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  • Museum Construction Updates

    Oct 09, 2020

    Author: Stephanie Stewart Bailey, Museum Specialist, Truhlsen - Marmor Museum of the Eye® 

    Museum staff and a team of contractors are putting the final touches on the museum and its exhibits, detailing each gallery so that we can open our doors to you. As the city of San Francisco reached stage 2 of reopening in June, essential workers gradually and carefully returned to the museum to wrap up installation.  

    A man hands a wall banner in a museum gallery. The gallery has gray carpet and white and gray walls. There are three tables with black touchscreens set into them. There is also a banner laid on the floor that reads: Gene Therapy. A man with a tool kit and step stool is in the back right corner of the room, hanging a banner with his hands over his head.

    The museum has been bustling with exhibit developers and technicians clad in pandemic masks, arranging graphics and timeline panels and squaring away interactives—all to explain the phenomenon behind how the eye functions.

    A museum worker installs a book in a display case. She is a white woman with short brown hair wearing a gray cardigan and white cotton gloves. She is placing a small book in a stand next to a ceramic statue of a man. The case is along a wooden timeline on the wall that reads: Classical Societies 1500 BCE - 600CE.

    In the meantime, the museum director and I have been placing objects in their new homes, the gallery display cases. These historic objects now get to see the light of day outside of the museum’s storage cabinets.

    A woman looks at a museum display of eyeglasses. She is leaning over a white table towards a plastic case. The gallery has green walls with historical images of eyeglasses printed on them. She is a young white woman with her dark hair pulled into a bun on the top of her head. She is wearing dark clothes and a face mask with a print of eyeballs on it.

    The Bay Area is known for earthquakes, and we have experienced some minor seismic activity over this year. We reinforced the security of our delicate historic glasses as well as their small identification tags. We took apart each object case and used light restraints and museum wax to gently keep each piece in its curated spot, ensuring the safety of the collection.

    Three men wearing white plastic hardhats stand in a room under construction. Two of the men are white and wearing beige blazers, and the man in the middle is Black and wearing a blue shirt and a checkered blazer. In the background, there is a window covered with an image of a blue eye. There is also a man standing on a red ladder behind the other men.

    Looking back over the general build process, many people with various skillsets have helped create each facet of our new museum. We have joined forces with various Academy staff and ophthalmic members from across the country, including committee members and donors, to design the exhibits and ensure medical relevance and accuracy.

    Four small images of a room under construction.

    The museum design process has come a long way. Prior to construction, this space was an art gallery. The American Academy of Ophthalmology staff collaborated with Weldon Exhibits to completely redesign the space. From inception to planning to demolishing walls to exhibit fabrication, the new museum has been years in the making.

    A man assembles a large model of the human eye. He is a Black man wearing safety goggles, and he is installing a TV screen with an image of a human pupil on it into a large white plastic sphere. A small clear plastic dome sits in front of the model.

    As part of the build process, all of the exhibits went through several creative iterations. Pictured here you can see an early design phase of an interactive eye model. The exhibit designer seen here illustrated his artistry as he folded in computer technology and his model-making skills, all while taking in anatomical advice and directives from our advisors.

    A museum worker rolls a cart of artifacts down a hallway. She is a young woman in a yellow sweater with long dark hair, and she is pushing a beige plastic card with three tray levels full of small, unidentifiable artifacts. She walks past two posters with drawings of the muscles of a human eye.

    Last but definitely not least, prior to shelter in place, we had two delightful museum studies interns from San Francisco State University working with us. We engage with students on a range of curatorial and back-of-house projects, as well as social media, communications and various public programming. We look forward to the knowledge and enthusiasm our next set of seasonal interns bring. If you or anyone you know is curious to learn more about our intern and volunteer programs, you can read more here. We’d love to collaborate with you.

    While we await our physical grand opening in 2021, we are having fun reaching out to you over social media @museumoftheeye and via our upcoming virtual public programs. We look forward to visiting with you more online, as well as in the near future, onsite at the museum.