The Lost Museum

The award-winning* interactive site, "The Lost Museum," is an example of a product that combines interactivity, non-linear narratives, education and 3d design into a cohesive experience that fulfills the needs of engagement, community and participation.

The intellectual problem was how to present historic texts and information relating to post-bellum US society and make it both relevant and engaging to audiences of today.

The solution was to design an immersive media project that integrates a 3d recreation, user directed interactivity and historic texts and ephemera that both engages new visitors and,equally important, re-engages returning visitors to fully explore the experience time and time again. As one of the creators, I can tell you that a participant could return time and time again discovering new documents, life histories, photos and other digitized primary records with each visit revealing more and more about US society and culture at this moment in time.

Using the infamous P.T. Barnum Museum as a starting point, a user can learn about the history of slavery through the story of Joyce Heath, early public performances including Tom Thumb and a plethora of other cultural artifacts.

My role and output of this project was as both the co-information designer of the site flowchart as well as the 3d animator of P.T. Barnum's office. For the narrative of his office, I wanted to add a touch of personality and a realism that would present the everyday of his office.

I, along the many collaborators who contributed to the success of this project, were thrilled to win so many prestigious awards and recognition!

* Selection of awards and publicity

AWARDS

In 2006 The Lost Museum received the Center for Digital Education Digital Education Achievement Award.

In 2005 The Lost Museum was a recipient of the National Endowment for the Humanities EDSITEment Citation.

In April 2005 The Lost Museum won the Platinum Award for Interactive-Educational New Media at the 38th annual WorldFest Film Festival. Worldfest, one of the oldest competitive international media Festivals, was held in Houston, Texas.

In April 2005 The Lost Museum was the recipient of an Honorable Mention Award for excellence in interactive media production in the Horizon Interactive Awards competition.

In 2000 The Lost Museum won the 2000 New York Metropolitan Archivists Roundtable Prize for "the most innovative application of archives to the Internet."

PUBLICITY
September-October 2005 Review in "Higher Learaning: Technology Serving Education":
"The Lost Museum"
"Beware: if you visit The Lost Museum, a Web site developed by the New Media Lab (NML) at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY), you may never return. Just as one can spend an entire afternoon in a regular, brick- and- mortar museum, the NML’s virtual take on P.T. Barnum’s 19th century American Museum, once found in Lower Manhattan, might cause a visitor to lose track of time, online.
The Lost Museum, constructed by CUNY’s Graduate Center students, is a fascinating, interactive 3-D look at what was once the United States’ most visited museum – until it mysteriously burned to the ground in 1865. Visitors can explore the virtual reconstruction and embedded resources, which can be used with classroom lessons, along with clues to the mystery of who set the fire.
Educators, students and history enthusiasts alike can access a rich archive of historical documents and present-day scholarships that delineate the marvels and scandals surrounding Barnum and his museum, as well as the social, political and cultural history of the mid-nineteenth century city. Learn about tiny Tom Thumb, the Feejee mermaid, the Circassian Woman and many other wonders – and hoaxes.
Not only is this an informative, educational Web site, but the rich images, graphics and animation make you feel as though you’re a 19th century patron, visiting the American Museum in person."

October 2005 Review in Common-Place, an online history journal, by Thomas Augst, Volume 6, No. 1 "Finding Barnum on the Internet: An antebellum museum in cyberspace"

July 1, 2000 A Museum to Visit from an Armchair, New York Times, Tina Kelley

July/August 1999 AAA World, Magazine of the Automobile Association of America , The Lost Museum, Kate Muhl

September 1999 CBS Sunday Morning Show