Exhibition Review

Traveling exhibition. Feb. 26–Nov. 8, 1998, National Building Museum; Feb. 1–April 1, 1999, Detroit Science Center, Detroit, Mich.; June 1–Aug. 31, 1999, Power House, Zion, Ill.; Oct. 1–Dec. 31, 1999, Miami Museum of Science and Space Transit Planetarium, Miami, Fla.; Feb. 1–April 30, 2000, Kirkpatrick Science Museum at Omniplex, Oklahoma City, Okla.; June 1–Aug. 31, 2000 (tentative), City of Kissimmee, Kissimmee, Fla.; Oct. 1–Dec. 31, 2000 (tentative), Cincinnati Museum Center, Cincinnati, Ohio; Feb. 1–April 30, 2001, Rochester Museum Science Center, Rochester, N.Y.; June 1–Aug. 31, 2001, Space Center, Alamogordo, N. Mex.; Oct. 1–Dec. 31, 2001, Science Spectrum, Lubbock, Tex. 3,000 sq. ft. Robert Friedel, guest curator; Dian Belanger, guest associate curator; Joseph Rosa, coordinating curator; 1717 Design Group, exhibition designer; Association of Science-Technology Centers, Washington, D.C., national tour coordinators.	1
Buckminster Fuller: Thinking Out Loud (94-min. videotape). Prod. by Tapeworm.	2
Internet: a web show featuring selected pictures from the exhibition and brief synopses of the case studies, http://www.eweek.org/2000/nbm/intro.html	3
As the title suggests, this is an exhibition exploring the venues in which creativity surfaces and flourishes in thinking by engineers. "Breaking Through" develops eight vignettes, each taking a theme and an associated case study to demonstrate this. It underscores these lessons with an imaginatively engineered layout of photos, graphic images, videos, models, and even a few artifacts, illustrating the case studies in a cubicle dreamworld of tube-mounted displays. Using the didactic properties of puzzles, computer programs, and games, a critical component of the exhibition imparts its lessons through six exercises that encourage the visitor to conceptualize and resolve problems in new ways.	4
Because the exhibition encourages us at every turn to reexamine our conceptions of what and how engineers do what they do, it is useful to look first at what this exhibition is not, before we explore what it is. It is not an exhibition of engineering in everyday life, nor does it seek to tout the biggest, the first, or other superlative engineering feats. It does not awe the viewer with monstrous structures, complex displays, or dazzling demonstrations. The exhibition is simple yet elegant in construction and layout; the scale of production is not meant to intimidate. In short, it is not the kind of exhibition one attends if the goal is a mildly mindless excursion into the technical world. Rather, it focuses on the problems and situations prompting novel engineering solutions and offers clear examples to illustrate them. Pulling the viewer beyond conventional expectations, it makes a strong case for engineering as what guest curator Robert Friedel, professor of history at the University of Maryland, calls "the creative impulse of the people who strive to give shape to our material world, built environment, and systems of information and power."	5
The construction of the Anaconda at Kings Dominion in Richmond, Virginia, illustrates some of the many challenges associated with creative engineering. Courtesy Arrow Dynamics. . . .