MUSEUM AT THE END OF THE WORLD

Working collaboratively with the museum and project architects, our team envisioned a new space for an existing city museum in the remote northern city of Nome, Alaska. The Carrie M. McLain Memrial Museum features the colourful history and rich story of this gold rush boom town. This is a museum intended for both the local community and visitors. Our work in the museum exhibit captured the sense of risk, journey, opportunity, and community of being on ‘the edge of the world’.

Client: ECI Alaska
Location: Nome, Alaska
Architect: PUBLIC
Scope: Interpretive planning, exhibition design concepts

Addressing the intense three-month period in the summer of 1900 when the population exploded from 3,000 to 20,000 (newcomers had to prove that everything for survival accompanied them in boxes), the exhibit concept centres around shipping, shipping containers, and the ad hoc edges and spaces that are created through necessity, ingenuity, and entrepreneurial invention. The exhibitry is designed to be modular, flexible, and changeable, so the local museum staff can continue to create their own labels to keep the locals interested and the topics up-to-date.

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In the process of the work, we developed content and immersive visitor experiences around six themes made unique by Nome’s isolation and harsh climate. Artifacts, stories and ideas explore “Gold Fever”, “Making the Most Out of Nothing”, “Building Community”, and “Staying Warm”, among others. 

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