Innovation Place

FAIN: BP-50191-10

Rochester Museum and Science Center (Rochester, NY 14607-2101)
Kathryn E. Murano (Project Director: August 2009 to March 2012)

Planning of a long-term multimedia exhibition exploring the interrelationship of society, technology, and culture that has made Rochester a fertile place for technological invention and entrepreneurial innovation for almost 200 years.

The Rochester Museum & Science Center (RMSC) requests funding in the amount of $40,000 to complete initial plans for Innovation Place (working title), a major new 10,000 sq. ft. exhibition in RMSC's third floor galleries that promotes understanding of Rochester's technological history and its culture of invention and innovation. Collections objects, immersive environments, multimedia presentations, and interactives will be used to tell stories of invention and innovation from Rochester's beginnings as the nation's first boomtown after the opening of the Erie Canal to its current rank among the top knowledge-based economies in the world. By combining the sciences and the humanities into a single exhibition, this project will critically frame and interpret new questions about Rochester as a laboratory of significant technologies -- on the local, national, and global levels -- and the changes in regional culture and economics that both inspire, and result from, their invention.