On Display

New in the Museum’s lobby display case: discover Blooming, a scene that celebrates the wonder of nature and its power to inspire the imagination. The display was created by AmeriCorps Museum Educator Sarah Schnurr, who described her inspiration and process.

I started coming up with concepts and sketches for the case in February – I was missing the warm weather and a lot of my ideas were about spending time outdoors! The more I sketched, the more I found myself thinking about poems, stories and children's books illustrations, specifically “The Giving Tree,” “Where the Wild Things Are” and the ee cummings poem “who knows if the moon's a balloon.”

I liked the simplicity, nostalgia and imagination of these stories and wanted to create a backyard scene that would capture that. I enjoyed working with materials kids might use in art class or at home – newspaper for the tree, paper scraps and thread for the leaves, masking tape and tubes for the tire swing, pom-poms, beads and pipe-cleaners. I also incorporated furniture and characters from the Museum’s collection of antique toys – it was really interesting to see all of the things kids used to play with and how different they are from our modern-day plastic toys.

The case was definitely a collaborative effort among the AmeriCorps members – Dylan cut hundreds of leaves, Francesca became a certified origami fashion designer and Megan lent a hand doing the tedious job of leaf-hanging.

Day.  And night.

Blooming will be on view for a while, so take a peek next time you visit to discover all of its lovely and clever details!