O Say Can You See?

The Lemelson Center serves up food for tomorrow

The Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center is dedicated to the study of invention and innovation in the history of the United States. The challenge of fulfilling such a broad mandate is what makes the Lemelson Center such an exciting and dynamic hub of activity. It is our responsibility to explore invention and innovation through a wide array of subjects and topics. From the latest inventions in nanotechnology to the radical innovations found in skateboard culture—there are no subjects beyond our interest.

In all that we do, the Lemelson Center strives to live its mission: to be innovative. We are at our best when our scholarship and programming bring scholars, inventors, and other practitioners together with a broad range of audiences to explore the history of invention and innovation in new and exciting ways. Our recent Food for Tomorrow symposium, held at the National Museum of American History on November 5-6, 2010, provides a wonderful example of what can happen when the public joins together with scholars, innovators, and inventors in an open dialogue about the history of invention and where future innovations will lead us.

The two-day program, developed in collaboration with the museum’s Food and Wine History Project, encouraged participants to “eat, drink, . . . and learn” through the discovery of invention as part of our daily menu. Specifically, what role does invention and innovation play in what we eat and how we eat it—in the past and in the future?

Symposium events included a food truck muster at the museum featuring cupcakes, french fries, Korean tacos, salads, lobster rolls, and more!

The Food for Tomorrow program, (or menu, if you will) featured presentations by some of the nation’s leading scholars, inventors, writers, scientists, and molecular gastronomists who engaged the public audience—and each other—to think innovatively about the ways in which we produce, prepare, and consume our food. Lively discussions challenged all of us to consider how new innovations will shape these efforts in the future. As one might expect, there were stark differences of opinion about these critical issues but, significantly, many commented that the symposium served to make them consider these questions in new and different ways.

Public programming for the symposium included making hydroponic gardens in Spark!Lab with Resident Eccentric Steve Madewell.

It is important to the Lemelson Center to continue this dialogue about the future of food beyond the two-day symposium. In this spirit, the Lemelson Center will feature Food for Tomorrow as the central theme of its podcast series, Inventive Voices, throughout 2011. In this way, we will provide the opportunity for our symposium presenters to share their innovative insights and include you in the conversation. The Inventive Voices podcast series is available through the Lemelson Center’s website or may be downloaded from iTunes.

Attendees sample wines from innovative East Coast vineyards.

The symposium was launched with the film premier of Truck Farm!, a whimsical look at the true story of urban farms taking root in New York City. From a self-sustaining Staten Island barge to a 6,000-square-foot market garden atop a Brooklyn roof, these gardens are breathing new life into old cities. We were thrilled to have filmmakers Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, the Peabody Award-winning co-creators of King Corn, Big River, and The Greening of Southie, at the museum to discuss their newest film. The Lemelson Center is very pleased to feature Ian Cheney as our guest in our first podcast of this year’s series to share his unique perspective about the future of food with you.

Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis with their truck farm.

Listen to the podcast

 

Jeffrey Brodie is the deputy director of the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation.

"Tapping" into innovation

On a recent trip to Wisconsin, I had the opportunity to spend a morning and afternoon in the City of Milwaukee. Now, I’m a regular visitor to the city, but Milwaukee has certainly had its share of visitors. Usually, I’m just flying in and out of the Cream City, but this time, I actually had some time to explore. On this particular fall day, I thought I’d combine a few of my interests: history, running, and—what made Milwaukee famous—beer.

Schlitz Brewing Company building

I set off on my self-guided running tour with the intent to check out three of Milwaukee’s largest and most famous breweries—Schlitz, Blatz, and Pabst, all three of which ceased to operate in Milwaukee years ago, but still maintain a physical presence in the city’s urban landscape. What impressed me most, in addition to the size of these massive old brewing complexes, were the recent efforts to preserve the old buildings and reuse them within the neighborhoods that they had helped develop and define.

The preservation and reuse of these buildings not only reflects how important they are historically to the city of Milwaukee and their specific neighborhoods, but it also reveals an innovative practice in sustainability. Sustainability is a word used a lot these days, but in this sense, when a building is restored, preserved, and reused for other purposes beyond its original intent, energy resources that would have been used to construct a new building are saved. In the case of Blatz and Schlitz, several of the old brewing buildings are used for condos, apartments, and businesses. What remains of the Pabst brewery is much larger, and emptier, yet the old keg house has been converted into loft apartments, a historic tavern operates at the former corporate offices and visitor center, and attempts have been made to save other buildings within the complex.

Blatz Brewing Company building

When it comes to beer and breweries today, innovation does not solely lie in the sustainable reuse of abandoned buildings at historic brewing complexes; nor is it only found in bottles with grooved necks, wide-mouthed “vented” cans, or labels that change color to let you know when the beer is cold (I always thought my hand did a well enough job of that).

Pabst Brewing Company building

This month’s episode of the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation’s Inventive Voices podcast series features interviews with the sustainability director at New Belgium Brewing Company in Fort Collins, Colorado, and the owner of Meridian Pint, a Washington, D.C., bar that focuses on being an “environmental steward” in its Northwest D.C. neighborhood. My experiences as a homebrewer (and the Lemelson Center’s interest in Fort Collins as a “hot spot” of invention) drew me to seek out more information on New Belgium—their founder originally crafted recipes in his own garage. And I’ll admit, as a D.C. local, I have stopped in to Meridian Pint to do a little “research” from time to time.

Beyond my interest in beer, however, each of these companies are great examples of people and businesses that use innovative practices to become more involved and ingrained in their surrounding communities. Whether it’s New Belgium tapping into a local wind power grid and promoting a bike culture amongst its employees and customers, or Meridian Pint redistributing glass bottles to the local homebrew community and employing a compost company to help handle their waste, both businesses are taking steps to work within their surroundings in a responsible and environmentally sustainable manner.

The Lemelson Center is very interested in inventive communities and networks of people, and with our upcoming Food for Tomorrow symposium, we have been paying special attention to how invention and innovation affect the way food and drink are produced, prepared, and consumed. Take a listen to this month’s edition of Inventive Voices; you’ll learn a lot about some innovative aspects of the beer and service industry, and you might even be inspired to think about how your own actions affect your immediate environment.

Matt Ringelstetter is a project assistant with the New Media Program and the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the National Museum of American History.

 

Backstage at the museum

Loyal readers of our blog are surely familiar with the museum's theater programs, especially Join the Student Sit-Ins. This presentation teaches the methods of nonviolence used in civil rights-era protests, including the sit-ins at the Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, a four seat portion of which is now on display in the museum. Past blog posts have considered how these programs present history for the public (“When History Comes to Life”) and about related programs previously offered about the lunch counter (“A Teachers Perspective on the Greensboro Sit-Ins”). But have you ever wondered how these programs came to be? In today’s post, we want to take you backstage to meet one of the stars of “Join the Student Sit-Ins” and learn more about the process of developing a museum theater presentation.

Xavier Carnegie performing in Join the Student Sit-Ins

We interviewed Xavier Carnegie—the museum’s Creative Director for theater programs and one of the lead actors for the “Join the Student Sit-Ins” program—as part of our “Meet Our Museum” podcast series. You may have read about “Meet Our Museum” in a previous blog post (“Have You Met Our Museum?”). While no longer a public program, it is now a podcast series, which, by the way, was an idea put forward by one of you, a blog reader! A new podcast is produced each month; each program lasts approximately 15-30 minutes and is designed for a middle school audience, but is appropriate for everyone (past podcasts have examined the history of lasers and the development of the electric guitar, among other topics).

In an effort to help students understand the practical side of research in everyday life and better comprehend the jobs that make up the museum experience, we asked Xavier a few questions about his work here, where he finds the information to create his performances, and how he draws an audience into the story of history.

“Protest by Ministers,” April 14, 1960. New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection. Library of Congress.

Xavier explained that after four years at the museum he is still reading and learning more about the civil rights movement. He noted, to do the job well, “you’ve got to read as much as you can. I’m learning something new at least every other day about the sit-ins—new names, new things that happened. You want to do that because people will ask questions…Some things we don’t know, some things are very, very hard for us to figure out, but I want to go that extra mile to figure those things out as much as I can, because these are things people really want to know and really want to ask….It’s a lot of work and it never ends…but that’s what helps the program grow and stay fresh.”

To help the audience understand the period on a more personal, emotional level, Xavier draws on video footage from the era and his experiences meeting with participants in the movement. As he noted, “you can really see the passion [the sit-in participants] have. At the end of the day, these people were really putting their well being on the line for the good of the country—and what does that look like? How did they feel? And these are the things that are important for us to hit, both as an historian and as an actor.”

In this podcast, you’ll hear about these issues, and you can find discussion questions in the teachers guide. A few ideas for students to consider based on the conversation:
-What does nonviolence mean to you? 
-Why do you think the museum would choose to use theater as a way of presenting the story of an artifact? 
-If you were asked to dramatize a moment in American history, what would it be and why?

In addition to the podcast and discussion guide, you can find a video of this performance online, along with its own teachers guide. For teachers participating in National History Day who have students interested in performance, or who are organizing an in-class research assignment and want to encourage students to create a performance of their own, we hope these resources will provide a little inspiration and motivation. You can find additional guidelines on creating a National History Day theater performance here. And stay tuned for future theater programs and podcasts from us—there’s much more to come!

Naomi Coquillon is an education specialist in the Department of Education and Interpretation at the National Museum of American History.