Gateway Science Museum

Fall 2012

Take Flight

Take Flight exhibit supported by NASA

Devoted to the creative exploration of flight. Visitors of all ages can try their hand at the Paper Airplane Launchers, the Hoverport, the Rocket Launcher, and other flight experiences while uncovering fundamental principles of flight.

Inspiring and stimulating curiosity about what makes flight possible and offering fascinating explanations of the principles and forces involved, Take Flight is sure to please one and all.

Take Flight is a traveling exhibition of ScienceWorks, based upon work supported by NASA grant award #NNX09AL32G, by the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences and Rockwell Collins.

Gold Fever! Untold Stories of the California Gold Rush

Hydraulic mining in the North Bloomfield 1870

Hydraulic Mining, North Bloomfield, Nevada Co., California, ca. 1870. Albumen print by Carleton E. Watkins. Collection of the California State Library.

Gold Fever: Untold Stories of the California Gold Rush starts with California before the discovery of gold in 1848 and traces the frenzied dash over land and sea to the gold fields in 1849. The exhibition includes 24 panels with photo-murals, video tapes of Gold Rush history, and an educational suitcase with hands-on artifacts. Also featured will be historical California artifacts from the 18th and 19th Centuries, including gold mining equipment.

Gold Fever! The Untold Stories of the California Gold Rush was organized by Exhibit Envoy in partnership with the California Council for the Humanities.

Third Views, Second Sights: A Rephotographic Survey of the American West

Third Views, Second Sights: A Rephotographic Survey of the American West features rephotographs of historic American western landscapes and considers dynamic landscape change witnessed since the 19th century when the great expeditionary photographers, W. H. Jackson, T. H. O'Sullivan, Wm. Bell, and others, first photographed for the geological and geographical surveys. Their photographs became the benchmarks for studying change and continuity as well as examining ways of seeing and representation.

The Rephotographic Survey Project, led by chief photographer Mark Klett, revisited and rephotographed 110 of these 19th century sites during the late 1970s. The Second View Projectconnected the first-view icons of early American photography to second views and explored how these original images were made while documenting a century of change.

Two decades later, Klett organized a new survey team, including Byron Wolfe, now a Lantis Professor in the Department of Communication Design at CSU, Chico, to rephotograph many of the same places. Third Views, Second Sights further records a changing landscape in light of a new generation's visual sensibilities and presents 43 rephoto sets from a contemporary photographic survey that documents over 125 years of geologic, environmental, and cultural changes, while exploring changing human perceptions and representations of the landscape. The photo sets are presented with extended interpretive captions as well as field notes from William L. Fox and contemporary photographs from project photographers.