the leadership of museums. Magdalena Mieri coordinated the 

 program. Highlights of this year's program were sessions on 

 diversity in the workforce, leadership skills, and developing 

 partnerships and collaborations. 



The Fellowships in Museum Practice program, managed by 

 Nancy Fuller, awarded fellowships this year to museum re- 

 searchers from Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Re- 

 search topics included repatriation, indigenous museology, 

 human resource issues, and public programming. 



The center broadened its international programming in 

 1937 with workshops and consultations in Argentina, South 

 Africa, and Zimbabwe. Rex Ellis, Director of the center, 

 traveled ro South Africa with other Smithsonian staff to give 

 presentations at the South African Museums Association 

 (SAMA) annual meeting and to consult with the South African 

 government's Department of Arts, Culture, Science, and Tech- 

 nology on its initiative to begin a National Heritage Training 

 Institute. The visit also created a reciprocal learning oppor- 

 tunity for South African museum personnel. In June, Deirdre 

 Prins, an educator at Robben Island, visited the center to re- 

 search educarion outreach programs at the Smithsonian. 



The "Training Course on Preventive Conservation and Ex- 

 hibition Design" was a collaborative effort between the center 

 and two institutions based in Argentina: the Fundacion An- 

 torchas and the University of Buenos Aires. Hosted this year 

 by the university's Museo Etnografico "Juan B. Ambrosetti," 

 this professional development training project, coordinated by 

 Magdalena Mieri, is designed to ensure that the cultural 

 patrimony of South American museums will not disappear as 

 a resulr of neglect or lack of resources. The course is also in- 

 tended to build bridges of collaboration among institutions 

 and museum professionals in South America. Smithsonian 

 staff and Argentinean museum personnel serve as faculty. 



Nancy Fuller developed and led museum practice workshops 

 for museums in Zimbabwe, as pan of the Si's 150th Birthday — 

 International Speakers Tour. Topics included collections manage- 

 ment, community relations, and museum management. 



Rex Ellis and Nancy Fuller also attended ceremonies and 

 programming in Paris commemorating the 50th anniversary of 

 the International Council of Museums. At the beginning of the 

 fiscal year, Nancy Fuller and Bruce Craig attended the annual 

 meeting of ICOM's International Committee on the Training of 

 Personnel, held in Lubbock, TX; at the end of the fiscal year, 

 Fuller actended the next annual ICTOP meeting, held in Berlin. 



Office of Exhibits Central 



Michael Headley, Director 



The Office of Exhibits Central (OEC) is one of the Smith- 

 sonian Institution's largest and most comprehensive exhibit 

 producers, experienced in permanent installations, as well as 



traveling and temporary exhibitions. In 1997 OEC accepted 

 more than 100 projects, large and small, for nearly every 

 museum, office, and research program in the Institution. 



OEC services include consultation, design, editing, gtaphic 

 production, matting and framing, exhibit fabrication, model- 

 making, gallery lighting, exhibit installation, and artifact 

 handling, bracketing, and packing. OEC's staff of more than 

 40 are also involved in training, conservation assistance, and 

 prototype testing. The staffs creativity and client-service 

 orientation have earned OEC a reputation for exhibits that 

 meet the highest standards of educational effectiveness and 

 accessibility. 



Responding to an Institutional emphasis on creative 

 partnerships, OEC has begun offering clients more diverse 

 services that make use of its staff's unique talents. The office's 

 services and activities in 1997 fell into the following 

 categories. 



Consultation 



OEC staff participated more extensively than evet in the earliest 

 phases of exhibit development, reviewing proposals and help- 

 ing shape broad outlines and design parameters for planned 

 exhibitions. This has yielded three distinct advantages: 

 1) OEC's experience in designing and producing exhibits 

 along with its ability to envision the physical realization of 

 ideas allow it to alert clients to necessary redirections and 

 potential pitfalls. Time and again this has headed off costly 

 mistakes. 2) Having an advance package or plan often enables 

 clients to more clearly and tangibly demonstrate the merits of 

 a particular exhibition to potential partners, donors, and 

 partners. 3) In light of the hundreds of requests OEC receives 

 each year, having the option of offering consultation services 

 permits OEC to provide cost-saving services to SI exhibitors 

 even when the office is unable to take on additional design or 

 production. 



Examples of this aspect of OEC's services include concep- 

 tual development toward the development of an exhibition 

 about the Burgess Shale in collaboration with the Smith- 

 sonian Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) and National 

 Museum of Natural History (NMNH) paleobiology curator 

 Doug Erwin. Working with SITES and the Smithsonian 

 Tropical Research Institute (STRI), OEC reconceptualized 

 STRI's Coral Reefs exhibition and prepared a drawings pack- 

 age for use in fundraising for the new exhibition. OEC recon- 

 figured Smithson's Gift in the SI Building for permanent 

 presentation after the 150th anniversary year. OEC provided 

 extensive consultation to the Office of Horticulture on its Or- 

 chids of the World exhibition, which opens in the Ripley Center 

 in January 1988. OEC also provided design consultation on 

 the SI Mace. 



Design, Editing, and Graphics 



As experts in traveling exhibits, OEC's diverse staff of ex- 

 hibits specialists are sensitive to the need for making exhibits 



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