State Historical Society of North Dakota Foundation - North Dakota in the News

Three Exhibit Firms Hired for ND Heritage Center Expansion

Posted 3/06/12 (Tue)

THREE EXHIBIT FIRMS HIRED FOR

NORTH DAKOTA HERITAGE CENTER EXPANSION PROJECT

The State Historical Society of North Dakota (SHSND) has hired Great Plains Exhibit Development Joint Venture to assist SHSND staff in designing, developing, and installing exhibits in the new galleries now under construction as part of the North Dakota Heritage Center expansion project.

Great Plains Exhibit Development is made up of three well-known exhibit firms: Lord Cultural Resources, Taylor Studios, and Xibitz, Inc. The three firms have collaborated on projects ranging from the Hong Kong Heritage Museum and the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, Texas to the Army Museum of Singapore and the National Archaeological Museum of Aruba, which is located in the Caribbean.

Lord Cultural Resources is the world’s largest and oldest cultural planning firm, with major offices in Toronto, New York, and Paris. They have worked with the world’s most prestigious museums, including the Louvre in Paris, the Tate Modern in London, and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.  Maria Piacente, vice president of exhibitions with Lord, will be Great Plains Exhibit Development’s lead project manager for the new Heritage Center exhibit galleries.  Lord will mainly focus on concept development and overall project management for the Heritage Center project.  Taylor Studios and Xibitz will do additional design development as well as the fabrication and installation of the project.

“We know how important this is to North Dakota, and are privileged to have been selected to work on this project,” said Piacente.  “This is not a client-consultant relationship, but a team approach. We will be sharing the responsibility of the project, and together we will be able to provide a complete experience.”

Three new galleries are being constructed in the expanded North Dakota Heritage Center, and the current Main Gallery is being recreated.  These galleries are:

• The Geologic Time Gallery will contain more than 500 million years of North Dakota history illustrating the earliest life forms up to the last glaciation, about 10,000 years ago.  These exhibits, which will feature a Magic Globe theater, several dinosaur fossils and much more, will set the stage for the fossil fuel stories of North Dakota’s oil and coal industries; they will explain the landscape and soils that have shaped the state’s agricultural future.

• The Early Peoples Gallery will cover more than 10,000 years of the earliest human history in what is now North Dakota.  When the Giza pyramids in Egypt and pre-Columbian civilizations of South America flourished, so did American Indian civilizations in North Dakota.  The gallery will highlight early occupation and exploration up to the establishment of Dakota Territory in 1861.

• The Inspiration Gallery is the current Main Gallery, and will present the last 150 years of the state’s history.  It will investigate opportunities, innovations, decisions, and outcomes through captivating stories about North Dakota’s resources, industries, events, and peoples.

• The Governors Gallery will host temporary and traveling exhibits, creating regional and world-class blockbuster events.  This gallery will provide an opportunity to bring the world to North Dakota and share the state with other museums throughout the nation and world.

The exhibit galleries will feature the collections of the State Historical Society of North Dakota, new media kiosks, learning labs and hands-on activities that offer all visitors -- school groups, families and tourists -- exciting and authentic experiences.

Taylor Studios of Rantoul, Illinois, recently worked on both the Fort Abercrombie State Historic Site Interpretive Center exhibits (completed in 2008) and the Fort Totten State Historic Site Interpretive Center exhibits (completed in 2011) with State Historical Society staff. Taylor is especially well known in the museum world for their natural history and scenic projects, including the diorama accompanying the recently restored Cyclorama at Gettysburg National Military Park.

Xibitz, Inc., of Grand Rapids, Michigan, specializes in finely-finished exhibit components for museums and other public use settings.  Xibitz’s recent projects in the Midwest include the Swedish-American Heritage Center in Rockford, Illinois; The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan; the Vesterheim Museum in Decorah, Iowa; and the National Czech and Slovak Museum in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, working with Lord on several of these. Xibitz and Taylor Studios, who have a long history of working together on many diverse projects, will be working closely on the actual exhibit fabrication for the Heritage Center galleries. Team members from all three companies recently completed working together on the National Archaeological Museum of Aruba.

The North Dakota Heritage Center expansion in Bismarck is expected to be structurally complete in the spring of 2013.  Construction is now about 24 percent complete. The 2009 Legislative Assembly authorized $51.7 million for the project. Of this, $39.7 million in state funds was appropriated. The remaining funds are being raised by the SHSND Foundation.  The amount includes up to $7.7 million for exhibit construction which covers 33,093 square feet of exhibit space in the Geologic Time, Early Peoples, and Inspiration galleries.  Gallery openings will be staggered, with The Geologic Time Gallery opening first in the spring of 2013, The Early Peoples Gallery later that summer, followed by The Inspiration Gallery, which will be finished in phases over several months. The fourth gallery, The Governors Gallery, will be primarily for large temporary exhibits and is not included in the exhibit contract. The expansion’s completion date is scheduled for North Dakota’s 125^th anniversary of statehood on November 2, 2014.

Representatives of Great Plains Development Joint Venture have already been working with State Historical Society staff and volunteers in visioning workshops that were held November 15-18. 

“The purpose of the intense week of meetings in mid-November was to develop the overall interpretive plan for the three main galleries,” said SHSND Museums Director Chris Johnson, “and then we’ll work on more specific plans for each gallery.” Johnson is Piacente’s counterpart as the lead project manager for the State Historical Society. The workshops included time spent looking at national and international trends in museum exhibition, historical context, usage, and aesthetics of objects currently in the collections of the SHSND, as well as the best ways to tell the stories in each of the three galleries.

A specific challenge that generated excitement during the workshops is the last phase of the project, according to Johnson. “We’ll be telling stories dealing with the start of World War II to the present time that really haven’t been discussed in our museum before.”

Sometime this winter or early spring, the Joint Venture and SHSND team will begin taking conceptual plans on the road throughout North Dakota for public comment.  Johnson expects that by summertime they will have developed more detailed plans for each gallery. 

For photographs of the North Dakota Heritage Center expansion construction project, visit the SHSND’s website at www.history.nd.gov and click on Heritage Center Expansion Project.