power of Imperial County.
“It is wonderful to be able to be a part of an effort to preserve the history of our county,” stated Chairman Jack Terrazas, who represents District 2 including Ocotillo where the museum is located. “When Dr. Hitch presented the Board of Supervisors with the request for assistance, my colleagues and I were more than willing to assist in enhancing the museum for the benefit of the community. The museum is a wonderful educational resource for our local youth who are making more frequent field trips to the museum to learn more about the history of their county.”
On September 16, 2014, the Imperial County Board of Supervisors voted to fund two components of an overall redesign at the IVDM. The two exhibits are meant to provide museum visitor information and historical background on the natural transition of the landscape of Imperial County over the last 9 million years. Both exhibits are now complete and IVDM is currently working on the last phase of their three-phase renovation project. The two exhibits sponsored by the County of Imperial were part of the second phase of the overall redesign. The IVDM is open to the public Wednesday through Sunday from 10:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m. 

Exhibit work continues

-from the Curator

Measuring pieces for trays

The installers from Weldon Exhibits may have left, but there are behind the scene aspects of exhibit building that continue.  Today, we worked on building the trays that will hold the glass bead base of our visible storage exhibit and added some finishing touches of paint and rust effects to wood. It's amazing to see the difference a few little touches makes!

 We were also inspired by the beautifully clear weather to drive out and re-take our panoramic images of the Yuha Desert for the Land of Extremes.  

A photographer's work is never done

Secret superhero photographer?

Frequently asked question: When will you open?

-from the Director

Archaeology section- under development

"When will you open?" is a question we have been getting a lot lately. Currently, we are installing the casework for Phase I and Phase 2 of our exhibit. This will take 3 weeks.  Though this is a lot like installing furniture, it is big furniture, and just like at your house, it also requires a lot of painting and wallpapering.  After installation, museum staff will have three weeks to complete painting, put back ceilings, and do a deep cleaning.

After the rocks and casework are installed and the museum is cleaned up, we will be installing interactives, media, and software. This entails setting up computers and LCD projectors and requires three more weeks to make sure everything is installed properly and running correctly.  After all this, we will prepare artifacts for mounting and installation. This is the most complicated and time consuming step that museum staff will be doing. This will take most of the summer.

Painting and protecting rocks

A Borrego Sheep & mountain lion in the new exhibit

Phase 3 of the exhibit will cover the geology of Imperial Valley, and we are hoping that there will be public support to finish our exhibit sooner rather than later. If this is the case, we will complete the final design for Phase 3 in the fall and install these components this winter. This would allow us to have an official "grand opening" in the spring of next year.

Until then, we are planning a series of rolling soft openings for our members and a few for the public as exhibit software is tested and comes fully online or as artifacts get installed in specific cases.

We are not taking the traditional approach to opening a new museum where visitors don't see anything until a grand unveiling. We have had people come in the building throughout the process and many have seen the behind-the-scenes process that goes into building a permanent museum exhibit.  We want our visitors to feel involved every step of the way, and feel pride and ownership in a museum that they have watched grow into something truly special.

This excerpt is from "Land of Extremes: Desert Museum: Behind the scenes of new exhibit." by Neal V. Hitch. Imperial Valley Press. April 18, 2015. For the full article, see today's Imperial Valley Press.

Exhibit Installation has Begun

-from the Curator

Looking good, even in protective wrap!

Monday, March 30 and Tuesday, March 31 trucks arrived and members of the Weldon Exhibits team spent an intense two days unloading exhibit components.  Wednesday began installation and even at the start of Day 3 you can already see the exhibits starting to take shape. 

Unloading components

Before installation

  

It's thrilling to see what we've only imagined through design drawings starting to take shape in our museum- we hope you're getting as excited as we are!

WE staff applying photographic mural

Our sheep will supervise the rest of installation 

Exhibit Text

For the last year, we have been working with Dean Weldon Exhibits to design and fabricate a permanent exhibit at the Imperial Valley Desert Museum. Today, we reviewed the final text panels for the first printing.

For six months we have been writing exhibit text. We have gone through prototyping and visitor evaluations. We had different groups of people come out the the museum and read the text out loud as fast as they could. This was to see how things read, and in fact this caught lots of issues.

On a panel about using natural materials as pigments for decorating ceramics 5 out of 6 readers read the word "plant" for the word "paint." This got corrected.

But today was about a final reading. Changing a "to" to a "for." Finding a sentence that used the word "might" twice.

I love the big ideas and the dreams. Now we are down to the details, and in a day or two we will be in print.