So glorious would be its final issue that so god would judge me i dare not say then it is not to be desired. At the New York Historical society, james legacy of the sixth president. For our complete American History tv schedule, go to cspan. Org. The Richard Nixon president ial library and museum in california completed a major renovation last month. The museums designer sat down to talk about how they revised the exhibits to tell a more complete story about president nixon and his administration. This is just over 90 minutes. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the new Richard Nixon president ial library and museum. Todays program will be introduced by ronald a. Walker and david farial. The arcavist of the United States. [ applause ]. Thank you and good morning, everyone. Over the last four daek cades Richard Nixons career and Public Service was talking about many new nixons. But this museum, which opened yesterday, most of you were here, is truly the newest and i think youll agree with us, its the best of nixon, all. This morning well be hearing from the think well group which were really pleased with and the cortina productions who designed and executed the new library and museum. The creators of our new web site, how many of you got our web site there are many without whom, people whose involvement and contribution were vital to the in every way to the success of this completion. Unquestionably, the new Nixon Library, most importantly without whom is my friend and very dear partner in the planning and building of this new Nixon Library museum. And now as my distinct pleasure to introduce the arcavist of the United States of america. [ applause ] thank you, and good morning. Yesterday, when we were on the podium, i reminded folks of fdrs vision when he created the president ial library system, his faith in the capacity of the citizen ri to learn from the past that they can gain in judgment to create their own future. One of the most important ways we do that continue to fulfill that mission is through our exhibit programs across the president ial library. I would like to describe our goals as to educate, to enlighten, to entertain and to inspire. And am i not so secret agenda is to inspire young folks to devote their lives to Public Service and the exhibits provide a way for us to celebrate Public Service. A lot has changed since 1990 when this library opened and more papers have been processed and declassified resulting in new scholarship, eric and his book who owns history writes about history as a process not casts in stone, but rewritten each new generation and that is based on this discovery and rediscovery which president nixon himself talked about when opening this library and museum. Technological innovations have transformed the experience, that provided opportunities to share and reuse content in new and innovative ways and most importantly, visitor expectations have changed. We now have limited attention spans. We reject over texted exhibits and the expectation of interactive opportunities have revolutionized the business of exhibition design. All of these factors help shape our design and redesign of president ial library exhibits and each time we do one, we learn. Each new project raises the bar, lbj, fdr, bush 43 build on the successes of the past, very much a collaborative process, cracker jack consultants on the technology and exhibit design, stellar historian and foundation and National Archive staff and not to be overlooked generous supporters who believe in the mission and have invested in the future. It really does take a village, my thanks and deep appreciate for all of you who have made this possible and helped us invest in the future. Please welcome, chief executive officer and craig hanna, chief creative officer. Good morning. Thank you all for coming out today on a nice cool saturday. Its great when the National Archivist steals all of your morning material. Literally, the first thing i was talking about this morning is how audiences have changed and how its harder than ever to communicate with them and whether you have one or not, most everyone has some sort of mobile device with them, their noses are in it all the time, theyre taking pictures with it, theyre looking up things, i dont know what might im going to sound like an old guy. I dont know what my kids are up to on these darn devices. But it really creates a whole different mindset for all we need to communicate with audiences and the job use to be a lot easier once upon a time we could ptd get out as much as a people, just getting to europe, it was 7, 8 days it was easy to be able to present objects that no one had or could see and be amazed by them, right. So back in the day you put stuff on display and everyone appreciated it because they had no other way to see it. Today, we have a plethora of opportunity to get information. Whether its seeing it in his home location. And we utilize technologies today to engage people in a different way and allow them to go deeper. Whats going to happen tomorrow and, you know, we look at this image and we say, oh my gosh its science fiction, but wednesday night of this last week at 9 00 p. M. , a Major Company sold for the first time at major retail outlets a home version of this device that is going to really be in a few more years and virge yule reality will allow us the opportunity to explore anything and everywhere as if we were really there. What does that mean for museums, well, we contend that it means primarily two things, one we all crave to do things socially together, so regardless of sitting at home and being able to see the greatest movie we could ever see on the nicest display with the best surround sound, i still want to come out with my friends and say, oh my gosh, wasnt that amaze. And the other thing is, the more we can do online, on our computers and see virge yulely, things, the more we contend you want to see the real thing and it makes the real more important. So, the importance of Something Like the Richard Nixon president ial library and museum, is we can see these amazing items from the National Archive, on display up close, things that the president himself touched and used. Were able to tell stories in new ways that, socially, we can do together, hey, come take a look at this, did you know this about the president. And that kind of engagement changes the way we look at things now, and it makes our jobs harder, dont get me wrong, but it also forces us to look at things in a new way. So if you cant beat them, join them. You cant get the device out of their hands, so lets encourage its use and whether its an app like the brand new mobile app that is here at the museum or whether its other technologies to create a connection between that device and the thing theyre looking at in the museum is one tool at our disposal. She said we do three things we social media, we say, i am here. Here is this thing, and i am here with this thing. And nothing else and i thought about it and went, oh my gosh, shes right. So we have to make sure that in todays age, we provide photo ops, seems ridiculous, but we do. As you go through the exhibition today, youll see a few, some selfie moments that you can do on your own and others that youll hang your camera over to somebody that knows how to use it and they can take a picture of you, as well. Hopefully we can bring those moments from nixons life to life in a whole way that allows us to engage with a whole new audience in another way. Last but certainly not least, being able to talk to different audience segments is really important as well. Now, i would like to turn it over to joe who is going introduce the rest of our team that worked on this project and our partner, as well. Thanks, greg. Well, were honored to have been a selected to work on this project, weve been working on it for nearly three years and its a long journey and a very complex process that requires the efforts of dozens of people. But, today, were going to have the lead creative who is are involved in creating the exhibit here and well kind of deconstruct it and talk about some of the moments and how it came together. First, i would like to introduce kate mcconnell, she was our creative director, a project like this needs a deep diver, somebody who can get in and understand everything, we would like to approach all of our projects by putting ourselves in the shoes with the guests that will be coming in. How do we get the next generation and people to care and want to be involved. And kate is that generation we want to talk to, she knows as much about nixon, as i think anybody in this room does, now, and shell go one and one with any of you, did a great job. Then, if kate is the words in the concepts and the presentation, just like a film that needs a production designer of how it all comes together, chuck robert who is is our art director. [ applause ] put them in a pleasing way, what the topic is or how you want to tell the story, that is chucks job. I would also like to bring up our partner for all the video and media. We partnered with productions and we would like to say in our exhibits, we try to create emotional souvenirs. You want somebody to feel something. As craig said, putting out information is not enough. Having the emotional power was really important. Amys principle and partner of cortina productions. How many president ial library ris have you done . This is our seventh. The stores and interactives is phenomenal. I also need to have a shout out for the rest of our team who was not here, but we also have and this was the producer project manager, thats the conductor of the train, a little bit about think well, when we got hired from this job, Richard Nixon foundation. Richard nixon loved cutting edge thinking. If clients that come to us want something a different way than telling the story, we work not just in museums but we work in entertainment. We work in corporate environments. We do buildings and urban development. But its always about connecting a guest with sintellectual property. We have about 200 employees. They range from being architects and master planners and Story Tellers and feeder designers, technicia technicians, video editors and all of that kind of comes together for these project that is we work on. We have an office in beijing and dubai. You may have seen some of the projects we have done. Hoar they had a puppet theater. They wanted to be repository of puppets and the stories that go behind these. This is an ancient art form and our job is to engage children and creativity and tell the stories of these collections. Its situated on the forest and our gold air, how do you connect kids with nature, again, when we did our study of the demographics, in atlanta there are two types of kids, there are the inner city kids who are scare today go out in the forest or there were the privileged kids who came in and they parents didnt want them to go out and get dirty. The way i grew up learning from nature by exploring it and playing and moving things and adjusting water and all of that, kids were getting that experience. So we created a 7,000 square foot exhibit where you did that in doors worked with Warner Brothers at the studio where harry potter was made. This is about 150,000 square foot factory tour, if you will, of where the films were made, but its a very mer zif way of telling the story of the craftsman, the ten years of film making that went on there, how you make the film. If you get to go see and touch all the real sets and costumes and see behind the scenes how the magic came off. Weve been working for the last number of years in dubai on the world expo in 2020. An expo is a museum, how big is the site there. 500 acres. 500acre city theyre basically building. We were involved in the content and entertainment master planner. Youll have an architect thats master planning the place, what do people do, how do they engage with it, what are all the different entertainment opportunities and cultural opportunities within this space. How do you engage a younger audience to want to dive deeper and want to learn. Were a media design and Production Company located in virginia, classic American Dream story, three of us started in a basement. And our the bulk of our work is for museums and Cultural Heritage spaces, thats what we focused our attention on the last 15 years and ill run you through a couple of our projects. Were really honored to have been a part of the new Smithsonian Museum of africanamerican museum and culture that opened last month. We produced 25 exhibits for that, combination of films, interactive and audio scapes. My particular favorite is join the show now and you participate in a stepping, im not going to do it for you, but you can travel to do d. C. And do it. Its widely popular. And a fun way to celebrate the culture of africanAmerican History. They use football to teach science, technology, engineering and math in an Interactive Lab and they take 60,000 students a year through this program at the 49ers stadium and we just love using technology and story telling to open up young peoples minds to new ideas and new careers possibly. Next is the Muhammad Ali Center in louisville, kentucky. The focus of this project is to use muhammads life to teach concepts such as dedication and confident speaking up. Another one of our successful partnerships. Carter, clin top. I was raised by two journalists during the hay day of print journal licism and they were al very politically involved and grew up at the dinner table hearing about the office of presidency. And weve been its been so important to us to work on these, now our seventh president ial library to reach out to young people to use technologies that joe and craig talked about to open up young peoples minds to the history of our culture and our country. Lastly, ill talk to you about mobile ap that we did that i think, is perhaps, the most visited exhibition and we have the nixons to thank for that. Its the pandas that have made this project so popular and well ill leave you with a shot of mrs. Nixon with the pandas in china and then in our wonderful zoo in washington, d. C. So, im going to turn it over to chuck. Youll hear a lot about partnerships today and chuck is going to introduce us to a couple of partners that helped us create this immersive museum. Thank you. Plaus plau [ applause ]. I want to talk to you about eis. Studio eis is a company in brooklyn and they did the original figures for the hall of leaders here at the library in 1990. And they ive wanted to work with these guys for 30 years, i think. Maybe 25 years. And they do i think, the best Museum Figures that ive ever seen likeness is good but its usually very kind of stiff. On the life and natural. You sort of feel like you understand the character and feeling of who this person is. It was just a no brain tore go with these guys. Well talk here for a moment about the fab bring karters for our exhibits. And in case you sl not comple completely clear on how all of this work they did a beautiful job on this building, the it was the facility contractor, most of the walls, a lot of what you see in the exhibit was done by them and then that sort of gets carried over by our who did the exhibits. I, as a art director, do not always get to choose, who are we going to go with and i didnt know these guys well. I newsome of their work, we finally get into the room as were getting close to production and theyre sitting there and we start to sort of eyeball each other, were hope you guys know how to build stuff, if you can draw it all, well probably be okay. And its just, you know, it became a partnership and theres a couple of people i point out, lynn who was the plo jekt manager got under the hood on me on everything and we worked out the details. I have eve got to tell you from point of view, nothing in this museum is arbitrary. Its all carefully thought through and planned. Lynn stuck with me on all of this and theres things that i wanted that i thought do it this way and he thought im not doing it that way. He was right. So he was awesome. I want you to imagine this for a moment. He was hired to do the site install here. And he had, you know, help, obviously. But just all of the exhibits are arriving from new jersey and from toronto, stuff, you know, coming in huge crates and boxes. Hes opening this stuff up. Its organized, but it is such a challenge to figure out how to build a museum when its just coming in box after box after box and he managed to put it all together, things that were missing, he put in place, he built them himself. It was an amazing sort of heroic effort. I just want to point him out, as well. A project like this is so challenging. And it has to be heard. So the team now is going to go through the exhibit itself and kind of peak behind the scenes on how some of this came together. Thanks, jim. So peak behind the scenes is polite turn for lets do a little sausage making. One of the things when we started this project was to understand the times and the world he lived in and take another look at the president. And we always start our process by putting ourselves in our in our visitors shoes and thinking what did they bring to the table when they come to any experience we create. In this case we said as we started off, everyone has a kind of a one dimensional notion of Richard Nixon, including all of us, which was water gate, resignation, the end. And ill admit, that was where i started personally from this. And we cant ignore it. We dont want to ignore it. Its not fair to ignore it. Its not honest to ignore it. We chose instead to hit the nail on the head. When we sat down and had our initial brainstorming. We said, all right, lets think about the baggage we bring as visitors. Lets think about the things you would expect to see and the things you would see surprised to learn. In the course of discover we did we found some kind of key things that came out of it. The first that we said, and we imagine the visitors could say coming to a new exhibition, is, i didnt know he did so much and we were astonished to see the breath and depth of th