Mayborn Museum Complex Announces Summer 2008 Traveling Exhibit: National Geographic MAPS: Tools for Adventure
Contact: Frankie Pack, assistant director of exhibits and promotion, Mayborn Museum, Baylor University, (254) 710-1202
Baylor University's Mayborn Museum Complex is pleased to announce its 2008 summer traveling exhibit - National Geographic MAPS: Tools for Adventure - a new international traveling exhibit from The Children's Museum of Indianapolis and the National Geographic Society. The exhibit will be on display from June 1 through Sept. 7, 2008, in the Thomas E. and Emilyne Weed Anding Traveling Exhibit Gallery at Mayborn Museum Complex on the Baylor campus.
Maps are full of adventure, used to find pirate shipwrecks, hike across the African Congo or explore Mars through robots. Prompted by the alarming lack of geographic knowledge among the nation's young people and the pressing need to protect the planet's natural resources, the world's largest children's museum and the world's most recognized map experts have joined forces to develop an extraordinary learning experience - National Geographic MAPS: Tools for Adventure. A generous grant from Lilly Endowment and a Museums of America grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services assisted in the funding of this dynamic new experience that will open June 1 at the Mayborn Museum Complex at Baylor.
This new international traveling exhibit premiered at The Children's Museum of Indianapolis in 2006, and then embarked upon an extensive world tour beginning at the National Geographic Museum in Washington, D.C., in March 2007. The exhibit will continue to travel for at least five years to 15 major cities in North and South America and Europe, reaching an estimated four million children and their families.
"We are very excited to bring this new and dynamic exhibit to central Texas," said Dr. Ellie Caston, director of the Mayborn Museum at Baylor. "This fun-filled exhibit combines artifacts and interactive experiences so that our visitors can become explorers and use maps to create their own adventures."
Dynamic elements within the exhibit - grouped by land, sea, air and space exploration - will invite families to become explorers, chart new territory and plan their own adventures. National Geographic MAPS: Tools for Adventure is filled with activities to help visitors navigate their way through new technologies and ancient mapping techniques. New explorers will learn the basics in Explorers Mapping School, where children and families will manipulate and study historical and contemporary maps to learn how they are used as tools for adventure.
Visitors also will be introduced to contemporary explorers throughout the exhibit. They can use "robots" to explore hidden shafts and layers of pyramids like Dr. Zahi Hawass, one of the world's most well-known archaeologists who currently serves as Secretary General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities and is a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence. Visitors also can step into a Congo trek tent or try their hand at tracking elephants and establishing a park for them like Dr. J. Michael Fay, a wildlife biologist and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence. Fay trekked 2,000 miles across the African Congo in 1999 and 2000, documenting rare and vanishing wildlife in an effort to establish protected land.
Join the Mayborn Museum Complex this summer to learn how we can all use maps as tools for adventure.
For more information about the exhibit, please contact the Mayborn Museum Complex at (254) 710-1110 or visit www.MaybornMuseum.com.
Created by The Children's Museum of Indianapolis in cooperation with the National Geographic Society and made possible by Lilly Endowment Inc., with support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.