The Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum is a wonderful resource for exploring the Midwest’s natural history and expansive flora and fauna in all its settings. Within the museum, the exhibit “Mysteries of the Marsh” offers in-depth insight into the complex ecosystems in the Midwest’s marshlands. Despite its wonderful contents, it was not a popular exhibit for the museum. Sporadic, debilitating glare and shadows obscured much of the exhibit and made it difficult to interact with the educational materials within. We created a welcoming, immersive atmosphere for “Mysteries of the Marsh” that greatly improved its popularity.
We started with changing and re-situating track fixtures throughout the exhibit, which immediately reduced shadowing. We also added more distilled lighting above the exhibits and removed glare-inducing track lights along a glass wall to improve lighting continuity. In addition, the exhibit contained a tank with one-way mirrored glass — a lighting challenge to improve visibility without reducing the effect of the mirror. We utilized ambient lighting as well as rope lights underneath the tank to adequately light the tank without detracting from the magic of the one-way mirror. These updates were made within strict budget and time constraints, and had immediate positive effects on the exhibit.
