Raiders of the Lost Art Returns

Date: March 30, 2015
Contact: Elizabeth Rodriguez, 603 675-2175

The Return of Raiders of the Lost Art @ Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site &Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historic Park

Last spring, Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site successfully delivered the very first crowdsourced exhibit in the National Park Service! This year we're doing it again and adding Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historic Park to the team with the return of "Raiders of the Lost ART." This crowd sourced exhibit has been made an official event in the celebration of the National Park Service Centennial activities. As a Find Your Park initiative it encourages the public to connect with their park through its collections. Your Collection, Your Exhibit!

Crowdsourced exhibit…What does that mean?

In your online world, you are in charge of your own content—you choose what to read, what to watch, what to post, what to comment on. But when you go to a museum, your experience is managed by others.With the return of "Raiders of the Lost ART," you and your friends in the online community get to design an exhibit of actual museum objects from the two parks' museum collections.

Crowdsourced exhibit…How did that work?

We asked our online community on Facebook to co-curate an exhibit display. Through a weekly online voting process, our online community on Facebook brainstormed ideas for a theme, then they selected the theme for the exhibit, and finally they selected the assemblage of museum objects to be included. Student Conservation Association (SCA) Museum Interns helped make labels and assisted park staff with installing the exhibit in an empty museum case in our visitor center.

In case you missed it, here's a quick recap:

"The Hairstyle Files: Hirsute Gentlemen and Coiffured Ladies of the Gilded Age" featured artworks by Saint-Gaudens and his contemporaries from the park's museum collection.Some of the works had never been displayed in public before. The exhibit reflected beautiful and complex up-dos and a myriad of different ways to sculpt male facial hair. It was a tribute to the skill of sculptors like Saint-Gaudens that they were able to capture this diversity with such realism in their plaster and bronze works. It was an exhibit we at the park never would have come up without the input from our online community.

A New Collaboration!

This year Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site is partnering with Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historic Park in Woodstock, VT. Both parks are working together to make this year's Raiders bigger and better by featuring more objects from their two amazing collections. Online users will not only vote on the theme and select objects, but their comments will provide additional content for the exhibits labels.

Here's how to participate:

Visit both parks' Facebook pages at facebook.com/SaintGaudensNPS and Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park to follow the action. Be on the alert for weekly Facebook posts starting Friday, March 20^th to begin the brainstorming session with a call for new ideas. Then check back on Friday, March 27^th to cast a vote on which theme you like best. Voting for objects will occur throughout April helping us move closer to determining the next Raiders of the Lost ART exhibit! The exhibit will be installed in June and on display through July.