Sharyn Horowitz << back to resume

Project: Breaking the Prairie Gallery - Prairie Learning Center

Client: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

Role: Exhibit Developer

Challenge: Treading lightly & telling the story

My initial plan for the breaking the prairie gallery

Collaboration with exhibit designer & architectural plan

Final design

The Prairie Learning Center is the visitor center for the Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge, an unusual project with a controversial mission. Typically National Wildlife Refuges preserve a pristine natural habitat or create conditions where game animals can breed. This Refuge is charged with restoring a nearly extinct ecosystem, tallgrass prairie. Right now most of the land is working or fallow farmland, and the Fish & Wildlife Service doesn't even own all the land yet, but rather must buy it at current market value when or if the landowners agree to sell.

In many farmers' eyes, restoring tallgrass prairie is a bizarre idea. There's great pride about breaking the tallgrass prairie to yield the richest farmland in the world. Why would anyone want to take good farmland out of production to grow a bunch of weeds? A massive public relations challenge. The Prairie Learning Center exhibits help sell the idea. The story is quite simple on the surface:

• It was a diverse, massive ecosystem
• It was plowed under and turned into farmland
• Now we're missing something & it's time to try to bring back a piece

These three ideas became the three galleries in the Prairie Learning Center.

The second gallery, about breaking the prairie, was the toughest challenge. What to say to visitors who take great pride in this accomplishment, which the Federal Government is now trying to undo. Wrap in the issue of Native Americans forcibly displaced from their lands by settlers and it gets even stickier.

The exhibit pictured is based on historical survey maps and is written in the voice of a farmer.

It's 1865 and you're in Jasper County, Iowa. What plot will you choose?

Most people say prairie is the most fertile, but a few think land that can't grow trees won't grow crops. You will need some trees to build with and be sure there's some water nearby. When you've chosen a quarter section, get out your wallet: Federal land is $1.25 an acre.

Roll over the flip labels to learn what you can expect from each piece of land.