It’s Raining Awards

This post comes to us via Alice Rubin who, in addition to playing a mean game of Mah Jongg, has done a great job with the Keeping History Center.

The Keeping History Center has been honored with two prestigious awards in the last two days. The first was announced Sunday at the MUSE (Museum and Technology) Awards, held each year by the American Association of Museums.

This year the ceremony took place at the Los Angeles Convention Center Sunday, May 23, in the evening.

Phillip Tiongson, from Potion, and Jonathan Alger, from C&G Partners, the two firms who collaborated on the Voices of Liberty project inside the Keeping History Center, attended the event as part of the overall AAM annual conference, and accepted the award on behalf of the Museum.

Here’s what Jonathan Alger had to say:
“Phillip and I knew that our project with the Museum had won a MUSE award, but the level of the award (Honorable Mention, Bronze, Silver or Gold) is not revealed until the ceremony itself. We sat with the crowd, watching people Twittering the results in real time, waiting for our category to be announced. When our category came up -- "Interactive Installations" -- we were in rapt attention, wondering if we wold get called first (they do them in ascending order) but knew the later, the better.

They announced the category, briefly explained it and thanked all the entrants and jury. Then they announced the first award, which went to ...
... the new SONY exhibit. That meant we had a "metal" prize, we had to now be in the top three. It was getting interesting.

The Bronze was announced. Not us either. Phillip and I looked at each other. We were in the top two. That or they lost our submission.

Then the Silver was announced -- it was our project, we had won the Silver. We were very happy, and we went together up to the front of the room and accepted the award on behalf of the Museum.

The Gold award went to a project in Australia. All the results can be seen on the MUSE website.

There were many entries, and the Voices of Liberty beat out quite a few and climbed to the #2 spot. It's not the first award that it's won, we're happy to have been able to do our best work for the Museum and we look forward to many satisfied visitor to VOL in the future.”

A day later we heard from the 365: AIGA Annual Design Competition that Timekeeper had been selected as an example of outstanding information design. There were over 2500 entries and only 5% were chosen for this honor from the design community. We’ll be featured in the annual 365: AIGA Year in Design publication and be part of an accompanying exhibit mounted in New York later this year.

If you haven’t had a chance to visit the exhibit please come by and we’ll show you our fancy plaque!