Museum Consulting

“A good museum is more than a collection of things, more than a box of stuff, a great museum is a collection of stories. The root of the word, muse, clearly implies that a museum is the place where the muses live. The better job your museum does of telling its story then visitors are more engaged, they will find more meaning, they are more likely to come back and they are more likely to tell their friends. The success of your museum is dependent on how well you tell your story.”        Brian “Fox” Ellis   From leading ‘A storyteller’s tour of Art History’ at the Louvre in Paris to assisting the curator of an exhibit on The Oregon Trail for the Museum of Nebraska Art, much of the work Fox has done in the past twenty years, has been within the halls of museums.   From the simple task of presenting a performance at the opening of new exhibit to a more complete series of performances, workshops for docents, writing signage and lesson plans then presenting a special program at a fund raising evening to honor donors, Fox is eager to help your museum put together a memorable experience for museum visitors. Please Contact Fox to discuss ways he may add an extra layer of vitality to your next project.   Because every project is custom tailored to meet your needs it is easier to talk about recent projects and hope this inspires you to dream up a few new ideas:   The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum has hired Fox to write a book on “Storytelling in the Museum Setting” then presenting a series of four docent training programs to give volunteers the knowledge base, skills and confidence to engage visitors in a more meaningful dialogue. He was also invited to participate in an in-depth teacher training program working with The Library of Congress to help teachers develop lesson plans to help students plug-in to the internet resources at both institutions. Fox also presents regular public programs on Lincoln the Lawyer, Lincoln’s Youth, and The Civil War.   The Field Museum commissioned Fox to be Charles Darwin for the press junket and opening weekend of the exhibit to celebrate the Bicentennial of Darwin’s birth. He was invited back as Darwin for the American Academy for the Advancement of Science annual conference in Chicago. He has also presented day-long teacher training workshops in conjunction with YoYo Ma’s Silk Road tour, exploring relationships between economic and cultural trade routes. For the Bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark Expedition Fox created a scavenger hunt to view the collection through the eyes of the Corps of Discovery, created several hands-on experiments and lesson plans within a trunk teachers could check out, and then presented a series of workshops and public performances to celebrate the modern corps of discovery. He has also presented programs as part of the ‘Dozin with Dinos’ overnight program and is a frequent guest speaker when The Field Museum hosts special events.   The Museum of Nebraska Art has invited Fox to be a featured speaker several years in a row when they host Crane Festival events. He has also helped to curate, choose the art, write the signage and develop on-line lesson plans for two exhibits, The Oregon Trail and Animal Kingdom.   When The Figge Museum in Davenport, Iowa partnered with the Butterworth Center to create an exhibit of the Bien Edition of John James Audubon’s Birds of America they invited Fox to present a total of 26 performances in local schools to promote the exhibition.   John James Audubon State Park in Henderson, Kentucky created an exhibit of Audubon’s art and artifacts that toured America for several years. Most of the museums hired Fox for performances and many invited him to present a multiple day mini-residency in which he visited schools, lead workshops for teachers and museum docents, wined and dined sponsors, lead birding hikes around the museum and gallery tours as John James Audubon. He even received a small grant to create a film of the tour to help promote the exhibition:   Please Contact Fox to discuss your next project and how he can help.