DESIGN
Through studying, teaching and creating many design projects for more than 30 years, I have learned the art of empathy for the visitor experience. I know how to inspire diverse teams to articulate a clear vision and achieve intended impacts with awe and wonder of elegant solutions.
Principal / Exhibitions at Alusiv, Inc.
Princeton University Library
In Pursuit of the Picturesque Exhibition
The “picturesque” was a new aesthetic that emerged in the late 18th century to express the latest contemporary thought about the place of nature and landscape design in man’s life. Detailed lithographs and aquatints depict broad vistas and breathtaking scenes from around the world. This 2,000-sq ft exhibit presents this story via 25 large format British Color Plate books of this era from the collection of Leonard L. Milberg. The exhibition design creates “horizons” of topographical views for thematic sections and the manner in which the books become landscapes within case designs.
Principal / Exhibitions at Alusiv, Inc.
Penn Museum
Beneath The Surface: Life, Death & Gold In Ancient Panama Exhibition
“Beneath the Surface: Life, Death, & Gold in Ancient Panama” reveals a story of the Coclé people who lived in the Sitio Conte area of Panama over 1,000 years ago, establishing hierarchical societies and trading by land and sea with other groups in their region. After a flood in the late 1920s, objects from a cemetery at Sitio Conte were found on the surface of the riverbank. The icon experience of the exhibit is the ten-by-ten foot “Burial 11” case designed as a three-dimensional “diagram” of this grave which contained 23 individual skeletons buried in three layers. Alusiv designed the exhibition and Art Guild engineered and fabricated the icon and introductory experiences. The exhibit also traveled to The Gardiner Museum in Toronto, Canada in 2016.
Chief Engagement Officer at
Please Touch Museum
Centennial Innovations: Digital Learning Interactives
Oversaw and supported the management of a year-long prototyping and evaluation process with PTM team, an external designer and evaluation team. Was also responsible for fundraising, reporting to funders and documenting the visitor research for this digital learning initiative. Oversaw and ensured PTM had the broadest group of stakeholders for these initiatives, worked with the PTM board, potential funders, visitors and neighborhood advisory committee from the Parkside community. With full awareness of parents potential negative reaction to “screens” in children’s museums, the two digital engagements were carefully planned, informed by a year-long literature/case study research project conducted by Randi Korn & Associates.
The first digital interactive (slide 1) allows visitors to “flythrough” the 1910 historic model of the 1876 Fairgrounds’ buildings. Through this virtual journey visitors see the names and photographs of the immense interior spaces as one would have almost 150 years ago. They become aware of the awesome scale of the fair and that the giant building they are standing in – Memorial Hall – was actually one of the smaller buildings!
The second digital experience is a touch table (slide 2). It invites visitors to build different civic structures on the site of the fair grounds today – swimming pools, public gardens, housing, recycling centers, etc. Visitors see the results of their actions through three impacts: budgetary, environmental, and community happiness. They can add and remove structures to find the perfect balance for their community’s needs. Prototyping revealed the family audiences with young children began to grasp basis of civic decision making while they had great fun building and playing together!
Chief Engagement Officer at
Please Touch Museum
Cents and Sensibility Exhibition
As Chief Engagement Officer, oversaw and managed the departments, staff and contractors in the creation of this small yet critically important exhibition on financial literacy for diverse families. The exhibition and related programs were developed with the educational resources created by PNC Bank as part of their Grow Up Great series. This exhibition explores the important basics of being financially sound starting with money recognition, building a budget, wants vs. needs and choices in spending, sharing, or saving. The exhibit and programs helps our youngest patrons and their families with words and ways to discuss financial matters and how to be informed decisions through play and fun activities.
Chief Engagement Officer at
Please Touch Museum
America to Zanzibar: Muslim Cultures Near and Far Traveling Exhibition
This 1,800 sq-ft traveling exhibition was developed and designed by the Children’s Museum of Manhattan. Ms. McKenna–Cress oversaw several aspects including managing and working directly with the Project Manager, Salima Suswell and the AZ Community Advisory Council made up of 30 scholars, community leaders, and cultural institution partners.
PTM added 800 sq-ft of customized experiences that reflected the African-American Muslim populations in Philadelphia. These customizations (shown above) included a prayer room with interpretation, two Artist-in-Residence installations, cultural artifacts from the Penn Museum and Free Library, everyday objects and their stories from local Philadelphia Muslim homes, and a graphic dedicated to the work of the New Africa Center. Working with local stakeholders and diverse points-of-view in three areas: educational programming, outreach and marketing, and research on early childhood understanding of difference, enriched the visitor experience and understanding of the impacts of culturally focused exhibitions on our youngest citizens and their families.
Director of Exhibits at
The Franklin Institute
Space Command: The Future Has Landed
A 5,500 sq-ft immersion exhibit that allows visitors to suspend belief and step out of the museum and onto a space station. This unique exhibit presents astronomical information in a very accessible way. Visitors are exposed to numerous ways they can explore space in some way: from standing in their own back- yards observing the night-time sky to using machines to investigate regions beyond human reach to actual space travel. Through open-ended personalized experiences, humorous text and graphics, team play multi-media, awe-inspiring artifacts and inventive interactives, they will leave with a fired imagination about the space sciences and the possibilities of exploration beyond earth.
Director of Exhibits at
The Franklin Institute
Kid Science: The Island of the Elements
A 6,000 square-foot exhibit experience illustrating the powers of earth, air, light, and water to children ages 5-8. Four characters (“Keepers”) were developed to personify each element and were central to the mystery-adventure backstory anchoring the exhibit concept. Captured and held by evil Lord Chaos, the four Keepers have left behind clues in the intricate, immersive environments that defined their powers, including a lighthouse, a ship, a cave and a working water wheel.
The open exhibit narrative allowed families a free-flowing exploratory journey to find the Keepers and discover the secret properties of their powers. The exhibit incorporated a number of hands-on interactives demonstrating scientific principles of magnetism, air currents, air pressure, light refraction, and a water zone featuring changeable piping allowing visitors to affect currents and flow. The exhibit opened in 2001 and closed in 2017.
Director of Exhibits at
The Franklin Institute
The Sports Challenge
A 6,000 sq.ft. exhibit illustrating the science behind the sport. As visitors pass through the ‘threshold’ created by bold 3-D signage they emerge onto the astroturf field. The room is alive with physical activity and excitement found at a sporting event. The exhibit’s setting is a sports arena complete with rotating blimp and camera that captures visitors at play and projects their image onto the ‘Jumbotron’ hanging above. They soon realize there is a twist to many of the activities, such as trying to balance on a rocking surf board with feet apart and than with feet together to see the difference in balance. All the while the sounds of cheering and music emanate in the background.
Project Manager / Senior Designer at CLR Design
Philadelphia Zoo
Primate Reserve
As part of a broad architectural re-design, Ms. McKenna-Cress worked closely with the Philadelphia Zoo and keepers to develop new “behavioral enrichment” opportunities for the primates. Studied the behaviors of the great apes (orangutans and gorillas) as well as the lesser apes (gibbons), monkeys, and lemurs to devise “interactives” to enhance dayroom experiences. Shifted focus from primary funding being allocated to expensive immersive environments to creating more industrial elements that aligned with “abandoned logging camp” theme of the entire complex.
Key role on the interpretive team was responsibility for developing and designing interpretive graphics, videos, media and integration into the environment. Also, worked very closely with the client to develop the interpretation which discussed the innovative nature of this new state-of-the-art building, both day and night rooms, and why the environment was not as naturalistic as many visitors had come to expect. Sharing the understanding that there needs to be a balance between visitor and animal needs.
Project Manager / Senior Designer at CLR Design
Los Angeles Zoo
Red Apes of the Rainforest Exhibition
Chimpanzees of the Mahale Mountains Exhibition
The redesign of these exhibits were two of a three part series for LA Zoo’s Great Ape Forest. Red Apes of the Rainforest recreates the Indonesian treetop home of the orangutan. Entering the spirit house plaza, visitors are welcomed into a different world with a Malay language message. A Thai style covered bridge provides a gateway into the treetop home of the arboreal red ape. The exhibit wraps around the visitor and transports them to a dramatically different environment.
Chimpanzees of the Mahale Mountains more than doubled the habitat of the 13 primate troop and highlighted researchers such as Jane Goodall to create a better understanding of our closest primate relatives and the need to conserve them in the wild. This exhibit also designed in many behavioral enrichment (interactives) for chimps and humans.
Senior Designer at MFM, Inc.
National Museum of Natural History
Seeds of Change Exhibition
Peale Museum
Mermaids, Mummies & Mastodons Exhibition
Seeds of Change recognized the quincentenary of Christopher Columbus' arrival in the Americas in 1492 and the impact that occurred from the European presence, as represented through five "seeds" of exchange: corn, potatoes, the horse, sugar, and disease,
Mermaids, Mummies & Mastodons was a 2,530 sq ft exhibit recreating one of America’s first museums with much of the original collection including P.T. Barnum’s Feejee Mermaid, Ramses Mummy, and a mastodon skeleton exhumed by Charles Wilson Peale. Responsibilities included development and design of timeline, design of all exhibit graphics, case detailing and layout, color and finish selections, supervision of exhibit production and on-site installation.
Senior Designer at MFM, Inc.
Smithsonian National Postal Museum
The National Postal Museum is a Smithsonian Institution located next to Union Station in Washington, DC. This 22,000 sq-ft museum deals with the history and technology of the Postal Service, and its impact on the development of the United States.