In a December tradition, I write a post about the highlights of my work each year. This year I am focusing on multisensory exhibits that opened in 2022—because exhibit planning can take months or years, I note the project phases completed in 2021.

In the spring of 2022, the Please Touch Tour at Macculloch Hall Historical Museum  in Morristown New Jersey was opened for visitors. The tour features stations in different rooms of the historic house. In 2021, I visited the museum and helped staff select objects for the touch tour. You can read more about how the tour was created in my May 2022 post titled Please Touch Tour at Macculloch Hall.

May 2, 2022, was the 25^th anniversary of the dedication of the FDR Memorial on the National Mall in Washington D.C. In honor of that occasion, the National Park Service installed Braille exhibits and tactile models of some statues at the FDR Memorial.

Here is the rest of that story. Federal agencies aren’t known for speed. The National Park Service conducted an accessibility review in 2015 that recommended tactile models and braille text on exhibits at the FDR Memorial. That internal report was filed somewhere, and no action was taken. In 2021 I wrote a report describing the lack of accessibility at the FDR Memorial.

Advocacy by the non-profit FDR Memorial Legacy Committee convinced the National Park Service to design and install the tactile models. Now they are on exhibit panels that include Braille and print text with a built-in speaker that plays an audio description.

Here is the press release with links to my 2021 and 2022 reports.

As I stated earlier, planning multisensory exhibits is a long-term process. In that spirit, I will end this post by teasing a cool project that is in early stages of planning. In collaboration with the Virtual Curation Lab, I am planning an exhibit of 3D-printed replicas of fossils at The Peale Museum in Baltimore.

I am working with dedicated and talented partners. Watch this space for more details about this and other projects in the coming months.

Also in 2023, a website redesign is being planned to support the growth of MuseumSenses LLC. Stay tuned for that announcement!